In Fidget Spinners: How Buffer Icons Have Shaped Our Sense of Time, Jason Farman mentions how people are so attached to technology and their phones because they feel connected to them and in a way understand their function.
I had never really thought of the influence a loading icon or cursor can have on our lives, but while reading this article I was put in a position to stop, think and realize how many time I have closed a window or automatically reloaded a page, or just simply given up on something because it was not loading fast enough or because it had no indication of doing so.
People want to know what is going to happen, they want to know that what they want to watch is at least loading by the appearance of a classical circular loading symbol or with the escalation of a percentage counter. People want to know if you have read their texts either with the word “read”, or with two blue colored checks, or if the person you are currently texting and dedicating your time to is about to text you back with the three moving dots. Whatever it is we need constant affirmation that the technology we use in our everyday lives is working and functioning towards our own benefits.
I guess it is a psychological factor that keeps us attached to out technology. How else would we keep watching a video if no one told us that somewhere out there, magical efforts are being made for it to load and play? How else would we trust our phones to tell us that a person has read our text and is not lying to us? So many theories, articles and studies have been done and created around this topic of people’s reactions and emotions if there is a Read but no answer. I guess this is another way of realizing how stuck we are to today’s technology and of course cannot escape it either.
