Superficially instead of thoroughly: What's more, we don't even want all of it. Once, we lingered over every word of a classic novel or the latest best seller. Today, since faster is better, we read the condensed version or put a tape of the book into our car's tape player to listen to on the way to work. Or we buy the Cliff’s Notes, especially if we are students, so we don't have to deal with the book at all. Once, we listened to every note of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Today, we don't have the time; instead, we can enjoy 26 seconds of that famous "da-da-da-DUM theme"—and 99 other musical excerpts almost as famous—on our Greatest Moments of the Classics CD. After all, why waste 45 minutes listening to the whole thing when someone else has saved us the trouble of picking out the best parts? Our magazine articles come to us pre-digested in Reader’s Digest. Our news briefings, thanks to USA Today, are more brief than ever. Even our personal relationships have become compressed. Instead of devoting large parts of our days to our loved ones, we replace them with something called "quality time," which, more often than not, is no time at all. As we rush from book to music to news item to relationship, we do not realize that we are living our lives by the iceberg principle—paying attention only to the top and ignoring the 8/9 that lies just below the surface.
adv. 表面地,表面上地