There is a strange, hollow feeling that comes from receiving a perfectly formatted, three-paragraph status update that you know your colleague didn’t actually write. You look at it. Your brain does a quick calorie-count of the effort required to parse it, and you instinctively hit the Summarize button. Now, you

The next time you find yourself standing in a checkout line, or waiting for a slow elevator, or sitting through the three-minute reboot of a laptop, notice the immediate, almost involuntary twitch of your hand toward your pocket. We have become a species that can no longer tolerate the gap.

We are living in a time of compression. Every facet of our modern lives—from the way we buy groceries to the way we find a partner—is being filtered through the lens of efficiency. We have become experts at identifying waste. We trim the fat from our schedules, automate our reminders,