Experiential Latency: A Phenomenon Approaching Zero
Chances are, many of us have returned home from vacation and, while looking through our photo gallery, found a photo we took in front of a landmark — perhaps a large brass sculpture of something or other, or a pretty looking building — that we can’t quite remember the history behind, but we felt compelled to stop and snap a picture anyway.
If you’re feeling singled out right now, there’s no need to worry. Since the dawn of recorded time (notice the word “recorded”), us humans have felt compelled to capture our lived experiences. In 2017, archaeologists were said to have discovered the world’s oldest known cave painting in Indonesia: a life-size painting of a pig dating back 45,500 years.
So why is a painting of a pig in a cave any different than your impulsive vacation photos? While the impetus behind the two may have differed, the action of living through an experience and subsequently capturing it is fundamentally the same. We can even call it a natural human reflex at this point; especially since most of us are now carrying a camera in our pocket at all times. Documenting our lives has never been easier.
There is a metric we can use to compare the two examples though, a metric I have named ‘experiential latency’.
In its most basic form, latency can be defined as the time delay between a cause and effect, or, an input and an output. If we apply this understanding of latency to our everyday lives, we can think of experiential latency as the delay in time between our lived experiences and our ability to capture them.
Experiential latency, or lack thereof, is a direct byproduct of humanity’s exponential growth in technological innovation and the rapid digitization of our tools. From hand ground pigments that would eventually go on to paint a portrait, to a 12 megapixel camera on the back of our cell phone, the methods through which we document our lives are constantly evolving. As we continue to redefine the gold standard for technology, the level of experiential latency we will face will continue to decrease — and we’re already quite close to zero.
Let’s recall the two examples from earlier: the first being you, vacationing somewhere sunny, holding up the passersby as you try to frame the perfect photo and the second, a paleolithic portrait of a pig, discovered recently in a cave in Indonesia.
In the case of the cave painting, there would have had to be a high level of experiential latency present. The painter would have had to do the following: come into contact with the pig in the wild, spend enough time around it to familiarize themself with its general anatomy, gather the tools necessary to paint the portrait, make their way to the cave, illuminate it and finally produce the painting. Having taken place almost 50,000 years ago, there would have been no digital technology present to aid the individual in doing so and therefore the experiential latency in this scenario is immense.
If we analyze the example of your tourist trap photo, we can see that 45,500 years later, technology has granted us the ability to, in the midst of an experience, summon a device of ours and within seconds, produce a recording of a moment in time that we can then choose to keep forever. The level of experiential latency in this scenario is very low — almost nil — if we are to compare it to the experiential latency present in the case of the cave painting. The only latency the user will have experienced here, is the time between recognizing their lived experience as something worth recording, and proceeding to then grab their device to capture it. So what does all of this mean for us?
As the progression of technological innovation continues its upward trend, the level of connectivity between us and our devices will naturally follow suit. The emergence of 5G has already promised us the ability to transfer data at as low latency as one millisecond. If we were to combine the blazing speeds of 5G with a brain-machine interface (BMI) such as Neuralink, the already low levels of experiential latency mentioned prior will continue to diminish, as our brains will simply be able to communicate to our devices in real time the desire to capture the moment at hand.
To say this imminent capability will only apply to the perceived world around us would be naïve. With a large portion of our lived experiences now taking place in the digital realm, a zero experiential latency existence will provide the basis for an unprecedented level of connectivity. If we picture the user at the center of an internet of things (IOT) ecosystem of devices, where every digital experience creates a data footprint, we can effectively eliminate the time it would take for our devices to communicate; providing the framework for a reality in which our tools can learn and adapt to our lifestyle at the exact moment that we do.
While experiential latency continues to approach zero, we can aim to harness its potential by forecasting ways that we can benefit from this emergent existence. It’ll be here in no time.
