Maybe waiting was part of the good bit

When did waiting become the enemy?

Faster has been one of the great promises of technology. Faster answers. Faster deliveries. Faster communication. Faster ways of getting from wanting something to having it. And, mostly, I am enormously grateful for that. I have no particular desire to bring back dial-up internet or the queue at the bank.

But I'm increasingly interested in what disappeared with the wait. Because we didn't only remove inconvenience. We also removed the gap. And sometimes something happened in those 'spaces between doing'.

1. Enter the pigeon

I'm obviously not alone in this. And some people are going a lot further to bring back the gap. An app called Carrier Pidge lets you send a message to a friend via a virtual carrier pigeon. Rather than appearing instantly, your message travels according to the distance between you. Another, Roost, lets you choose from birds, snails, turtles and other virtual travellers.

I realise this sounds like the sort of technology nobody could possibly need. Which is why I love it. We have spent billions creating systems capable of moving information around the planet almost instantly. And now somebody has looked at all of that extraordinary engineering and thought: what if we sent it by snail? There is something so brilliantly bonkers and human about that.

2. Anticipation used to be part of the experience

I remember waiting for letters. Waiting for photographs to come back. Waiting for somebody to phone. Waiting for the next episode of something, or for a record to be released. And yes, plenty of that waiting was irritating. Nostalgia has a habit of airbrushing out the boring bits.

But anticipation also gave experiences edges. There was a before. Then there was the thing itself. Then there was an after. Now those boundaries are increasingly compressed. If I hear about a song, I can play it immediately. If I wonder what an actor was in twenty years ago, I can know before the opening credits have finished. If someone sends me a message, a small part of my brain assumes I should probably answer it now.

Convenience has removed enormous amounts of friction from our lives. But perhaps not all friction was bad friction.

3. Some things improve when we can't rush them

This is the part I find interesting in midlife. There is something about getting older that makes the cult of faster feel slightly less convincing. I don't necessarily want to get through everything more quickly. As I shared last week, there are things I would like to experience more slowly, because there is, increasingly, a sense that time itself is travelling quite fast enough. Meals. Conversations. Books. Walks. Weekends. People I love.

Perhaps what we are looking for isn't slowness for its own sake. It is texture. A little more distinction between moments. A little less sense that life is one infinitely scrolling surface.

4. Good friction

There is a phrase in design: friction. Anything that makes something harder, slower or less seamless is generally something to remove. But I think there is also such a thing as good friction.

The walk to buy the newspaper that means you speak to somebody on the way. Writing a birthday card rather than sending a text, because choosing it makes you think about the person for longer. Cooking something that takes an hour when you could have it delivered in twenty minutes. Sending a pretend pigeon and knowing that, for once, your message cannot demand an immediate response.

None of these things is better because it is inefficient. They are better when the extra time becomes part of the experience.

5. What if technology gave us time rather than saving it?

I don't want less technology. I want thoughtful technology. Technology that knows the point of being human isn't to move through every part of life with maximum efficiency. There are occasions when instant is miraculous. And there might be others when anticipation is part of the pleasure.

So I'm curious about the pigeon. And possibly the turtle. The snail might test me. But perhaps that is the point. Maybe good technology doesn't always save us time. Sometimes it might help us feel it again.

Where would you put a little waiting back into your week? I'd love to hear. As always, email me at rebekah@mpowder.store.