Faster?
Stock photo of Target checkouts in the 1990s
Technology promises to allow us to do everything faster. Create art faster, write papers faster, get through the checkout line faster, the list goes on and on.
‘Faster’ seems like it can be convenient, but is this rapid pace really making our lives better?
I m’m getting to that age where I start to look around and say, “is this all there is?” to this whole life experience. For all of my life I have enjoyed sitting back and watching humanity do their thing in public. In the past decade or so, there has been a definite ramp up in the “frenetic vibe” that seems to be gripping the society around me. The 2020s feel like an exercise in FOMO, or fear of missing out.
I’m tired.
When Earl and I arrived in Denver for vacation earlier this week, the first thing we did was pick up some groceries for breakfasts and lunches in our rented house. As we made our way through the King Sooper, we picked up the items we needed and Earl started heading toward the self-checkout lines. I swayed him over to the number of open checkouts with an actual cashier. We waited a few moments for the non-committal cashier to finish up the order ahead of us. I don’t feel like I missed any moment of my life by waiting for the cashier to do his thing.
As we started stacking items on the conveyor belt, the two of us swung into gear like it was 1999: Earl started loading items in the order he was going to bag them and I was putting the squishy and non-edible items at the end of the belt so they would go in the bags last. Earl would handle all the bagging, I would handle the payment and the courtesies with the uncommitted cashier, and said cashier would swipe the items across the scanner.
Being a cashier was much more fun and engaging when we had to push buttons on the cash register for every item.
While I know supermarket executives revel in the details of their on-hand inventory as a result of scanning technology, what is really gained by the speed of this same approach? It’s not price accuracy; one has to keep an eagle eye on a display to see if someone entered a price into the back-end computer incorrectly. The cashier is usually so disengaged that they may not notice if something beeped twice. Time for some wit and try to make them smile.
As we trudge toward technology that’s suppose to make our life faster and better, I often wonder if it’s all worth it.
I heard a music producer talk about using A.I. to create the percussion tracks for their latest track, so they didn’t have to loop and place all the tracks manually in their audio editing software. This use of A.I. allows them to make their music faster.
What is gained by that?
One of the pieces of this life experience we seem to be missing as we keep our finger permanently on the fast-forward button is the experience of savoring the moment. Whether it’s something as mundane as standing in the checkout line at the supermarket or waiting for a roll of 35mm film to be processed so we can reminisce about our vacation memories a couple of weeks after it’s happened as we scan through our photos, we’re short changing ourselves by trying to live life as rapidly as possible.
“Slow down, you move too fast.”
Take a moment to slow down and enjoy life around you. Take a moment and get to feelin’ groovy.
#fast #life #pondering