Download

There's a brief hesitation, then click! And we're off, we're downloading. The little sideways thermometer, the Progress Bar, starts moving slowly to the right from zero degrees to warmer climes, through sub-zero up to freezing, then temperate and hot and damn hot and Texas in August. Progress, shown in graphical form, like those United Way fundraising signs out in front of City Hall: "We've raised x millions toward our goal of z millions!" Progress, usually based on a simple calculation taking into consideration the size of the download and the number of actual bits received, sometimes estimating a finish time based on the rate of transfer, as ones and zeros are streamed from thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away, your special set of ones and zeroes navigating a maze of fiber optic and Category 5 cables, switches, routers, satellites, copper wire, repeaters. An amazing invention, truly a Twenty-first Century Miracle Of Technology, used mostly to view pornography.