The need for speed in the age of rage.

Ten years ago Internet users still marveled at the utility of navigating through cyberspace. Back then web surfers joyfully maneuvered from one website to the next, waiting patiently for each web page to open. Now, waiting just a few seconds for a page to load can incite a user to rage against the machine.

Computer users (according to humorist Dave Barry, "user" is the word used by computer professionals when they mean "idiot") have become accustomed to real-time speed. Now any bump in the "information superhighway" (remember that term?) can drive a web surfer to distraction.

The trouble with progress is that once technology users are granted speed, utility, and efficiency, they tend to immediately take it for granted. Once the remote control became standard, nobody wanted to get up again to change a TV channel. Once answering machines were invented, no one needed to stay home waiting for a call.

In The Age of Speed, a recent New York Times bestseller, Vince Poscente, business consultant, inductee into the Speaker Hall of Fame and former Olympic speed skier, employs speed metaphors and "fast facts" to make some quick points about today's business landscape. Though somewhat sketchy (it's a quick read), the hardcover book includes some fascinating nuggets. For instance, Poscente references a Google study that found web surfers preferred getting only 10 search engine results to 30--if they had to wait a half-second longer for 30 results. "So Google decided to give the people what they want: fewer immediate hut faster results," Poscente writes.

The thesis of the Age of Speed (subtitled Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster Now World) is that the 24/7-style of today's business means that the business office is no longer a place, but rather a state of mind. To survive in this new climate, Poscente says it's best to be fast, fluid, and high-flying like a jet - rather than slow, cumbersome, and archaic like a zeppelin.

Records and information management (RIM) professionals already know as well as any professionals how to adapt to a "more-faster-now" business environment. Perhaps more pertinent for them is The Future of Success, a book written seven years ago by political economist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich.

Reich observes that rather than making life simpler and workdays shorter, more technology means more frenzied lives, less security, more economic and social stratification, and the loss of time and energy for family, friendship, community, and self. "There was a time when we were told that technology would make our lives easier," he writes. "So why is it that the Internet, e-mail, and e-business actually seem to have made our workdays more hectic and our job futures appear more insecure?"

An irony to all this talk of more-faster-now business technology can be found in a news item on page 22 of this issue. U.S. medical doctors, among the most highly skilled of all specialists, have been behind the eight ball, and way behind other professionals, when it comes to using recordkeeping technology to run their businesses. Most doctors still don't use computers to e-mail patients, prescribe medicines, consult with other doctors, and maintain electronic health records (EHRs). Turns out that some of the best and brightest have been behaving more like zeppelins than jets.

Because medical records affect everyone, many believe that the government should provide incentives or subsidies to speed the use of computerized patient records in the United States. The U.S. government recently announced a $150 million Medicare project that will offer doctors incentives to move from paper to EHRs. The program is intended to help up to 1,200 small practices in 12 cities and states make the transition. Individual doctors will be offered up to $58,000 over the five-year span of the project, which is intended to test the impact of incentives on the spread of EHRs.

Meanwhile, the RIM profession remains nimble and tech savvy, in spite of the fact that many members of the profession are getting a little long in the tooth. As Nancy Barnes points out in her review of Bruce Dearstyne's Leading and Managing Archives and Records Programs (on page 72), many RIM professionals are "baby boomers," with retirement looming near. So could it be that these graying RIM managers know even better than medical doctors that a stitch in time saves nine?