I can still remember what it was like when the Windows 95 operating system came out. I was a Mac user at the time, but Apple was regarded back then as a pathetic has-been of a company. Microsoft seemed to control everything, and to make piece of new technology worth having. People were literally lined up outside of computer stores at midnight waiting to buy Windows 95. It was perceived as a bold new operating system that was going to transform boring old PCs into objects of wonder and delight.
Today, a computer running Windows 95 is regarded as nearly worthless. The cycle of technological innovation has transformed what we perceive to be desirable. The computer we want is never the computer we have. As soon as we purchase a new machine, a better one is developed. Yet another new operating system is offered makes the old one feel obsolete, requiring new equipment to run effectively.
The ideal digital experience we seek is always just around the corner, tantalizing us.
Tantalus was, in Greek mythology, a king who was so wicked that he was punished by the gods by being placed in a pool of water that would always drain away when he sought to take a sip from it. He stood near a delicious fruit, hanging from a tree branch that would bend away from him whenever he reached out toward it. His punishment was to remain in this place forever, with an end to his desperate hunger and thirst near at hand, but never satisfied.
It is with this character in mind that we speak of feeling tantalized.
To feel tantalized is like being greedy, except that while the greedy obtain their desires and are instantly dissatisfied with them, the tantalized are tormented by the feeling that the very things they cannot obtain are those things most worthy of having. The longer that a person is tantalized, the more their desperation for the object of their desire increases, but their hatred and resentment of it grows as well.
The slim emotional passage that offers an escape from being tantalized is sour grapes, the decision that the object our hunger is certainly not as delicious as we have imagined it to be.
