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F there is anything that reflects society today, it is speed. Everything is happening so fast, which is a great achievement on the part of humanity — except that human beings are struggling to keep up.

There is a way around it, writes Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman, in his latest book, Thank You For Being Late.

The title of the book, he says, comes from moments when people were late for meetings, giving him time to sit, think and relax. “It felt good to have those few moments of unplanned, unscheduled time. Like many others, I was starting to feel overwhelmed and exhausted at the dizzying pace of change.”

While we need to keep up, we also need to stop, pause and appreciate the moments we are in, to be able to manage the rapid movement in the world right now.

Through anecdotes from his 40-year career in journalism during different eras of technology and interviews with highly placed people like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Kofi Annan, he looks at how tech has created a world that is infinitely more efficient.

He examines the world economy, wealth and debt, climate change, how carbon levels rise, and how this pace of life is affecting human beings in harmful ways. While we have more connectivity than ever, we suffer from isolation and “dislocation”.

Friedman writes that starting with the release of the iPhone in 2007, the way we function is being realigned, including how we order transport and food, conduct relationships and even how we vote.

“We have no choice but to learn to adapt to this new pace of change. [But] it will be harder and require more selfmotivation,” he writes.

Friedman looks at three major forces in terms of “acceleration” — technology; globalisation of finances and markets; and climate change and biodiversity loss. He says the accelerations are transforming key areas of our lives: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics and community.

Friedman suggests some solutions. Along with his 18 steps for sustainable growth (including radical concepts like a complete ban on sugar, tax adjustments that enrich society, changing the way teaching and learning works, and spiritual practices), he says we need to rediscover our sense of community.

“We need to anchor ourselves in the

Stop the world I want to get off! But you can’t, so read this book instead, writes

eye of this storm,” he says.

Problems will be solved when we are grounded in a community that is “decent” in the broad sense of the word.

“Sustainable values like honesty, humility, integrity and mutual respect . . . generate trust, social bonds and hope,” he writes.

“The more the world demands that we branch out, the more we each need to be anchored in a topsoil of trust that is the foundation of all healthy communities. We must be enriched by that topsoil, and we must enrich it in turn.”

While it is not an easy task, Friedman says starting from the basic good is the way to survive this era.

Our creative capacity is rich enough that we should be able to fix our big social problems, he writes.

“That prescription is easier to write than fill. But it is the order of our day, the real uber-task of our generation.

“It is so much easier to venture far, not just in distance but also in terms of our willingness to experiment, take risks and reach out to each other — when you’re still tethered to a place called home and to a real community. And don’t worry if it makes you late . . .”