5G, Really?

[. . .] To have enough of enough is always enough . . .
~ Daodejing Chapter 46

Do We Really Need an HD Movie in 10 Seconds? 

I recently read an article announcing the introduction of 5G technology. The new mobile network is expected to deliver connection speeds of up to 10Gbps and allow users to download a complete HD movie in less than ten seconds. Great as this may sound, it made me wonder, how fast is fast enough? Do we really need to be able to download a movie at that speed?

My first experience dates back to the early 1980s. My father had a simple home computer which came with some games. On Wednesday afternoons, when we were free from school, my sisters and I were allowed to play these games. To load one, I’d put a cassette in the cassette player connected to the computer and pressed play. For the next 50 minutes we would patiently sit and listen to a symphony of beeps and booms as the computer loaded our game. Luckily we had the whole Wednesday afternoon off, because something would inevitably go wrong around the 45-minute mark and we’d have to start loading all over again. Fast forward 35 years and I find myself shouting at the PC if a program doesn’t load instantly; as things got faster I lost my patience. Has this really been an improvement?

Then downloading (mostly illegally I’m afraid). I do think it’s great we can download, music, movies and books at the click of a mouse, but there’s also something that we’ve lost. When I was young, I used to spend hours in book and music stores and I regularly used to go to the cinema. I really enjoyed browsing for books and music and I’d always read reviews in the newspapers to assist my search. I even always carried a list of books to search for with me. These days, however, I don’t go to the cinema anymore and instead of browsing for new books and music in stores, I download whole collections, often without knowing what exactly I downloaded. Has this then really been an improvement?

Technology changes and as a result I change. What I’m really commenting on here is not the advancement of technology but my own behaviour as a result of it. I should not be impatient when a computer program takes a couple of seconds to load, I should still go browsing for books and music and I should still go to the cinema. The thing is that I don’t and I’m not alone. It seems that the faster technology becomes, the less we do. If we stop doing, we stop thinking and if we stop thinking…

[T]here you are.