Technology has gotten so good, spoiled us so thoroughly, that we now need to use that technology to make our lives a little bit more challenging so we can remember what life was like before instant gratification could be measured on a quantum level. Thus, the rise of messaging apps that don’t take fractions of a second to reach someone’s phone on the other side of the Earth. Apps like Carrier Pidge, an app that lets you send a message at the speed of a carrier pigeon, purposely take quite a bit longer.
As the New York Times reports, Carrier Pidge and another app called Roost have attracted hundreds of thousands of users by turning texting digitally back into sending old-school letters. Or, at least, in effect. It’s still a digital text message, but the rate at which it takes to get to the recipient is calculated based on how quickly (or slowly) a pigeon could deliver that message.
Finally, you can use your very modern phone to pretend you’re, say, a medieval squire sending a message of emergency to a knight after learning of the handsome prince’s dastardly plan to usurp the throne. Or something like that. Roost, a similar slow messaging app, does the same thing, only expands the range of animals to include snails and penguins.
Carrier Pidge launched in April and now has more than 75,000 users, while Roost has surpassed 650,000 downloads this month. With all the coverage these apps have been getting from major outlets in the past week, those numbers are likely to keep rising. It’s a fun if novel way to message someone.
The creators of these apps are clearly having fun with the idea. Carrier Pidge doesn’t just let you send a message via digital pigeon; it also simulates a pigeon’s 0.2 percent chance of getting lost or dying along the way. If that happens, you have to pay $0.99 to get a new one.
Carrier Pigeon Apps Aren’t the Only Step “Away” From Modern Tech
It’s all part of a broader trend in the tech world to take a step back from the hyper-connectivity of the past decade to a more considered, slightly more contemplative approach. Phones with near-infinite hard drive space let us take thousands of pictures without fully considering each one.
The return of film cameras is indicative of this trend, as a generation that maybe only vaguely remembers not being able to instantly see a picture as soon as it was snapped takes a trip back in time to when you had to wait hours, days, or even weeks before you could see the pictures you took, and even then there were only a finite number of pictures you could take per roll, forcing a bit more consideration on the composition and necessity of each picture.
It’s a fun trend. I can’t wait to get a longer view of it to see how long it lasts. Eventually, things will turn around; people will go back to appreciating the instant gratification of modern technology. But for now, modern tech is being used to add a little bit more friction to a world that became way too slick.
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