One harsh consequence of our technological society is a mania for speed and novelty. Most early inventions of the Industrial Revolution, whether train, steam ship, or telegraph, celebrated speed more than any other aspect.
These new technological advances helped unleash pent-up disordered passions deep inside man that exploded like fireworks and found their expression in an unbridled appetite for ever greater speeds, sensations, and pleasures.
This adoration of movement and change manifests itself by a desire for all that is instantaneous without the natural progression of intermediary phases of speed or reaction. It creates impatience with time and space based on the idea that nothing should stand between ourselves and the objects of our gratification. It stimulates inside man a restless desire to leave himself and his normal environment in search of new sensations. It can be seen, for example, among those who misuse an array of gadgets and electronic devices to multiply an instant yet superficial connectivity with others or the intense addiction of those who find fast-paced gratification in video games.
Thus we are victims of a brutal and exhausting pace of life. This cult of speed is facilitated by a technology that allows us to make our machines, computing devices, and therefore our lives go ever faster.
(Taken from Return to Order: From a Frenzied Economy to an Organic Christian Society—Where We’ve Been, How We Got Here and Where We Need to Go, pp. 66-67)