Having been recently stuck on the runway at LaGuardia for 4 hours in the snowstorm, and furthermore standing in line for 3 more hours to determine my future flightfate, and then the next morning standing for 2 hours in a line to get through security, to finally wait for another hour on the runway at LaGuardia, I am now a changed man. The realization that life is about waiting comes later in life to most. As a child, the idea of waiting is something foreign. But waiting is what we do in the adult world. We do it all the time.
Some of the waiting we do is subtle. We wait for water to come out of the spigot when we turn the valve. We wait for water to boil. We wait for the seasons to change. Some of the waiting we do is less subtle, and can oftgen be annoying. Like when we wait for a URL to load, or wait for an Illustrator file to open, or wait for or wait for the computer to awake from sleep. When you think of all the waiting you do, the list really goes on forever. Well, not actually. Because we are all limited to finite lives. This is the final wait, or the implicit queue that we all find ourselves in.
This brings me to the Second Law of Simplicity (the First was discussed here), where each law is at a different level of granularity for the time being.
One could argue that utility and saving time are synonymous, but I think they are two different concepts. Utility is a matter of convenience; reducing one's time to wait ultimately translates to freeing oneself to use the time saved elsewhere. Ultimately it's about choice. When forced to wait, by definition, you have no choice.
Posted by maeda at March 10, 2005 12:30 AM