One minute of humanity

One minute of humanity (original title: One Human Minute ) is a 1983 book by the Polish author Stanisław Lem . It is a fictional review , i.e. a book review of a non-existent book .

content

The non-existent book, also called One Human Minuteuses statistical data to describe what happens to mankind within a minute, such as B. the number of births and deaths, which in turn are broken down into the causes of death. The reviewer draws attention to the fact that the book, as much as it is committed to the truth and tries to present the entirety of what humanity experiences in a minute, can only contain a limited section of the reality of human experiences. So he notices that in the book the negative events predominate. But he explains this by saying that there are more statistical data for negative events than for positive ones. There are statistics on crimes, but there are no statistics on good deeds. The experience of higher feelings such as love is also completely absent; in particular, their intensity cannot be determined. In conclusion, the reviewer points out that the book could only be created with the help of computers, and in a supplementary chapter he presents an electronic edition of the book that can only be read on the computer and always contains the latest data, as well as for past and future minutes enables a representation.

literature

• Stanisław Lem: One minute of humanity . From the Polish by Edda Werfel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-518-37455-9 ; (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch 955)