Swipe Down to Close

Diary of a Programmer 10

it’s like the knowledge was always there:
swipe down to close.
but ten years ago there was no swipe down.
there wasn’t a quick exit out of an open image.
I guess you could have gone back,
as you still can, now.
but there wasn’t enough power back then.
there wasn’t enough memory.
we couldn’t remember long enough
what we had been doing
to be able to swipe any which way.
but now it’s so easy to remember.
the second you can’t swipe down
to close, it is a glitch.
or bad ux design.
like a site without basic tabbing accessibility
on radio inputs and selects.
but swipe down is now ubiquitous
and expected. engrained
in the consciousness of youth.
something unteachable in school.
there is an art to hiding things.
a snake plant in the corner of the room
blocking the view of an ugly bag of wires.
no one wants to see wires.
no one wants to see the inside of a sausage.
you don’t look at the engine of a car.
you just know how to drive it.
you know how to choreograph
the gas and the brake and the wheel
and your eyesight and even hearing
just enough to make it go.
you know how to sit just exactly right
to operate the machinery
and you know how to turn on and off the radio.
you know how to work the windshield wipers.
but that is nothing compared to the click
of the seatbelt, an almost unnecessary device
if the autonomous car vision of the future succeeds.