The Progress Bar (When Technology Asked us to Wait)

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It starts with a click, then a hiss, a series of electronic chirps and static

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that somehow sounded like two machines trying to hold a conversation.

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For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, eventually, you were online.

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Looking back, it's remarkable how much of our lives used to be spent waiting.

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Waiting for the internet to connect. Waiting for software to install.

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Waiting for a CD to finish burning.

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Waiting for a song to download.

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Waiting for a tiny green bar to crawl, almost reluctantly, towards 100%.

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And at the time, we probably hated it. But today, I wonder if we miss it more than we'd like to admit.

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Technology used to make us wait, not because it wanted to, but because it had to.

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And every wait came with a familiar companion, the progress bar.

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Sometimes it was a thin green line. Sometimes a blue block, slowly marching across the screen.

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Sometimes just a percentage, 12, 48, 83%.

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And sometimes it seemed determined to stop at 99% just to test your patience.

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It was one of the most ordinary things we ever looked at, and yet somehow it

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became one of the defining artifacts of growing up with early technology.

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We watched progress bars install games, copy files, update windows,

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rip CDs, burn CDs, download songs, transfer photographs from digital cameras.

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Simple little rectangles reminding us good things take time.

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But the progress bar wasn't really just measuring time. It was measuring anticipation.

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Think about downloading music in the late 90s. You didn't grab an entire album in seconds.

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Sometimes you waited 20 minutes for a single song. Longer if someone picked

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up the house phone halfway through.

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Installing a game could mean feeding your computer one CD after another. Disc 1, disc 2, disc 3.

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Each one followed by another progress bar.

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Each one bringing you a little closer to finally click and play.

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Even burning a mix CD had its own ritual. You chose the songs,

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got the order exactly right, and pressed burn.

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And then spent the next few minutes hoping nothing would interrupt that process.

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No bump in the desk, and no mysterious software errors. Because if that progress

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bar failed, you probably just created yourself an expensive coaster.

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Here's the funny thing though. I don't remember staring at progress bars.

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But I do remember everything that happened around them.

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Reading the game manual while the installation finished. Looking through CD

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liner notes while songs copied across. Talking to whoever else happened to be

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in the room. Making a cup of tea, grabbing a snack. Sometimes just sitting there,

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wondering what was waiting on

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the other side. But waiting wasn't empty - it gave us space. Space to think,

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space to imagine, space to build anticipation. And by the time something finally

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loaded, it already felt valuable.

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Today, progress bars are almost invisible. Streaming begins instantly.

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Photos appear the moment we press a button on our phones. Games download in the background.

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And cloud storage platforms synchronise while we get on with our day.

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Much like the Six Million Dollar Man, technology became faster, smarter and more seamless.

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And I don't think I'd want to go back. But I do think something changed.

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Not because waiting disappeared, but because anticipation did.

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When everything arrives immediately, there's very little time to imagine at

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first. And imagination makes the waiting part of the memory.

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It's strange that one of the defining symbols of an entire generation isn't

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necessarily a console, or a phone, or even a computer.

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It's a rectangle, quietly filling from left to right.

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It never asked for our attention. It never became iconic. It simply appeared

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whenever technology needed us to pause.

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And maybe that's why he stayed with us - not because we loved waiting, but because

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those little pauses became woven into the experiences we remember most.

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The first song we downloaded. The game we'd been saving up for. The family holiday

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photographs. The mixtape we'd made for someone special.

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The progress bar was never the destination - it simply reminded us that something

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exciting was almost here And perhaps that's why we still smile when we hear

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a dial-up modem or remember a download creeping slowly towards 100%.

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Not because we choose to go back, but because those quiet moments of anticipation

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became part of the story.

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Because sometimes it isn't the things we remember, it's the time we spent waiting for it.

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And sometimes the objects fade, but the feeling doesn't.

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I'm Danny Brown, and this is Artifacts.