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I've always loved a good progress bar. Without a progress bar, I might begin to install or download something, then use that unquantifiable amount of time to read a book, or donate money to a really cool charity. The progress bar eliminates that possibility, by compelling me to stare at it. It transports me into a one-dimensional universe, transforms me into a point on a line. In this universe, there is no hate, no anger. There is nothing but progress towards a utopia of 100 percent.My love of progress bars isn't blind. I mean, there is no progress bar more hostile and insulting than that endless barber's pole. And some love affairs have turned sour: I was once infatuated with the Windows 95 defrag progress bar. This was a window containing a massive grid of colour-coded squares. Each square was a section of your hard drive, and you could scrub around with the scroll bar, watching as Windows built a beautiful nest out of contiguous files.
If you strayed away from the main defragging action, sometimes you'd find a lonely chunk of information. And sometimes, just sometimes - you'd see that piece of information disappear, presumably returned to its lost adjacent sisters. If you didn't cry at the presumed anthropomorphic drama of that off-screen reunion, the only explanation is that you are a beastly cow.
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