For a brief generation or two, we clicked

For a brief generation or two we clicked. On little rectangle buttons. On dropdowns. On tiny little icons we memorised without knowing quite what they were trying to represent.

Before clicking, we talked. Or at least that’s what I’m told. We told travel agents where we wanted to go, asked strangers how to get there, and asked smart people to help us figure out what we were even asking.

Then we clicked. (Slightly later, we tapped. But, c’mon, everyone knows that’s just a lower form of clicking.) Clicking was apparently easier. It was scalable. It was the interface to the computers, the internet, it was how the digital world worked. Some people even based careers around knowing which menu was hiding the thing we wanted. It was the future, so get with it, grandpa.

But now, apparently, we’re stopping clicking. Why learn the precise sequence of clicks when you can just ask the computer? You don’t even need to be polite about it.

Over a generation or two we built a shared understanding of icons and gestures, learning the language of computers before we realised that computers could just use our language.

And so we’re going back to what humans have done for the vast majority of history: saying what they want to something that understands. Which makes us, the clickers, the historical anomaly. History will probably forget why we clicked. But damn if we didn’t feel like we were doing something that would last forever at the time.