The progress of progress bars

Anthropic's Claude AI chatbot displays playful status messages like 'Thinking…' and 'Wibbling…' instead of traditional progress bars, prompting a reflection on the history of progress indicators. The essay notes that progress bars were never truly about measuring progress, but rather about reassuring users that the system is working.

I was waiting for Claude to answer a token-heavy question at work the other day, the little “Thinking…” label flickering into “Wibbling…” and then “Moseying…”, and I caught myself doing the thing I always do when a spinner takes too long, staring at it, trying to divine meaning from the word choice. Is it nearly done? There’s no percentage, no bar, just a word standing in for “trust me, something is happening.” It sent me down a rabbit hole into where progress bars came from, and it turns out they were never really about progress at all.