I think 'lag time' is a very interesting variable. We could call it "interval time" or "interval length". When you ask, "What color is the sky?" and I respond,"Blue", there is a little time gap between your question and my answer. That little gap is the lag between question and response. Some of our phones catch that lag of silence and transmit it as silence. Some don't and keep you on the line until I begin speaking. If you keep on talking and talking, I never get a chance. That lag is important. Too long and you think I didn't hear you or am ignoring your inquiry. Too short and I am being pushy or abrupt or impolite. Just as the socially approved distance to stand from a person in conversation varies among societies, so, I suspect, does the approved lag time between utterances.
I really notice lags in computing. I go to save a document but how long does the machine take to do the saving? I appreciate that the programmers built a little graphic indicator to give me an idea when the saving has begun and when it is complete. If either the saving or the indication of saving is super-quick, I might not notice or believe it has happened. Getting used to the lag time between command and completion is part of getting accustomed to a given program.
I have worked with two different people who routinely used conversational lag time that was noticeably longer than most of the rest of us. Taking your time to respond can add gravity and the feeling of careful consideration to a talk, provided the lag isn't too great. With either of these two, their lag between getting a question and stating as answer was so long that others often go out of sync, like this:
A: What's your name?
(long time lapse)
A: Eh, where are you from?
B: Dallas
A: Oh, a Texan.
B: No, my name is Dallas.
Often, my computer coupled with some software on another part of the web does what I want but so long after, I have forgotten what I did or grown prematurely angry at some sort of computer failure. When news traveled by pony express or crossed the Atlantic on sailing ships, the lag was tremendous. That would be difficult for me to get used to.
One of the longest lags I ever heard about (not counting the birth and death of stars or extinction of a species) was sending in a job application in October and getting an invitation to an interview in May. The applicant had to scrabble to find documents that re-informed him as to what the job was all about.
