What isn't realtime?
By @edent
· future · 4 comments · 550 words · read ~218 times.
There are a few heartstopping moments when you have to transfer a Very Large Amount of Money. Will the bank deny the transaction? Will I have to remember my mother's cousin's dog's maiden name? Will the money arrive safely?
I clicked the "Transfer Your Life Savings" button on the website. An hourglass appeared. I flipped into the other tab and hit refresh. My balance went from zero to quite-a-bit-more. I flipped back to the first tab. The hourglass faded away and I saw the words "Transfer Succeeded".
For all intents and purposes, money transfer in the UK is free and - just as important - instant. In this case the receiving bank told me the funds were present before the JavaScript on the sending bank had updated.
When I'm due to receive a parcel, most reputable couriers tell me exactly where it is at all times. I can see it transit through customs. I can see it get stuck in Antwerp. I can see it is due to be delivered tomorrow. I can see that it is only 3 stops away. I can see a photo of it hidden in my porch.
I think back to the days when I had to carry a paper cheque between branches to transfer funds - and then wait until my monthly statement to see if they'd been processed. I remember ordering goods from far off lands and never quite knowing when or if they'd arrive.
Nowadays I can play Scrabble against my mother-in-law while she's 18,000Km away - and the moves ping across the æther in an instant.
Most media is released simultaneously around the world - I remember Star Wars being released in the UK months after the US release.
I applied for a new credit card. The ID verification was pretty much instant but the physical card was going to take a few days to arrive. So they let me create a virtual card number which I could use instantly.
What's next?
What is currently slow but should be instant?
Having sold a property recently, there are so many bewildering slow steps that it's hard not to imagine a conspiracy of lawyers keeping things churning along to pad out their fees.
It bemuses me that so many computer games are multi-GB downloads - why don't they stream to start? Wither Stadia!
There are still long lead times on some physical items. For some reason sofas and spare parts for washing machines are all made by hand and travel on the same slow boat.
Education still hasn't reached the "I know Kung-Fu" stage. Sure, we can dial up a YouTube video on any esoteric subject and watch it at double-speed. But we're stuck with pedagogy which hasn't changed in a thousand years. Read, listen, practice, repeat.
Counterpoint
As I've said before, slowness can sometimes be a virtue. Perhaps insurance payouts should wait until an investigation has been completed. And it probably isn't the worst idea in the world to wait between getting a marriage licence and tying the knot.
But the world is getting inexorably faster - even while people continually complain about the pace of change.
Gratification delayed is gratification denied.
@Edent Oof yes. When I transferred the "deposit" for our house last year, despite me treble checking the account details by phone and e-mail, being supervised by a bank manager after signing stuff to agree that "are you really sure?" I still had that sense of overwhelming dread that it could all go wrong.
Thankfully it was fine.
DinoNerd says:
In counterpoint, computer use gets slower and slower. I start the morning waiting until the computer deigns to turn on the screen, displaying a prompt to unlock it. Controls are invisible; I must mouse to the correct location, wait, and interact when they appear.
Web sites take significant time to load, and while they may start displaying before some gigantic chunk of software arrives, they frequently redraw the screen when the rest arrives - inserting some large image ahead of where I've started reading, just as I attempt to scroll down for more of the text. Or they require scrolling to the bottom, clicking more, repeatedly, to get the entire contents so that the web browsers search function will tell me whether or not the list includes the one thing I'm looking for.
To log in to many sites, I must click on the login button, which produces a menu, in which I must click on the login button, which produces the actual login/password pair; I must then supply id and password, and finally click the real login button. Then the site may well insist that I provide two factor authentication; on a good day, the needed code arrives at my phone within a minute, to be manually retyped on the computer. (On a bad day, the message isn't sent, and I have to retry, then fall back to an alternate option for receiving the code.) Sites used to require far fewer steps to get to the userid/password input, not to mention not requiring two factor authentication for accounts the user doesn't believe to rate that much security.
And the capstone is the demise of type ahead. Are you old enough to remember when you could type before a program launched, in happy confidence that it would receive your input? Also, of course, before various prompts appeared. That was "fixed" long ago. Later we also lost "focus follows pointer" in window based systems. The loss of visible controls came later; all three combine to make computer use much slower and far more frustrating.
Br3nda says:
The warning on this blog about comments not displaying immediately would be another example of delay.
I hear that, sister.
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