Funny how we always think we’re constantly evolving, shape-shifting. Crazy how we convince ourselves we’ve bettered everything that came before.
It’s just not true. This past week, eBay showed me why – and gave me a lesson in humility.
I’d decided to much upgrade my podcasting kit. Let’s revise that: I’d decided to buy podcasting kit because my crappy stupid desktop mic was picking up more pops than Father’s Day.
So I took the sage advice of Leo Laporte and bought myself a Heil PR40. I felt all giggly and kid-at-Christmas on hitting the buy button when I spied an awesome price for this top-flight microphone. Awesome by UK standards – Americans would laugh heartily if I relayed the actual cost of this metal mouthpiece.
I ordered early in the morning. The next day, the microphone arrived at my door.
The next day I ordered an audio interface. Now I’m really geek. I sent an email after winning the auction near-begging for the gizmo to be sent out that day. I grovelled, how I pleaded. It was winsome, it was wholesome, it was downright disgustingly effeminate.
It worked. The widget arrived in my letterbox today.
At the thud, a high-pitched acknowledgement of great delight. Of bewilderment that business could be transacted with such ease, so effectively and efficiently.
And then I disassembled the experience. Each time I’d had to wait a whole day to get on my new playthings.
There was a time when everything you needed was in the shop, available to buy immediately. Then people stopped buying in shops. They started going down the mail order route. Then the computers took over, and we started acclimatising to getting everything we needed, but on the suppliers’ terms.
We eulogised about Amazon pulling it off in three days. Currys managing a five-day turnaround. Oblivious at all times to the fact there still isn’t a nationwide delivery service that will produce itself at your door when you get home from work. The logic of it all.
So we wait, and we smile when someone pulls off the amazing and we wait only 24 hours from ordering until it arrived!
It’s hardly progress though, is it? Arkwright could have it to your door in an hour.
Do you think we’ve regressed? That the gloss of technology masquerades a true slowness in the way we do things today? Are we more accepting of things that go on around us? What would Queen Victoria say?