Poet, novelist, essayist, scientist and educator Alan Lightman delivers the annual Hart House Lecture at the University of Toronto on the topic: The World is Too Much With Me: Finding Private Space in a Wired World.(cbc: april 30 ideas)

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
(Wordsworth)

"Not long ago, I was sitting at my desk at home and suddenly had the horrifying realization that I no longer waste time. It was one of those rare moments when the mind is able to slip out of itself, to gaze down on its convoluted grey mass from above, and to see what it is actually doing. And what I discovered in that flicker of heightened awareness was this: from the instant I open my eyes in the morning until I turn out the lights at night, I am at work on some project. I have subdivided my waking day into smaller and smaller units of "efficient" time use, until there is no fat left on the bone, no breathing spaces remaining." -- Alan Lightman