I love music. I remember those days when I used to actively pursue the news related to music. I eagerly anticipated the album release of my favourite composers. On the first day of release, I used to rush to the store to grab the first copy. For the next few days, I would listen all the tracks in album on my Walkman day and night. Later, I will shortlist few favourites from the whole album. And then I used to listen those favourites again and again and again.
Later, in the era of MP3s, same process. I eagerly waited to download and then, burn my favourites on CDs and later on USB. When I loved a particular song, I would listen the same song about thousand times in a row!
Then suddenly the time came! The time of subscription services! The time of convenience! The time of comfort! The time of streaming! I quickly singed up for it. I got all excited about the prospect of having all the music at my fingertips. Anything I want to listen to, it is at the touch of my fingertip. I don’t even have to follow the dates for new releases. Its all there for me to consume at any point in time.
It should have made my life infinitely better, shouldn’t it? You would think I now listen to more music than I did before since plethora of options are just one touch away!
But sadly not. Now I listen to music less often. And when I listen, I just keep listening to some random stuff that comes up. I listen to charts and playlists made by someone else who has no idea on what I like. Even though I can make my own playlists within the app, I am not doing it. I am listening to music in some random haphazard fashion where often every second song in the queue is far from my liking.
It made me realise that may be it is not all about comfort and convenience. In the old way of doing things, there was clear intention. There was anticipation. There was excitement. May be it was the process that I enjoyed so much!
When something is available too easily, the value of that thing drops significantly. May be we humans need some friction in life.
We invent things for our convenience but then completely bastardise their intended use later on. We invented treadmill so that we don’t have to go out and rely on weather to do exercise. Soon that treadmill becomes a clothesline. We invented smartphone as a tool to make our lives convenient but then we end up scrolling endlessly like a zombie without any clear intention. Soon we will be in a mental health pandemic. We came up with the great idea of Uber but then started ordering chicken burgers from local KFC using UberEats. We invented email to work better and be more productive. Now the same email is making us so unproductive that we have to attend courses to learn to use it more effectively!
Of course, there are some great inventions and ideas that made our lives really convenient.
But what is the cost of this convenience?
The real cost of the convenience is far greater than we can ever imagine.
The cost of convenience is that it reduces the barrier of entry to our chases. They rise to the surface..