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

nytimes.com

41–50 of 114 posts

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

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if there was a locked down smartphone OS with only call/messaging/camera and maps functionality. No other apps possible

I made a similar comment like this a couple months ago...it seems like it would be hard to draw the line on what to include and what not to include. I'm considering getting a dumb phone for on-call and talking to my friends/family...but if I wanted all of that other functionality I could just delete the apps that are addicting off of my phone.

Just don't get a data plan.

Then you can use maps stored on the device and get a modern camera and lots of storage and so on but you aren't constantly checking apps for notifications and whatever.

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

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a depressing quote.

Sounds like you regret reading it.

Read the quote, and you will regret it; don’t read it, you will also regret it; read or don’t read the quote, you will regret it either way...

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

#43
post #8
post #5

> and about 11 hours a day looking at screens of any kind. That is so depressing, but thinking about it myself, 11 is probably a minimum. I have to change careers to selling ice creams at the beach or something.

Despite earning marginally more than minimum wage, being a lifeguard is still the happiest I've ever been at a job.

My first job during / out of High School was washing dishes and doing prep work at a really crap restaurant. I used to think that every subsequent job was a little better then the one before that.

My job now is essentially solving puzzles and stopping problems before they happen. And I have time to write something non-work related while I'm at work.

Sometimes though I wonder if it really is better. My current job can be frustrating. Sometimes I come up with solutions that make me feel incompetent. It took too long and the answer is inelegant.

When I was working at that restaurant all I had to do was put forth effort. It was physical and stressful to be sure but it never made me feel bad about myself.

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

#44
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I don't own a smartphone. I'm behind a screen 8 hours a day. I don't want to keep watching one when I'm off work.

How about if there was a locked down smartphone OS with only call/messaging/camera and maps functionality. No other apps possible

You can always just... not download the apps you don't want.

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

#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, and any abstract logic involved was done by you, so you had to be into it.

Then the 80's and 90's came along and we got stuff like the DX7 and innumerable "workstation keyboards" that were little more than a tiny display and two or three buttons. Maybe a jog wheel if you were lucky.

These were unambiguously cleaner from a design perspective, but what people began to realize is that the screen was too much of an abstraction. Then of course DAWs came along and even the synthesizers themselves moved into the computer physically.

Music, like life in general, is visceral, and the screen is not. Musicians became frustrated with the lack of physicality.

The modular synthesizer approach of the 70's has made a HUGE resurgence with the eurorack standard.

Not everyone, but LOTS of people actually PREFER a gigantic mess of tangled wires with physical plugs and knobs to a sterile pure-logic implementation on the computer that can do all the same stuff cheaper and in a more reproducible way.

I suspect we'll see a similar sort of resurgence of physicality across every product that has been absorbed into the computer screen.

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

#46
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to change careers to selling ice creams at the beach or something You will learn to loathe ice cream, the beach, and even the nicest people you could see there. (Quoth Kierkegaard: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7141047-marry-and-you-will-... )

That was a depressing quote.

That quote reminded me of this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXQR-cPXlmY.

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

#47

Great message, but this is mostly an opinion piece with few technical details. I am also not a fan of how the answer is to wait for Apple (Big Tech) to save us. Bret Victor wrote a piece [0] lamenting the convergence on screens as the interaction design paradigm almost 7 years ago. Bret explains why screens are limiting interaction design through examples centered around the human body. Ironically, this NYT piece giv…

I disagree with Bret for fundamental reasons. I think Bret is trying to make computing more human, when I view computing as fundamentally unhuman. It seems that there is an inverse correlation between screen use and mental health. Bret's solution is to improve our technology. My solution would be to limit our use of technology. Computers are fabulous for certain things: transmitting information, processing data, automating repetitive things, but they're awful for many others. I worry that by trying to make our interactions with computers more human we're just going to become more dependent on them.

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

#48
post #24

Article makes the argument that Apple is secretly releasing tech (iWatch, Airpods, screentime app) that aim to eventually phase out the screen. With AR and VR, my money is on more screen time in the future not less.

Today, services we interact with on a screen bring us ads. This is how we pay for them. Tomorrow, when new interactions will exist, we also will have ads. On the watch, during Siri conversations, ... Same as Facebook at it's beginning, they will wait until we are used to it before beginning to do it. I'm looking forward to the "vocal assistant" version of uBlockOrigin ;)

>Tomorrow, when new interactions will exist, we also will have ads. On the watch, during Siri conversations

Apple's essential point of differentiation with Android is the fact that they make money on hardware. Google give away their mobile OS to funnel more attention into their attention monetisation machine. Every step that Apple takes to protect user privacy deepens their moat, because Google only make money by harvesting data and monetising attention.

Google can't compete on privacy, so it's very much in Apple's interests to push that issue as hard as possible. Their decision to block ad trackers by default in Safari was very smart; deciding to insert ads into Siri or WatchOS would be indescribably stupid.

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

#49
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I don't own a smartphone. I'm behind a screen 8 hours a day. I don't want to keep watching one when I'm off work.

How about if there was a locked down smartphone OS with only call/messaging/camera and maps functionality. No other apps possible

Looking forward to https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/

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

#50
post #39
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it wasn’t the intent, but I find it inspiration not to dwell on my past decisions but to move on and make new ones.

He who collects the most regrets wins?

"It's better to regret something you have done then something you haven't".

-- Gibby Haynes (And/or lots of other people)

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