What does a feature tell about us and the way we are living?
Everyone has seen how awesome is the new WhatsApp feature. Now you can accelerate the voice massagers. So now, three-minute audio of your friend, you can listen in a frequency of 1.5X or 2X. Isn’t it the more fantastic thing? So we have no more excuses of complaint about these “long” audios, and also we have this sensation of saving a lot of time.
The first time I saw the functionality, I was delighted, especially from a product perspective. I heard thousands of times complaints about long audio files but never heard someone comment on that solution. That’s the remainder me the Henry Ford quotation.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
What does it mean to accelerate the audios?
This feature solves a big pain point and a delighted lot of users. I am one of them. However, what does “1.5X or 2X” say about us and our lifestyle.
Don’t we have 5 minutes to hear a friend’s story? How does it influence our way of establishing social relationships?
Here I let some questions on this topic; of course, this isn’t the only feature that makes us reflect.
We live in a rush
We never have time for anything, and every change to save time is an opportunity. But then we are with our phones 4 hours per day on social media, reacting to content, answers with emojis, etc.
- Why are we so desperate to save time?
- How is it possible we can’t dedicate 3 or 5 minutes to hear our friends or family or someone that messages us?
- Are we not interested in the content, or are we losing the capability to concentrate?
Do we communicate properly?
Communication in the past had a different spark. When communication was slow, people needed to think about what they wanted to share. So they were spending time thinking, writing, and waiting.
The communication’s evolution and the “right now” concept reduce the waiting and thinking about what to share. Instead, we can share everything immediately, and communication transformed from something wanted and expected in the past to a basic commodity and, in some cases, irrelevant.
In the over-informed decade, it’s time to reflect on what we communicate and how we do it.
Do you have other features or technology that make you reflect on how that is conditional on the way we live?
