We Have Reached Peak Screen. Now Revolution Is in the Air
nytimes.comI'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 into 30 minutes or even an hour. Think about how checking e-mails can take you completely out of context and badly dilute the quality of your work. Consider how the amazing small interactions with other people that make life beautiful can be destroyed by even a glance at the phone.
Monitoring phone usage and actively cutting it down I really feel has improved my quality of life. Now that Apple has built in tools to do this, I hope more people will treat this as seriously as they treat exercise, nutrition, etc.
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 conventions and quality face to face interactions. I'm just curious about whether we're reducing screen time overall, or just shifting it from mobile/interrupted to desktop/purposeful.
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.
Think about how checking e-mails can take you completely out of context and badly dilute the quality of your work.
I agree with this completely, but the converse is also true. Sometimes you need to switch context during the day, and scanning headlines and reading emails helps me do that (I'm doing it right now!).
The best context switching strategies I've found are eating and meditation, but those aren't always feasible or socially acceptable, so browsing headlines is a good stand-in.
Surely walking around the building/block is an effective and healthy context switch?
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.)
Android P is baking it into the system soon. That's probably the best you'll get.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital-hea...
humanetech.com/take-control/
RescueTime
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.
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.
The first time I heard about Eurorack was when the guy behind the Audio Damage plugins remarked on his blog that part of why he he was making the move to Eurorack was that hardware couldn't be pirated.
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.
What’s expensive to you? With 2-3k you can gather an amazing array of equipment these days, unthinkable 10 years ago.
A basic modular system with all the basic oscillators and filters you'd find in a standard VST plugin set will cost roughly 5 thousand if not more. It's a bit expensive really, but I suppose that's the cost of analog in a digital world. It might just be me and my reluctance to spend money but it seems like prices would be dropping for equipment if it was making as big of a comeback as it is, but prices seem to be relatively stable, sometimes more expensive as new small scale manufacturers come out with modules.
Five grand? No way. Take a look: https://www.bax-shop.nl/producten.html?keyword=analog+synth&...
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.
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 plain worse as an interface - just try to use a phone tree. People have dutifully ignored phone tree based answering machines existence except for the visually impaired who frankly lack options and must use what everyone else would consider useless.
Third there is less to do with it and thus less reason to get involved with the frontier. Again the same trap as the smart watch. People asked what can you do with it and the iWatch flopped despite Apple trendiness.
Direct thought reading might work better but that is in the easier said than done category. They can't even make an acceptably accurate non-invasive glucose meter so it is very unlikely to come out in consumer goods.
Google glass interestingly also largely flopped for several reasons despite heading in the opposite direction and provoked sheer irrational hatred above and beyond all other carriable or constantly recording cameras. AR sounds nice but they also need to factor in the significant glasses wearing population. Also apparently had short battery life for something to be worn as a HUD.
Noting where things can go wrong is easy compared to figuring out where to go in the future even with caveats like "10 years directed research lead time". I think the market has matured for personal electronics now until they can offer "magic" again. VR is neat but a niche in chicken and egg situation.
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 assistant not only in certain rooms of their home or in their pocket, but also on their wrist. It might seem to be a small thing not to have to reach into your pocket to invoke a voice assistant, but that small amount of time saved really adds up, especially if you're doing something with your hands like cooking or holding a baby, which some people still do!
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.
>including the failure of voice recognition with speech impediments
There’s a massive wave of geriatrics coming, and various dysarthrias (be it as significant as a stroke or as minor as edentulism or poorly fitting dentures) are extraordinarily common.
Any voice tech that can’t handle speech impediments isn’t ready for the market - it’s just too big a demographic chunk.
I’m positive Google Glass was just released at the wrong moment to the worst possible people. AR is the next wave. The question is when.
For me, it's when AR doesn't require glasses.
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 media and news to these new channels -- be it voice assistants, watches or whatever else.
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.
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.
You're demonstrating my point. Portable cassette/CD/MP3 players have existed for what, four decades? The vast majority of humans only experienced music through bards and family/friends up until the last century. This is all a vastly unexplored topic and that's exactly why calling it an addiction is inaccurate. Our understanding of pleasure and neurological dependency is still in its infancy yet our ability to manipulate it at a commercial level through sound, visuals, and base human instinct has grown exponentially - despite the fact that the latter has happened largely through free market trial and error.
The phrase "you could just accept that [music/video games/heroin] is a good addition to most peoples' lives and that their spending time and money on experiencing it is an entirely reasonable decision" is right out of the hardcore addicts' self-defense-from-intervention playbook (been there). Likewise, it's equally ridiculous to use music, a passive art form that has existed for thousands of years, to argue in good faith about the kind of technology that we have today. Especially when that technology has spawned several unique industries ranging from social media to gaming that are dependent on "whales" spending thousands of dollars a month and other behaviors distinguishable from clinical addiction only by the lack of violent withdrawals.
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.
> deciding to insert ads into Siri or WatchOS would be indescribably stupid.
Most notifications are just ads to use an app. I'd say the ads are already here.
I agree about Apple making money on hardware rather than ads. I'm afraid of vocal interactions with Android stuff, on a watch, not with Siri, but with the Google assistant.
Right, but we won’t recognize it as ‘screen time’ because we won’t recognize what we’re doing as interacting with a ‘screen’.
> When you do give in, you lose your mind.
Does anyone else think this kind of writing is unnecessarily hyperbolic? I'm so tired of reading articles that resemble the next Michael Bay script. The core of this article may have value, but I can't even get to it since it's drenched in distracting click-bait sauce.
This isn't story time, New York Times. Treat me like an adult.
> 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.
> 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.
On the contrary. If all actions lead to regret, then it is regret which is meaningless, not the actions themselves.
The same holds true for life. All our lives end in non-existence, but it is non-existence which is meaningless, not the life that's lived. Music is beautiful while it is being played, not only once it is over.
So this is what Bezos means when he talks about a "regret minimization framework" \s.
"Our life is what our thoughts make it"
-Marcus Aurelius
It may sound strange, but I found it very funny. I've had the same thoughts myself. As someone who sometimes worries a bit too much about making the best life choices, it's darkly funny to think that for all my planning, I'll probably find a way to regret and hate my attempts at thoughtful and wise decisionmaking in the future no matter what path I choose.
I couldn't agree more!
The article that made me realize this was Mark Manson's "The Most Important Question of Your Life" (https://markmanson.net/question). It's probably one of the best articles I've ever read.
Thank you for posting this.
I needed this article more than I knew
Kierkegaard is often great subdued, ironic fun. I share his native language, and always have the sense that he somehow loses a layer of his most subtle humor in translation.
I also found it funny. As someone who overanalyzes things constantly, I often get into thought loops that lead to regret before I’ve even taken an action.
"Don't forget to regret all the time you now feel that you wasted in your analysis!"
-My Brain
I can't help but think it would be more depressing to find the quote depressing than the quote is depressing itself
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)
As someone who regrets a lot of things I've done and a handful of things I haven't, I'm very much inclined to agree.
Learn from that then, for the future, do what you won't regret in the future.
But be aware, it can cause its own issues. Example, dating and saying what you really feel when you do. It can cause things to end quickly, but at the very least you won't regret not having said what you felt. :)
Regrets are chains you put on your own legs that weigh you down for the rest of your lifes journey. Just put them aside and agree not to wear them again in the future.
It's a nonsense quote.
Regret is the essence of expecting your past self to know the things that only your present self knows.
As long as you don't make a habit of doing things you know in advance that you will regret, then you have nothing to regret at all: all your experiences, good-bad-and-otherwise, make you into the person you are.
True, but people who tend to regret things (not me) have a real knack for arguing conclusively why they could, should and actually have known all along that they were making a mistake.
And often it's actually true, but they erase all memory of the trade-offs they were considering at the time and disregard the possibility that acting differently might have led to an even greater regret.
So I think the Kierkegaard quote is not so nonsensical for people who - unlike yourself and myself - are prone to regrets. If you're bound to regret everything anyway then the feeling of regret driven by "why was I so stupid??"-logic may lose its intensity.
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...
And Kierkegaard is one of the optimists among 19th century philosophers.
That quote reminded me of this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXQR-cPXlmY.
I don't understand how one can regret hanging themselves. Maybe hang means something less grisly than what i'm thinking of.
Maybe they regret it for just a split second?
Despite earning marginally more than minimum wage, being a lifeguard is still the happiest I've ever been at a job.
The summer after high school, I worked for the parks department of my city. I just did general maintenance things, sold tokens for batting cages, emptied trash, "ensured the safety of the people in the park". I remember being so thrilled when I got an offer for a "real job" doing software development.
I miss working at the park. And I'm pretty sure it's not just nostalgia. I liked being outside. I liked working with the people there.
I've been doing pretty well at work lately, but I don't seem to get any happier with any type of promotion I receive. It's just more of a challenge, which I like, but it doesn't make me any happier.
I make more money now, and I just keep working hoping that I'll get to a point where I'm happy with my job, where I find something I like, but it doesn't really seem to be happening.
---
I made a throwaway for this because after I typed it up, I realized it's just me lamenting about growing up.. but I figure it's worth saying anyway.
You can get that feeling back, and usually you can do it without changing jobs. I've helped people make just this kind of change. The trick is, it's a mix of 1) abstracting the fun parts of the enjoyable job such that the individual elements can be spotted and "farmed" at the current job and 2) setting boundaries with and pushing back on any elements that compete against this process. (This is apart from work-external considerations, like having things to look forward to every day after work, etc.)
In learning to do this, people become more motivated than they would be if they just changed jobs. Patience, analysis, and cleverness are required but those skills when strengthened also tend to make people feel like they're in control of their lives again.
Believe me, you're not lamenting about growing up. Look at the details and it's probably closer to a situation that could genuinely use some rebalancing in your favor. Your career should be supporting you and not vice-versa.
Happiness is not something you find, it's something you make when you recognize what is missing in your life and you make that thing part of your life. It sounds like you're halfway there if you've identified what did make you happy.
If you enjoy your job, you're still well ahead of most people there too, even if it doesn't make you happy. Use your spare time to do the things you miss about working in the park, get outside, help people, etc. Maybe you could start a meetup.com group to give hiking tours of local trails/parks. Talk to a park ranger and find out if there's anything you can do with your group while in the park that would help the park.
Happiness is exactly the opposite. It's realizing that nothing external or material can leave you perfectly content for any length of time because that violates what it is to be human. Happiness is a choice you make and a mindset you adopt.
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.
Same sort of thing, happiest I've been "working" was helping a mate with some labouring of a weekend back when I was 17. It's amazing the satisfaction you get at the end of the day feeling 100% exhausted, but with several tonnes of concrete mixed, or a few thousand bricks moved (even seemingly arbitrarily from one spot to another).
Not something you really want to be doing for 30+ years though, but to be fair, I'm not sure the prospect of staring at this screen for 30+ is especially appealing either...
Sounds good, but:
1. Can you do it for 30+ years?
2. What do you do if you get sick/injured?
3. What will you do after 30 years of working for a bit more than minimum wage? I don't think you can save a lot for a rainy day...
I think the point is that it's not practical to work as a life guard, but the job made them happy.
My favorite job ever was making glasses at LensCrafters. So satisfying, so zen-like. I wonder if I'd still feel like that if I did it for my entire career.
Think of it this way: we spend 16 hours a day looking at things in general. Over 50% of our brain's cortex is dedicated to processing visual information. It makes sense that we're going to gravitate towards devices that provide us with an easy means of giving us visual information. We're just structured that way. If over 50% of our brain's cortex was dedicated to processing aural information, or physical touch, or smell, then the dominant devices nowadays would be related to that.
The main problem with screens (and the reason why I try not to do it as much as I used to) are 1) If you're interacting with a screen all the time, you're probably not interacting with someone in person, and everyone's ability to read body language and subtle cues probably goes way down when they do interact in person. 2) The current screens emit light that at the very least probably harm our biorhythms, but may harm us in other ways as well. Meanwhile the Kindle isn't much different than looking at a book or a sign. and 3) Screens provide a limited window into another world, and at least right now, that window has zero depth (and doesn't engage our other senses either while we're at it). We don't get to take advantage of having two eyes and seeing depth while we're on a screen. This may change once VR becomes more and more viable and realistic.
I do try to do things more analog myself now though. Writing or designing on paper while outside in good weather is much preferable to inside on a screen. It's also why I've gravitated to more offscreen hobbies, such as board games and board game design, as opposed to staying on screens and programming games and apps in my off hours. Screens can let you get those things done faster, though (i.e. it's much faster and less straining on my hands to type than to write all of my thoughts).
One slightly good thing about all of this is that at least the issue of light that is potentially harmful is fixable with technology.
We will at some point have colored high-refreshrate e-ink monitors, I'm convinced of it.
I'm looking forward to e-ink, paper-like laptops and phones that work well in the sun!
Yeah me too. I'm sick of having to work inside whenever I need to do something on the computer. I'd also appreciate some sort of AR headset with input via thoughts (or some other inobtrusive and precise, but portable, new input method). I'd love to be able to work on a computer while walking on a trail, for example.
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
This is kind of why I like the Windows Phone platform: it's generally sort of laggy, lacks apps for most things, and the apps it does have are generally not swift or feature-packed. It provides the basic functions fine, and with the Lumia 950, has a great camera, display, and is durable. It isn't versatile or swift enough to where I can get lost for hours on it like I tend to do with Android devices.
Even the lack of ad-blocking in the browser I find beneficial, because there is practically no way I can tolerate the web without ad filtering, so I use it mostly for utility, not much for leisure.
Trying to switch back to Android recently, and I find that the instant responsiveness, the virtually unlimited selection of great apps, means that its a lot more likely to turn into a time sink for me.
I think having a browser is what keeps me hooked. I removed all my social media apps out of privacy concerns, install only utility apps as needed, but that pesky browser seems to always be open...
I also spend more time on it when I haven't slept well. I'm happy to do other things when I'm rested but when I'm tired I don't want to do anything, and apparently looking at my phone meets the criteria for not doing anything.
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.
This is what I do. I use HERE WeGO for offline maps, check messages when there's wifi. Saves a lot of money too! Never experienced problems so far. I think it's easier when you never had a data plan, going 'back' might be tough as you've changed your habits to rely on a data plan.
This is a good idea!
You can always just... not download the apps you don't want.
Bonus: Turn your phone's display to monochrome mode. Force it to become less visually stimulating to our monkey brain.
This is a fantastic idea and one I'm immediately adopting. Thank you!
Looking forward to https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/
So, a feature phone?
For now, we still have a choice. While the article points out that we have a hard time resisting the urge to use our phones when they are in room, what happens with AR/VR becomes so embedded that we can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is augmented?
Most of us are already choosing to give into screen time, what happens when we no longer have an easy choice?
> what happens with AR/VR becomes so embedded that we can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is augmented
You might enjoy Vernor Vinge’s novel Rainbows End, which offers a version of a future where augmented reality is so pervasive that people stop really caring about the difference.
I must say that my own takeaway from the novel is that that idyllic AR future is only going to work out if, as Vinge assumes, driverless cars also become a reality soon. We already have people walking into dangerous traffic situations because they are looking down at their phones, imagine the chaos if people start moving into dangerous paths because they are chasing something shown by the AR view.
I think most people would end up choosing AR that clearly marked dangerous areas. So they wouldn't chase the butterfly into the stampede or whatever.
Please elaborate.
Are you gonna have games that mess with your mind when you’re away from them?
I think the suggestion is more along the Ready Player One lines where the virtual world feels more real than the real world and most choose to spend most of their lives there.
Take long 6 hours walks every day after work. No need to do something as drastic as changing careers. I bet ya that you'll get bored with outside play soon enough, and you'll come back with more appreciation for the comforts of an engineering life.
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 gives the impression that a human being is a floating head and fingers i.e. an AR/VR avatar that they seem to loathe. I hope the future of computing isn't just the ability to check my calendar without a screen while walking. I want to use my body in tandem with computation. I don't have a Killer App for this interaction paradigm, but I found this paper by Scott Klemmer, Björn Hartmann, and Leila Takayama useful for thinking about it [1].
[0] http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... [1] https://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2006/HowBodiesMatter-D...
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.
Visual signals and interfaces have information density and permanence, which gives gleanability. You can put lots of things into your visual field (e.g. multiple application windows, multiple computing devices, multiple inanimate objects), where they'll stay put without further input. Inherent cognitive ability even allows us to track multiple objects in motion throughout a scene and keep them coherent -- which is the skill that enables driving. Visual interfaces are very well suited to how humans best absorb information, and how they context switch given a large number of potential tasks.
A world where we begin to move off of visual interfaces will be awkward. While humans are good at absorbing conversational audio, they mentally filter most of it out to distill it down to its essential elements, and knowing what's essential may not even be known ahead of time. We'll direct voice-outputting interfaces to repeat things often, and they must be smart enough to accurately determine the context of our inquiry.
Voice output is often paired with voice input, but voice propagates well in public, leaking information to everything in range. Devices that capture speech-like input in a private way are not yet widespread. Meanwhile, structured command input through voice is awkward, and natural language processing doesn't sound natural yet. It's complex to implement and the computer frequently encounters a situation it doesn't yet understand, which is the most discouraging kind of interaction one can have with a computing platform. Factors like these highlight that audio-based interfaces are rarely programmed to be discoverable, and even if they were, exchanging that information over audio is less efficient than doing so visually.
New research into interface design is needed to address many of the shortcomings of current attempts to de-emphasize screens.
I took a class in rapid prototyping earlier this spring. One question has resonated with me since: “How does a human appear to the computer?”
There was a grotesque drawing of an eyeball attached to an ear along with a couple of fingers. It’s not entirely inaccurate: most of our interactions with computers are with our fingers, eyes, and ears. But now that microcontrollers like the Arduino and SBCs like the Raspberry Pi are so cheap and accessible, we can begin to look at different ways to interact with computers, through sensors instead of touchscreens and keyboards.
In a few decades, we may see a shift in our human-computer interfaces as lasting and profound as the leap from mainframe terminals to personal computers.
The author sees this as a problem and the solution is a new revolution but didn’t realize the underlying problem might be we are constantly seeking the next revolution, or to refuse to accept the horror of people stop buying stuff.
The title suggested to my brain that some sort of eye glass device would handle projections from your phone in a non intrusive way for quick access to things like calendar, last text received, etc.
No 3d, could just be text with voice control for what to display. The eyeglasses would be normal looking eyeglasses, maybe a heavier frame to house the needed electronics. Or maybe the ear loop has the extra stuff but not thick like a hearing aid.
Anyhow, what I think the article intended was the next revolution being in perfecting voice commands to apps. This is obviously for consumers not computer geeks that work on computers all day.
It’s not screens that are the problem, it’s the internet.
This!
And notifications of irresponsible programs. The tragedy of the commons where the commons is human attention.
Holy shit this is a good take. Can anyone recommend some article looking at attention from this perspective?
This seems like a clear next step; however, I have a hard time believing that the underlying goal of this direction is NOT a pair of AR glasses - another, potentially more addictive, screen.
I’m personally really excited about that potential. I would love to pivot my career away from teaching to building AR workflow mediation for teachers. I would even be pleased to only carry a watch and headphones to fulfill the majority of my computer-related tasks.
That said, I do fear Hyper-Reality[1] and such a persistent, obligatory mediation of our lived experience.
Fuck AR glasses. I absolutely do not want a society where they are an important component of participating in economic and social life. In my mind, that is a far greater threat to human freedom than any corrupt government or act of violence.
Wow, yet another internet moral panic piece from Farhad Manjoo and the New York Times. For extra credit replace smartphone and facebook with MTV and television and see if you can tell the difference from something written in 1983.
Developing nations are nowhere near “peak screen”.
link without paywall http://archive.is/6nR92