cybertime and impatience

While I was reading chapter 22 in "Communications and Cyberspace," I came across a passage that stuck out. The passage can be found on page 367 and says, "When sitting at a computer terminal, delays of a few seconds seem interminable and five minutes an eternity. Hyperspeed breeds impatience, haste, and intolerance, both online and in the real world." After reading this passage I began to think about how long it used to take a page to load when the Internet was in its early stages. When I used to go on the Internet as a kid the time it took for a webpage to load up wasn't nearly as quick as it is today. It usually took a couple minutes for each page to load up, but at the time it seemed like nobody saw no big deal in waiting the couple minutes. Now, if a page takes a mere 30 seconds to load up we all seem to have a problem with it. We are so used to getting information at the instant we demand it that it appears we have lost a lot of the patience we once had. Even in the real world, as the passage says, when it takes a couple of minutes to receive certain information we become anxious and impatient. I have never really thought about how or why my patience has changed until reading this passage. I never even really thought my patience had changed until I thought back to the days when the internet was first introduced to everyone, and it was then that I realized how much things have changed.