"Please wait while we access the functions on this card"

bric-a-brac, first-draft thoughts

There’s a big essay on machines and computers inside my head that will come forth at some point this spring. This post is a scratch-pad, a prelude to some first-drafts. There may be more of these to come. I’m interested in what readers see.

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Few seem to notice, but computer operations that used to happen instantly are now taking longer. There seem to be built-in time delays that I cannot explain. It can't be that these functions "take a lot of processing power"; they're the same basic functions computers used to do instantly just a few years ago.

It's everywhere. And even though each instance is just a few portions of a second, I find that it adds up in a way that annoys. A few examples:

1. ATMs---the transaction takes twice as long as it did 5-10 years ago. There's a software imposed delay between every screen. "Please wait while we access the functions on this card." Which leads to multi-second delays through each step of the transaction. Oh, and there are five more steps now. I have to choose whether to have a receipt, and, if so, whether it's on paper or by email, etc.

2. Same thing at gas pumps. "Please wait." "Please choose from this menu of things you didn't ask for and don't need." “Also, please answer this mandatory question about whether you want Gas Station Credit Card Reward Club Points Bonanza. You may not skip this. We will not sell you gas unless you perform this question ritual. Have a fucked day loser.”

3. I have a brand-new HP laptop. But try moving five MS Word files from one folder to another. Astonishingly, I'm seeing the kind of "hold on" progress bar and spinning wheel that I haven't seen on an operation this simple and low-resource use since. . 20 years ago? This is also happening with other basic functions like dragging and dropping files. I have noticed this on other recent PCs.

4. A friend has a new BMW. The thing is choked with digitization. It's an auditory cacophony every time you get in and turn the key. There's a TV-sized screen on the dashboard that dings in several different chimes, simultaneously. The only saving grace is that whoever designed this auditory mess at least took the rules of harmony into account and the notes in the chimes actually form coherent chords that don’t clash in dissonance with each other. Check this. Check that. Buckle this. Notice these graphics lines showing your car through the rear camera. Listen to increasingly shrill beeping if BMW doesn't like how you're parking.

[Concept to bear in mind with this next: the collapsing of a machine’s functions into only one button control, where these functions would have had their own buttons that gave task-specific user confirmation just a few years ago. Those buttons would also be labeled to let the (wait for it) user see and understand what function he is order the machine to perform]

Oh, and even the controls for the heated seats have a software-imposed delay. You have only one button that you have to push repeatedly for settings from low to high to on to off. But don't you dare expect instant response. The only confirmation you get is the LED lights. But don't press too fast--there's a .3 second delay built in for every button push.

This means your cadence, the rhythm of your fingers pushing, gets thrown off. Your mind is competing with the imposed delay. It stores up all your finger presses then suddenly "instantiates them" all in a row, leaving you at a setting you can't even figure out. Has anyone else noticed these creeping, "small" changes adding up?

5. My washing machine. In order to begin any cycle, even if you’re setting it merely to re-spin the clothes (meaning, you are not requesting an actual wash cycle), the machine still “has to” do this stupid pre-cycle. Press the button. Wait 5 seconds. Then hear the machine do two little squirts of water onto the clothes (remember, I’m not requesting a wash, only an extra spin). Then wait 10 seconds of silence. During that 10 seconds, you get no visual or auditory confirmation that a function will eventually be performed. You wonder if the machine is in some “pause” state. It will not tell you.

You stand there wondering, and at what seems to be some arbitrary amount of time, the machine begins making actual mechanical movement (thank the lord).

Oh, and don’t bother thinking you can hurry it along, or change your mind. You can’t. The lid is locked. You have to wait for it to cycle. And even when it’s done, there’s an imposed and excessive delay between the drum coming to rest and the machine releasing the lock on the lid. Ya know. “For your safety.” Again, there is no visual or auditory confirmation that it will eventually perform the function, nor will it update you on progress toward reaching the timer limit.

There are many possibilities to explain what I’m noticing. Some have suggested that companies now treat resource-intensive graphics displays as somehow mandatory, and they’re bogging down ATMs and other public computers with them. Screen wipes, cinema-style dissolves on a freakin’ account balance screen, etc. There’s some truth to this, but it can’t explain it all. The tasks simply are not resource-intensive enough to account for the amount of time these machines bog down.

It does seem to me that some conscious choices have been made to hobble, to slow down, machine functions with imposed time delays.

Why? What motivates an industry or software engineers to want to impose these time delays? I suspect, but can’t confirm, that this is related to a newer “aesthetic” sensibility that’s crept into how machines do their work. I notice it most in cars. Take the heating or air conditioning systems. They’re all now locked behind a software-controlled interface. There are no direct mechanical controls to open vents or turn fans on or off. You have to “request” it through a computer command on a virtual “button” (I get super irritated at the feeling of having to “ask” a machine to do something I’m capable of doing instantly by throwing a physical lever.).

The fan comes on. But slowly. “Smoothly.” One gradation at a time. It shows you how smoothly and “luxuriously” it operates by lighting up one pip/bar for each step of the fan coming up to speed. And the whole thing takes at least five second to come to speed.

This “smooth and luxurious” method of operation is something I notice in every modern car, and in many more modern machines. It chafes and frustrates. It’s not actually necessary.

The end result of all of this, cumulatively, is that the same pedestrian, physical-world functions we used to be able to control physically (and instantly) are now these drawn-out, indirect, time-intense processes.

One cannot help but suspect this is part of an ethos, a set of choices (even though some may be unconscious or opaque to the designers). What is that ethos? If I had to put it into words:

”It’s gauche to have to interact with mechanical switches, or to interact directly with machines in a way that makes tactile contact any more direct than a virtual button. It’s low class, it’s old, and it’s just ‘not it’. Therefore, we are going to artificially limit the interface options for humans and machines. We are going to digitize simple functions that do not require, and do not benefit from, digital software control. There will be nothing that is not software-controlled, and you will like it.”

EDITED TO UPDATE:

I knew what would happen eventually when Star Trek: The Next Generation, came out. Like everyone, I was initially impressed with the whiz-bang factor of a ship controlled by dynamic touch screens. But I also saw how unrealistic it was. Lt. Yar's fingers flying over that touch screen, making no errors, and getting confident positive feedback of each command, simply isn't realistic.

That's not how touch screens work. This was an example of the ethos that "humans must adapt to the superior tech, the tech must not be made to fit the human organism." We're living in that world today. Notice a cashier at a grocery store. Their movements are significantly slower and more tedious since physical keys were replaced by dynamic touch screens. Hunt. Peck. Search, Long press. Oh! Don't press too long. . have to clear and start over.

This is not progress. When I cashiered on a physical keyboard, my fingers flew over it without having to look. I was moving groceries down the belt with one hand and typing in produce and tare codes (memorized) by muscle memory with the other. And that's just a grocery store.

The absurdity of thinking that a warship is best controlled by the tenuous and sloppy/ambiguous interface between a human hand and a flat surface that's not really a button. . . And we're there, too. Look at our cars. I have to actually look (taking my eyes from the road) and press at a specific pressure to get my fucking Toyota to turn on the radio.