The need for speed in the age of rage.

• Position: IN FOCUS: A Message from the Editors - Editorial

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...