Living with Lag

In Umeå, Sweden, local internet service provider ume.net offers one of the world's fastest connections. To increase awareness, ANR BBDO devised and executed an experiment that spotlighted one of the internet's biggest disturbances: lag. They equipped four volunteers with a custom-built lag machine programmed to adjust video resolution and simulate real-time buffering. The volunteers were then given ordinarily simple tasks like cooking and eating, resulting in messy consequences. Illustrating just how frustrating slow connections can be, the experiment was turned into a short film and strategically disseminated online, giving a local broadband provider global recognition.