I was reading through some Flickr discussions threads, yesterday, when I came across one started by someone who was having trouble with photographing a full moon. Intrigued, I grabbed my DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera, went out onto the landing, and took some shots of the full moon that was overhead. I then took the camera back into the house, connected to my computer, downloaded the pictures to the computer, cropped and adjusted one of them using Photo Shop, then uploaded it to my flickr account. Once uploaded I was able to post the picture as part of a reply to the original post. All of this took less then ten minutes.
This is the definition, the sign you might say, of our times: instant gratification. Just a few years ago it would have taken me days or weeks to go from camera to printed image unless I had access to a darkroom, and even then it would have taken hours to develop, print, and scan the photo. What took weeks, days, or hours, now takes minutes.
This need for instant gratification permeates every aspect of our culture: food, entertainment, education, jobs, housing, investment; you name it, we want it now. Pick a problem our society is having and we can probably trace it to the need for instant gratification. The housing bubble--flip a house and make a bundle in 60 days. The credit crunch--I want a <place name of item here> and I don't want to save for it, so I buy it on credit even if I can't afford it. Kids are entering the job market with the expectation of starting at $100k/year. Students care more about passing then learning and have no compunction against cheating as long as they graduate on time.
I think that the current woes being faced by all of us are good things in that they are forcing us to slow down and think about things and about the future. Instead of thinking of just the now, we are being forced to think about tomorrow, next week, next month, and even next year. In the short run this will be very painful, but in the long run this will be a very good thing.
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