My dad used to wet his thumb to flick through that paint catalogue which, for a child of my age, felt as heavy as a brick. “Look it up in the catalogue,” he would say slowly, pointing to dense columns of numerical codes where ‘Cobalt Blue’ was merely a number and a smudge of dried ink. Those were times of infinite patience, when choosing a colour for the living room or bedroom required a physical expedition through pages that smelled of glue and cellulose.

^{DAVINCI AI}

Then the barcode brought efficiency, a technological beep that replaced handwritten calligraphy. But the real change came about two decades ago. Today, sitting in front of the screen, looking for a new home is more than just a number or a code; the digital catalogue allows me to walk through the corridors of a house I haven’t yet visited, view a car’s engine in 3D or read the detailed ingredients of a medicine before buying it — all at the click of a button.

Interaction has changed radically; before, the sales assistant was the guardian of knowledge, the sole interpreter of the secret code behind those barcodes. Now, the catalogue is a living ecosystem that knows everything. However, my mother would ask me for help with her tablet and, whilst searching through the catalogue, she would say to me, ‘I feel as though time is bending’. Although our fingers no longer get stained with ink, the act of searching remains that human expression of desire and curiosity. We have moved from paper to pixels, from static figures to infinite information, but the impulse is the same: to find that object of our dreams which, at least for a brief moment, promises to fulfil our lives from a cold, gleaming touchscreen.

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