In today’s streaming world, we can actually access millions of TV shows, movies, and even music albums and songs at the touch of a button (and sometimes not even a button). For example, right now, you can just easily ask your favorite voice assistant to load whatever song you want, whether you’re driving, at home, or at work. I think this form of convenience extends itself to a point where you hear of people not knowing what to watch or what to listen to. You hear of people who say, “Oh, there are so many TV shows, but I don’t know what to watch. I have so many songs, I don’t know what to listen to.” Or, “I got a problem with discovery. And I think I like this type of song, but I don’t know if that is what I really like cause I just listen to what’s recommended to me”.
I think this is very reflective of our society today, where you feel this immense sense of choice paralysis. There’s a book by Barry Schwartz talking about the “Paradox of Choice”, and the more choices you have, the harder it is to make a choice because each choice you have requires some effort and time to actually curate or decide. If you have, like, three DVDs or VCDs or even Laserdiscs (for those of you who still remember it), then it’s easy. You just choose the movie that you want to watch, sit there, maybe spend an hour, and then flip the Laserdisc to the other side and continue on side B, and that was it. You only had a few shows to watch.
And it was not just that, perhaps you had to go to a rental stall to rent it, or perhaps you saved up and bought that one movie that you wanted to catch, (remember those days)? The one movie you didn’t manage to catch in the cinemas because you were too busy or something. This was a very simple choice. You have three movies today. Pick one or just don’t watch anything. Watch TV, or whatever, listen to your Walkman or something.
And even when we’re talking about TV, it used to be that you only had a couple of local channels. And then, if you had cable television, you actually had but a couple hundred channels. And sure, there was a bit of choice paralysis as well, but it was easier because each channel had its own programming and schedule, and you could only watch what was available at that slice in time. Perhaps you had to be tuning in at a specific time just to watch a specific program, because that was how the media consumption experience used to be. Tune in at 7pm if you wanted to watch the latest drama as that was the prime time. Tune in at 10pm if you wanted to watch the news, for example. If you wanted to watch the latest TV shows or the latest movies, you just watch it at whatever time the TV studios dictated, 10pm, 11pm, whatever was shown.
Today, people get upset when their latest TV show gets released and not all 15 episodes are available on day one. “Oh, it’s released in two tranches? Such a shame. I wanted to binge-watch the entire thing.” It’s so different. First of all, you get way more choices on what you want to watch. And then, you even get to choose when you want to watch it.
And it’s also so different because now you’re mostly like, okay, I’m watching on a bus or a subway, and you just don’t have the same level of attention to pay to the media that you’re consuming. It’s more like, oh, I just want to kill time, and I don’t really care about what I’m watching. It’s just like an in-flight entertainment system. I just want to kill these four hours. Okay, I’m done. I’m at my destination. I don’t care about the movie anymore. Maybe I’ll resume it on the return leg, maybe I won’t. Who has time for that? And this type of interaction changes the way that we see art or trashy TV shows, and I think that’s partly what contributes to this being such a different experience today.
For music you may even hear people say, “Hey, you know what? For music, it’s nicer when I’m playing it on a vinyl record. It’s nicer because it’s of a higher quality.” There are all sorts of magical attributes that they think about for vinyl, when we know for a fact from different double-blinded tests that it is not nicer than a typical lossless audio file that can be streamed over the internet. Most streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, they’re all streaming lossless audio today. And on Apple Music, you even get surround audio as well.
But still, people are dealing with bulky physical media like vinyl records instead of listening to lossless files, thinking that a needle dragging across wavy grooves provides a more authentic auditory experience than streaming pristine digital files. Similarly, in photography, there are those who prefer the slow and costly process of film photography over instant digital RAW files that provide instant feedback and unparalleled resolution. I recently heard of a friend who used a service that “develops” photograph film into digital photos and sends them to you. We know what technology that is, it’s been invented close to 30 years ago. (It’s called a digital camera!)
And when it comes to handmade goods, people often think that a human who takes longer to craft a backpack somehow always does it better than a high-precision machine, despite the superior consistency and durability of many machine-made goods to that of a low-skilled crafter (of course I know that not every mass-produced good is well-made and not every crafter is low-skilled).
But look, we live in an age of extreme efficiency, where we can accomplish things today that were unimaginable not long ago.
- We can make a phone call to anywhere on Earth in less than a second, unimaginable 100 years ago.
- We can hold a high definition video conference with someone across the globe at virtually no cost, an impossibility just 15 years ago.
- We can access most of the published human knowledge in mere seconds, a feat unimaginable less than 50 years ago.
- And we can order anything online, pay with digital currency, and have it shipped to our doorsteps, all of it taking place in a seamless digital transaction.
I think this sense of the analog being better comes down to a deep-rooted sense of nostalgia and romanticism. We tend to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, convinced that there was something inherently better in how things were done before technology made everything so fast and easy. There’s definitely an egoistic belief that if a human takes longer to do something, it must be more valuable than something efficiently produced by a machine.
The truth is, as anyone who has ever had a two year old who plays with their food with their fingers, these experiences play into our desire for a more sensory interaction: physical goods allow us to engage with touch, smell, sound, and sight in a way that digital goods or services can’t. This is why the experience of going to the supermarket, for example, is not just about acquiring goods, it’s the discovery, the unexpected, the little delighters along the way.
In a world where efficiency rules, there’s an undeniable allure to inefficiency. It makes us feel like we’re engaging with life on a deeper level, like we’re earning our experiences. But as millions of people indulge in these inefficiencies, we do have to consider perhaps some broader implications. Are we adding unnecessary waste or slowness? Are we clinging to outdated practices that no longer serve us?
Ultimately, whether you choose efficiency or inefficiency is up to you. Just remember that sometimes, the extra effort spent may not be about getting something better, but just about feeling like you’ve earned it.
