"Somewhere between 1995 and 2010, a bunch of very smart engineers and product designers looked at the human tendency to wait and decided it was a bug, not a feature. And honestly, we just let them run with it."
"In 1997, Amazon introduced one-click buying. It sounds innocuous, even clever. But Cornell research found that removing friction from the checkout process didn't just make shopping easier. It made people spend more, visit more often, and stop pausing before they bought."
"The friction, it turns out, wasn't just annoying. It was doing cognitive work. It was the half-second where your brain asked, 'Do I actually need this?' One-click removed that question from the equation entirely."
"This shift broke something important. Not the convenience itself, but what we concluded from it. It says: hesitation is the enemy. Deliberation slows conversion. Patience is a market failure."
Impatience is now embedded in the infrastructure of daily life, affecting interactions and perceptions of waiting. The shift from the 90s to 2010 saw engineers and designers eliminate waiting, viewing it as a flaw. This change led to a cultural expectation that waiting is a personal insult. Innovations like Amazon's one-click buying removed cognitive friction, encouraging impulsive purchases and suggesting that hesitation is detrimental. This evolution reflects a broader philosophical stance that prioritizes speed and convenience over patience.
Read at Silicon Canals
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