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    But the society that has peaked has moved to the slow clock.  It has

    ceased to absorb data rapidly.  It is on beach time.  Tennis time is the clock of

    the newly-emerged toad, spending energy in a frenzied burst.  Beach time is

    the clock of the dormant toad, hoarding every gram of substance on his

    bones.

    Superorganisms on the trail of growth gravitate toward chemicals that

    speed the system up to tennis time.  The British, when their Empire was

    enthusiastically seizing new possibilities, were fueled by a new import called

    coffee.  The English commercial conquest of the world was planned in the

    coffee houses of London in the late 1600s and early 1700s.149 The Chinese,

    during the roaringly successful years of the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-907),

    filled their lives with another beverage that set their mental clock to "fast."

    They  expanded their empire under the influence of tea.150  The modern

    Japanese have shown the same predilection for chemicals that turbo-charge

    the system.  The leading drug problem in Tokyo's nightlife neighborhood

    during the late '80s was not heroin or marijuana--the drugs that slow you

    down.  It was amphetamine.151

    With perceptual shutdown, we put on our eye-protectors and crawl

    into the stupor of beach time.  But exploding societies like those in Japan and

    Korea may well be racing on tennis time, a clock that allows them to outrun

    us as we sit in front of our television sets, cradling a can of beer in our hands,

    cozy in the low-stimulus, low-challenge life.

    How can America put itself back on tennis time?  By focusing on the

    trigger that moves the toad from torpor into overdrive--opportunity. Close to

    100 years ago, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner proposed his highly

    regarded Frontier Hypothesis.152  The existence of the American frontier, he

    said, had invigorated the American mind.  The possibility of unending

    resources just over the horizon had filled Americans with zest, imagination

    and exuberance.

    America was not the only nation thrown into high gear by the presence

    of a new frontier.  England was a puny and somewhat pathetic power up to

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