The Internet Taught Me Patience. Then It Took It Away
Tools Should Be Fast. Craft Should Be Slow.
Title: LATENCY
Status: Archived Log
Author: Ezra Hale
Cycle: 001 — HANDSHAKE
Position: Log 003 of 5
BEGIN LOG
The Old Rhythm:
It’s hard to imagine a time when things weren’t instant and effortless.
When updates took longer than seconds, when intuition and reason couldn’t be automated.
But I remember.
I remember waiting for pages to load, The text loading first, and then the images.
I remember waiting for replies, I never expected to get a reply to an email the same day I sent it.
I remember waiting hours for a download, watching the completion bar make its way from start to finish. I will admit, it sucked.
Downloads weren’t instant and hard drives weren’t infinite so you only downloaded what mattered.
Yet....I was fine with the wait, it really wasn’t even considered “waiting”.
It’s just how things were. Things took time.
Things took effort, and it was fine, the effort was visible and it was appreciated.
There was a sort of fulfillment on the other side of it.
That was latency. The wait time between a command and its execution. The gap between wanting and having.
But as the internet and technology got faster and frictionless, so did we.
The New Speed:
I for one appreciate how things have improved since then, I have the worlds knowledge at my finger tips. Research is so much easier to do, Sourcing material, parts, information is so much easier. The access to just about everything I could want and need is a amazing.
The speed, the convenience of it all. Its all great.
I just, I think my problem with it, is that it bled into things that aren’t supposed to be fast, or convenient.
We don’t have time for anything anymore. Everything is in a hurry. Everything has to be or seem effortless. We value that now. We don’t look at time the same, We look at it as a liability.
The Learning, The Thinking, The Creating, The Building.
I don’t believe these things are supposed to be fast or convenient. I think these things MUST
take time and effort.
The Wrong Application:
We’ve lost the best part of the process. The most meaningful parts.
When you had to wait for a download, you chose carefully. Is this worth 20 minutes?
When you had to wait for a page to load, you stayed with what was in front of you. You read it.
When you had to wait for a reply, the conversation meant something.
The delay, it forced intention. It proved value.
Now? Everything is immediate. Nothing requires choice. Nothing builds anticipation.
And we brought this into our work:
- Learning became consumption (watch tutorial, move on)
- Thinking became searching (Google or should I say chatgpt for answer, move on)
- Creating became posting (first draft, ship it, move on)
- Building became templating (copy, paste, deploy, move on)
We removed the delay from creation. And with it, we removed the depth. They require time and we stopped giving it.
The Infection:
In my own life, I see how easy it is to lose control over these things. It’s not really intentional.
We call it optimizing, or saving time. Which is useful, but not in everything.
The Learning:
Learning isn’t supposed to be quick. It isn’t a download. It’s an understanding. So to sit with it, and aim to understand, it was hard for me.
Not because the material is difficult, or uninteresting, but because I’ve been trained to rush. Trained to be impatient, expectation of immediate intelligence and understanding.
However, I believe the only fruit, evidence of learning is wisdom. Knowing how to use what you’ve learned and when to use it. It’s more than just remembering the material.
It’s proof that you know the material. To know a thing is beautiful.
A beauty you can’t get without going through the process.
“The Thinking” isn’t supposed to be simple and surface, it’s something to wrestle with.
To think things through is hard and it’s something that we have to do on our own.
It’s very easy to be nudged in a direction, to hand over control of this process to someone or something else.
The Creating:
This is a process that is highly affected by this low latency living.
The low latency makes it hard to create meaningful things. Creating becomes a race to finish. At least that what is was for me. I’d have an idea, and would rush to get it done. Believing that my first draft was good enough. It didn’t need to be worked on, corrected. It didn’t need time.
Add on the pressure of likes, shares, engagement, algorithms and it’s hard to create anything.
These metrics naturally, and aggressively take the soul out of creativity.
Creating that’s not really creating. It’s a factory, an assembly line. Making the cheapest product as fast as you can as much as you can.
I can’t tell you all the times I have edited something to be more aligned with what I see trending. How many times I’ve deleted projects because I imagined people wouldn’t get it.
Or I have said to myself. This is too good, but I need more followers first so that more people can see it. It’s silly, but it’s true.
The polishing and performance of it all. All this production for what? It’s empty.
No matter how good it looks, it’s empty. I think that’s what content is. Empty art. Filler. Or art that’s purpose isn’t expression. I am no different, I have created plenty of empty art.
Plenty of “content”.
I look at creating as a way to share feeling.
To take what I’m feeling and thinking and put it into something tangible. I appreciate when I see something and can see the time the creator took to make it. It doesn’t have to be a painting. But it’s a great example.
There are some paintings i’ve seen. Really beautiful work, and a part of that beauty is that you can tell it took time to make.
Some things that i’ve read and paused. How profound it was, and I ask myself how did the author get to this point. How did they arrive here? The effort.
Why is showing effort all of a sudden a bad thing? That we worked on something until we felt it was right. Why is that bad? Or a sign of I don’t even know what it is.
So I wrestle with how to take what I create the best it can be while keeping it honest and human.
I don’t believe speed helps with that at all.
The Building:
I think should take the most time. It should take the most planning because we build things to last a long time. For example ,a house. The foundations should be sound. What we use to build with should be quality. The plumbing, (the system) the electric wiring (another system) all should be thought out carefully.
They should be built to serve their purpose. A home should have a good roof, should be insulated, should be able to weather storms.
So when I say I’m building a business, a channel, a website, platform.
I should consider these things. I should take my time building it. At least the foundation.
Sure I could chat gpt the blueprint of it, I could have chat gpt build out everything honestly. Literally make a checklist and just complete the task and check them off. But then who built it? Really, why did they build it?
We shouldn’t outsource the blueprint.
We should take the time to figure these things out before the first brick is laid.
And we shouldn’t rush these things.
Learning takes patience
Thinking takes silence
Creating takes iteration
Building takes time
The Restoration:
It may be impossible to return delay to the internet. It will only get faster. But I can return delay to my work. I won’t automate learning, thinking, creating, or building.
Here’s what that looks like for me.
I batch my inputs. Before work, I decide what I’m going to research and gather what I need. Articles, images, videos, fonts, colors, boards, programs.
I use the speed to get what I need fast.Then I close it and I work. Slowly. When I’m writing or creating something, I give it time.
The first draft is for exploration. Then the following drafts are crafting. However many drafts it takes, is what it takes. I let time be part of the process again.
I’ve felt the pressure to learn faster, build faster, finish now. That urgency led nowhere. Only to unfinished concepts and first drafts disguised as final work. Now, I take my time. Fully. As long as I’m moving forward, speed is irrelevant.
The depth I am looking for, the quality I am reaching for. Everything... it all takes time. So I give it.
Low latency for tools. High latency for craft.
Let it load.
END LOG
ezra@endofday:~$ logout
> log003_latency terminated