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We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

nytimes.com

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Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#101

Post by wilsonnb2 »

Adamantcheese wrote: post #75
plurgid wrote: post #45

I say I'm a musician on the side, but truthfully I've been messing with sound instinctively since I came out of the womb, and I only picked up programming and design and stuff later on. As such, I gravitated toward electronic music doodads almost immediately. This issue of "falling down the LCD well" has been at the forefront of electronic music for a while. Synthesizers were cool in the 70's because they had knobs,…

I'm somewhat sad that modular synthesizers are so expensive, even semimodular standalone units. They're really fun pieces of equipment to play with.

The Korg MS-20 mini sells for $450, the Moog Mother-32 sells for $600, and the new Behringer Neutron will sell for $300 when it comes out. Semi modular synths are pretty cheap these days even though they aren't quite as cheap or popular as non modular synths like the Arturia Microbrute or the Korg Monologue.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#102

Post by obelix_ »

codethief wrote: post #73
pcprincipal wrote: post #57

I've been using Moment ( https://inthemoment.io/ ) for about a year and am really proud of how I've been able to reduce total screen time from 4 hours to 45 minutes per day. Most of the gains were due to deleting Safari and Twitter from my device (Moment breaks down app usage based on battery usage). To anyone reading this, be aware of how grabbing your phone in the morning to read headlines or Medium digest can turn…

Can anyone recommend an app for Android which does the same thing as Moment and is effective? (Not that I don't know any apps that offer similar functionality but so far none of them has really convinced me / worked.)

humanetech.com/take-control/

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#103

Post by 8bitsrule »

plurgid wrote: post #45

I say I'm a musician on the side, but truthfully I've been messing with sound instinctively since I came out of the womb, and I only picked up programming and design and stuff later on. As such, I gravitated toward electronic music doodads almost immediately. This issue of "falling down the LCD well" has been at the forefront of electronic music for a while. Synthesizers were cool in the 70's because they had knobs,…

As a life-long musician, I found that the tedium and aggravation of fighting the software and associated hardware to get it to do what I wanted - a wholly left-brain activity

- was taking up half my time.

And that was after the learning curve of trying to adapt to the melange of hardware, interface, and software options.

That time and energy was taken away from creativity and experimenting with music to improve its richness,interest, and originality.

Modulars can be more expressive in expert hands (seldom the case). But making good music requires a different kind of expertise. And I hear that difference - and the cost of all the lost creative energy - on the radio every day.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#104

Post by taneq »

dgudkov wrote: post #97

The article points in the wrong direction. Yes, smartphones is the new smoking but not because of their screens. It's not the screens that are addictive, it's what on the screens -- the internet. The internet is too good to not be addictive, especially with the rise of social media, internet news and messengers. Switching to other, non screen-based interaction channels will only bring all the notifications, social me…

Exactly. The screen is just a window into another world where information is far more accessible and available. And calling it "addictive" isn't really appropriate (in general, obviously there are a lot of nasty Skinner-box apps which do deserve that name) when it's a high-quality resource and paying it more attention makes sense.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#105

Post by tcoff91 »

codethief wrote: post #73
pcprincipal wrote: post #57

I've been using Moment ( https://inthemoment.io/ ) for about a year and am really proud of how I've been able to reduce total screen time from 4 hours to 45 minutes per day. Most of the gains were due to deleting Safari and Twitter from my device (Moment breaks down app usage based on battery usage). To anyone reading this, be aware of how grabbing your phone in the morning to read headlines or Medium digest can turn…

Can anyone recommend an app for Android which does the same thing as Moment and is effective? (Not that I don't know any apps that offer similar functionality but so far none of them has really convinced me / worked.)

RescueTime

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#106

Post by closeparen »

plurgid wrote: post #45

I say I'm a musician on the side, but truthfully I've been messing with sound instinctively since I came out of the womb, and I only picked up programming and design and stuff later on. As such, I gravitated toward electronic music doodads almost immediately. This issue of "falling down the LCD well" has been at the forefront of electronic music for a while. Synthesizers were cool in the 70's because they had knobs,…

Well into the era of digital mixing consoles, the complex tactile control surfaces remain. Faders and knobs are the right abstraction for working with sound. Contrast with lighting, which has become almost entirely keyboard driven; faders are now optional add-one for some of the most popular consoles like the Ion.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#107

Post by civilitty »

gnicholas wrote: post #74
pcprincipal wrote: post #57

I've been using Moment ( https://inthemoment.io/ ) for about a year and am really proud of how I've been able to reduce total screen time from 4 hours to 45 minutes per day. Most of the gains were due to deleting Safari and Twitter from my device (Moment breaks down app usage based on battery usage). To anyone reading this, be aware of how grabbing your phone in the morning to read headlines or Medium digest can turn…

I'd be curious to know if reducing your mobile screen time has led to an increase in your desktop screen time. That is, if you're not looking at email on your phone, presumably you look at it later on the computer. Is it the same for news reading, or do you just read less news these days? Even if reducing mobile screen time leads to some increase in desktop screen time, it could still be a good thing for social conve…

It does lead to an increase in desktop time for me. I've been consciously cutting down on mobile use for HN/reddit/general web browsing throughout the day but I haven't found that I just end up doing it later on the desktop. To the contrary, I end up focusing on stuff far more productive because the desktop is a business/productivity device actually capable of more than rudimentary telecom with a screen bigger than 6.3" (at most). I'd credit that shift for helping me rediscover a love of programming that I thought I had lost a decade ago - all because I could run an IDE and code instead of just reading random blog posts while stuck in an ARM-induced quasi analysis paralysis.

I find that if I end up just playing an online desktop game or putting on the Oculus, the time I spend away from my phone is higher quality and better for my well being overall, even if it replaces something "productive" like answering work emails on my giant (and yet oh so tiny) Note8.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#108

Post by civilitty »

taneq wrote: post #104
dgudkov wrote: post #97

The article points in the wrong direction. Yes, smartphones is the new smoking but not because of their screens. It's not the screens that are addictive, it's what on the screens -- the internet. The internet is too good to not be addictive, especially with the rise of social media, internet news and messengers. Switching to other, non screen-based interaction channels will only bring all the notifications, social me…

Exactly. The screen is just a window into another world where information is far more accessible and available. And calling it "addictive" isn't really appropriate (in general, obviously there are a lot of nasty Skinner-box apps which do deserve that name) when it's a high-quality resource and paying it more attention makes sense.

I agree that calling it addictive isn't appropriate, but only because the vast majority of our clinical and social experience with addiction is entirely based around physical dependency. Just look at the amount of research into opioids, nicotine, amphetamines, benzos, and alcohol compared to the dozens of less addictive/harmful psychedelics and research chemicals.

Information and the psychological dependency it creates, whether it be a message from someone we are attracted to or the stimulating audiovisual response from a slot machine, used to be tied to slow physical mediums like snail mail and restricted by location. In that context, the smartphone has created a whole new era of crazy that we are completely unprepared to deal with. Coupled with the rapid pace of development that didn't leave anyone enough time to adopt to the internet before it became ubiquitous, they have provided a perfect delivery mechanism for psychological dependency optimized on a massive scale, long before we've had time to adapt.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#109

Post by taneq »

civilitty wrote: post #108
taneq wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The screen is just a window into another world where information is far more accessible and available. And calling it "addictive" isn't really appropriate (in general, obviously there are a lot of nasty Skinner-box apps which do deserve that name) when it's a high-quality resource and paying it more attention makes sense.

I agree that calling it addictive isn't appropriate, but only because the vast majority of our clinical and social experience with addiction is entirely based around physical dependency. Just look at the amount of research into opioids, nicotine, amphetamines, benzos, and alcohol compared to the dozens of less addictive/harmful psychedelics and research chemicals. Information and the psychological dependency it creat…

Consider music. Music is a form of information, it's pleasurable to listen to, and many people spend significant portions of their day listening to it and would be strongly unwilling to give it up. You could call this 'psychological dependency' or you could just accept that music is a good addition to most peoples' lives and that their spending time and money on experiencing it is an entirely reasonable decision.

Re: We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air

#110

Post by Retra »

ewzimm wrote: post #66
Nasrudith wrote: post #64

I know that I am not the typical use case for several reasons including the failure of voice recognition with speech impediments but I doubt voice will be the way forward any more than smart watches were - being niche at best. First off with speech everyone can tell what you are doing and it is obtrusive - look at the old DMV signs against cellphones back from when they could literally just call. Second it is just pl…

I appreciate your sense of doubt about often overblown predictions for the usefulness of the next new thing, but I think some of your claims are a bit too pessimistic. The Apple Watch can hardly be considered a flop. They're now selling 8 million per quarter and have outsold the entire Swiss watch industry. In just 3 years, it became the most popular watch in the world. Now more and more people have a voice-activated…

Holiday season comes around and everybody gets Apple Watches. Doesn't mean they're good. It often means people feel compelled to buy things they don't want, because gift buying is hard. It happens every year.
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