Slow on purpose
I don’t think I can legitimately write that I am “on vacation”, given that the state of being on vacation presupposes another activity – often work-related – from which we have stepped away for a period of time, however long. But anyway: I fled the heatwave of the Padan Plain (and most of Europe) to spend a week in the Prealps, a place I could never truly leave, having grown up there.
Every time I come through here, there are many reasons why it feels like going back to another era; one is rather trivial: the internet connection here is a (prehistoric) 10 Mbps down/up, with a latency that easily reaches a full second. However, the habits of the people who use it most – my parents and me – don’t adapt so easily. There are those who want to stay constantly updated with social media feeds, or expect the weekly episode of their TV series in 4K without interruptions. Or perhaps updating a blog, which involves uploading a photos heavier than a few MBs. Latency becomes a problem with another activity that everyone is accustomed to nowadays: using conversational AI tools. All the content we consume thanks to the internet has adapted to network availability: ultra-broadband mobile, fiber optics straight to the home in many places that just five years ago were almost completely isolated.
I realized this just last night, when the TV insisted on serving me the final episode of my rewatch of the second season of “Slow Horses” in horribly pixelated quality. Then buffering for a few seconds, followed by a few acceptable minutes. I thought: “Now I’ll change the router settings and set up a series of QoS rules to prioritize the TV.” In the end, I didn’t do anything; I just settled for it.
This morning I had a nagging question in my head: “Is it possible that fiber hasn’t reached here yet?” So I checked Open Fiber’s website, and I discovered that yes, for just under 30 euros a month I could have a connection of up to 2.5 Gbps. “Why not? How much could the activation possibly cost?” But then I thought that I would have to convince my parents too, even though they are the two most frequent users – during the summer months, my father, now retired, likes to work with his consulting clients two days a week from one of the balconies of this house. I don’t think there would be significant resistance to making this upgrade.
“What if this were a challenge instead?” Ultimately, I’m not missing anything: it’s just an annoying limitation because it disrupts well-established habits; it adds a friction that hasn’t been present in my daily life for quite some time. Our lives are already streaming everything; everything is immediate, instantly available, without any waiting. A phone call would be enough – actually, just filling out an online form – and this friction will vanish (for a fee). I realize it’s not that outrageous a challenge. But isn’t it precisely this kind of friction – the small, unnecessary, easily removable ones – that forces us to notice something we’d stopped seeing?
