The world is undergoing massive changes lately, as you’ve probably noticed. And it’s all happening really quickly. What seemed to make perfect sense on Monday is already a bad idea by Wednesday.
Instant coffee can help.
Which is not to say that everything is moving quickly. The traffic through downtown, for example, has never been slower. That’s an unfortunate situation, where instant coffee will not help matters.
But generally speaking, life is whizzing past at an ever-increasing speed.
Back in 5000 BC, a camel caravan was the fastest form of transportation available, with a maximum speed of about 8 MPH. (That was a bit slower than a well-trained long-distance runner, who could clock about 12 MPH. But load that same runner with 100 pounds of salt or silk fabrics, and the camel comes out ahead every time.)
7,000 years later, a horse-drawn stagecoach was able to travel at 10 MPH. An increase of 2 MPH in 7,000 years.
Then in the early 1800s, someone invented the invented steam-powered locomotive, and the speed increased to 13 MPH. 100 years later, the Ford Model T had a top speed of about 45 MPH. Almost six times the speed of a camel caravan, but, unfortunately, just as bad smelling.
The International Space Station now orbits the earth at 17,500 MPH.
A similar phenomenon of ever-increasing speed has been seen in the way humans calculate numbers.
In 5,000 BC, numbers hadn’t yet been invented, which is why some men ended up with a dozen or more wives. Eventually, however, businessmen wanted to start keeping track of their bank accounts, and the abacus was invented, allowing for complex math operations.
Long fingernails were useful for operating an abacus.
A skilled abacus operator was able to do complex multi-digit calculations in less than 30 seconds, which resulted in the rise of Capitalism, and the decline of polygamy.
The hand-cranked adding machine first appeared in 1692, and long fingernails quickly went out of style.
Early electronic computers like the ENIAC, back in the 1940s, weighed several tons, but could perform 5,000 calculations per second. By the 1980s, the introduction of faster clock speeds, improved memory, and better storage devices allowed computers to process millions of instructions per second. The next generation of devices could do billions of instructions per second.
Quantum computers are expected to perform calculations so fast that we don’t even have numbers big enough to describe how fast they are.
All of which brings me back to instant coffee. How can humanity keep up with the ever-increasing speed of living?
Here are some data points.
Assuming the water in the electric kettle is already hot, making a cup of drip coffee takes about 138 seconds. That’s more than 2 minutes.
Making a cup of instant coffee (with the water already hot) takes less than 5 seconds.
If you are like me and you drink two cups of coffee every morning… and you live to be 90 years old (which I hope to do)… you will waste approximately 40 days of your life waiting for drip coffee, when compared to instant coffee.
(Of course, this assumes that you, like me, are just standing watching the coffee drip, instead of doing useful things while you’re waiting.)
An argumentative person could assert that a decent electric coffeemaker can brew a full pot of coffee (12 cups) in about 5 minutes, which includes boiling the water.
I dislike argumentative people, and try not to pay them any mind. An argumentative person can waste more of your life than any type of coffee-making.
Also, who wants to drink 12 cups of coffee? I would be totally too wired up to enjoy my usual afternoon nap.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.