8 ms·

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

129 points by montrose 8y ago

germinalphrase 8y ago
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.
- shawn 8y ago
  [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
- cirgue 8y ago
  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.
yanslookup 8y ago
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.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  Right, but we won’t recognize it as ‘screen time’ because we won’t recognize what we’re doing as interacting with a ‘screen’.
- jpl56 8y ago
  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 ;)
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >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.
    - drb91 8y ago
      > 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.
    - jpl56 8y ago
      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.
rb808 8y ago
> 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.
- vkjv 8y ago
  Despite earning marginally more than minimum wage, being a lifeguard is still the happiest I've ever been at a job.
  - oblio 8y ago
    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...
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      I think the point is that it's not practical to work as a life guard, but the job made them happy.
  - rambleramble 8y ago
    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.
PerilousD 8y ago
article is behind a pay wall cant read it?
- AndrewDucker 8y ago
  https://bypasspaywalls.weebly.com/ https://bypasspaywalls.weebly.com/
tk75x 8y ago
link without paywall http://archive.is/6nR92 http://archive.is/6nR92
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
It’s not screens that are the problem, it’s the internet.
- EGreg 8y ago
  This! And notifications of irresponsible programs. The tragedy of the commons where the commons is human attention.
  - mnx 8y ago
    Holy shit this is a good take. Can anyone recommend some article looking at attention from this perspective?
matt_s 8y ago
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.
niftich 8y ago
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.
meathook 8y ago
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/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... [1] https://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2006/HowBodiesMatter-DIS2006.pdf https://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2006/HowBodiesMatter-D...
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  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.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
plurgid 8y ago
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.
- Adamantcheese 8y ago
  I'm somewhat sad that modular synthesizers are so expensive, even semimodular standalone units. They're really fun pieces of equipment to play with.
  - ricardobeat 8y ago
    What’s expensive to you? With 2-3k you can gather an amazing array of equipment these days, unthinkable 10 years ago.
    - Adamantcheese 8y 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.
tyu100 8y ago
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.
pcprincipal 8y ago
I've been using Moment (https://inthemoment.io/ 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.
- codethief 8y ago
  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.)
  - graeme 8y ago
    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-health-vs-google-wellbeing-time-well-spent-wwdc-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital-hea...
  - obelix_ 8y ago
    humanetech.com/take-control/
  - tcoff91 8y ago
    RescueTime
- gnicholas 8y ago
  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.
rm_-rf_slash 8y ago
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.
darkpicnic 8y ago
> 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.
Nasrudith 8y ago
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.
- ewzimm 8y ago
  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!
bwang29 8y ago
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.
dgudkov 8y ago
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.
- taneq 8y ago
  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.
  - civilitty 8y ago
    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.
    - taneq 8y ago
      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.
personjerry 8y ago
Developing nations are nowhere near “peak screen”.

129 points by montrose 8y ago

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.

shawn 8y ago
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
cirgue 8y ago
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.

yanslookup 8y ago

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.

germinalphrase 8y ago
Right, but we won’t recognize it as ‘screen time’ because we won’t recognize what we’re doing as interacting with a ‘screen’.
jpl56 8y ago
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 ;)
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >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.
  - drb91 8y ago
    > 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.
  - jpl56 8y ago
    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.

rb808 8y ago

> 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.

vkjv 8y ago
Despite earning marginally more than minimum wage, being a lifeguard is still the happiest I've ever been at a job.
- oblio 8y ago
  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...
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    I think the point is that it's not practical to work as a life guard, but the job made them happy.
- rambleramble 8y ago
  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.

PerilousD 8y ago

article is behind a pay wall cant read it?

AndrewDucker 8y ago
https://bypasspaywalls.weebly.com/ https://bypasspaywalls.weebly.com/

tk75x 8y ago

link without paywall http://archive.is/6nR92 http://archive.is/6nR92

tonyedgecombe 8y ago

It’s not screens that are the problem, it’s the internet.

EGreg 8y ago
This! And notifications of irresponsible programs. The tragedy of the commons where the commons is human attention.
- mnx 8y ago
  Holy shit this is a good take. Can anyone recommend some article looking at attention from this perspective?

matt_s 8y ago

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.

niftich 8y ago

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.

meathook 8y ago

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/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... [1] https://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2006/HowBodiesMatter-DIS2006.pdf https://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2006/HowBodiesMatter-D...

jeffreyrogers 8y ago
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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

plurgid 8y ago

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.

Adamantcheese 8y ago
I'm somewhat sad that modular synthesizers are so expensive, even semimodular standalone units. They're really fun pieces of equipment to play with.
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  What’s expensive to you? With 2-3k you can gather an amazing array of equipment these days, unthinkable 10 years ago.
  - Adamantcheese 8y 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.

tyu100 8y ago

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.

pcprincipal 8y ago

I've been using Moment (https://inthemoment.io/ 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.

codethief 8y ago
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.)
- graeme 8y ago
  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-health-vs-google-wellbeing-time-well-spent-wwdc-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital-hea...
- obelix_ 8y ago
  humanetech.com/take-control/
- tcoff91 8y ago
  RescueTime
gnicholas 8y ago
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.

rm_-rf_slash 8y ago

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.

darkpicnic 8y ago

> 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.

Nasrudith 8y ago

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.

ewzimm 8y ago
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!

bwang29 8y ago

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.

dgudkov 8y ago

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.

taneq 8y ago
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.
- civilitty 8y ago
  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.
  - taneq 8y ago
    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.

personjerry 8y ago

Developing nations are nowhere near “peak screen”.