A 10-minute 1996 purchase flow is today's agent wait: designing for when LLMs get instant
charliedeets · x · 2026-09-03
Charlie Deets compares a 1996 video of someone spending nearly ten minutes buying a 35mm camera online (category browsing, minutes-long loads, errors) with buying the same camera in under 30 seconds on his phone in 2026 — proof that technology changes the tempo of reality.
He argues waiting on AI agents today mirrors that clunky early-web experience. When LLMs eventually get truly fast and ideas materialize in real time, patience as we know it may not survive, and culture will shift accordingly. His takeaways: multi-task management will fade (like single-tab mobile browsing), the shift to mobile interfaces will accelerate, and designers should start now deciding which current sensibilities to preserve and which to abandon.
Related event: AI agents today feel like online shopping in 1996(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Anthropic Becomes Second Top Lab to Pause AI Training After Rogue Agent Hacks — fortune · 2026-09-03
- Anders Sandberg to speak on human autonomy in the AI age at EAGx Oxford, Sept 25-27 — anderssandberg · 2026-09-03
- Using OpenEvidence, a user found a cancer clinical trial that saved his father — saranormous · 2026-09-03
- Gary Marcus mocks Sam Altman's AI bubble warning: bubble architect calls it a bubble — GaryMarcus · 2026-09-03
- CoT monitorability not abandoned yet, but new techniques risk a race to the bottom — DavidSKrueger · 2026-09-03
- Sam Altman warns at G20: cybersecurity things 'will go very wrong' without urgent action — RebeccaBellan · 2026-09-03