The world’s long romance with speed may finally be ending. Even if Concorde (协和式 飞机) flies again, its antique nature was revealed as soon as the Paris accident made people scratch their heads and ask quite why these odd aircraft were still flying. Much of the tech nology that surrounded us has, when we look at it afresh, a Jules Verne qualityIsolving problems that once seemed important in ways that are ingenious but not necessarily effi cient or safe. The reorientation of science toward the biological and computer frontiers is now an old story, but the 19th century fascination with motive power has retained a powerful hold on our imaginations and our economies. It is still marginally attractive to make trains go faster. The pursuit of physical speed has been replaced by the pursuit of near in stantaneity on the Net, an aim which we may in time come to regard just as skeptically. It is hard to imagine the mood in which David Loan’s The Sound Barrier was made in 1952. breaking that barrier seemed to hold the key to a mystery. But there was no mystery. Man can go faster, but that does not mean it is worth doing so.