Slashdot Mirror
We've Reached 'Peak Screen'. So What Comes Next? (wral.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
We've hit what I call Peak Screen. For much of the last decade, a technology industry ruled by smartphones has pursued a singular goal of completely conquering our eyes. It has given us phones with ever-bigger screens and phones with unbelievable cameras, not to mention virtual reality goggles and several attempts at camera-glasses. Tech has now captured pretty much all visual capacity. Americans spend three to four hours a day looking at their phones and about 11 hours a day looking at screens of any kind.
So tech giants are building the beginning of something new: a less insistently visual tech world, a digital landscape that relies on voice assistants, headphones, watches and other wearables to take some pressure off our eyes. This could be a nightmare; we may simply add these new devices to our screen-addled lives. But depending on how these technologies develop, a digital ecosystem that demands less of our eyes could be better for everyone -- less immersive, less addictive, more conducive to multitasking, less socially awkward, and perhaps even a salve for our politics and social relations. Who will bring us this future? Amazon and Google are clearly big players, but don't discount the company that got us to Peak Screen in the first place. With advances to the Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, Apple is slowly and almost quietly creating an alternative to its phones... If it works, it could change everything again.
Warning that screens are insatiable vampires for your attention, the piece argues we should be using our phones more mindfully -- and exploring "less immersive ways to interact with the digital world" like Google and Amazon voice assisants.
"The sooner we find something else, the better."
So tech giants are building the beginning of something new: a less insistently visual tech world, a digital landscape that relies on voice assistants, headphones, watches and other wearables to take some pressure off our eyes. This could be a nightmare; we may simply add these new devices to our screen-addled lives. But depending on how these technologies develop, a digital ecosystem that demands less of our eyes could be better for everyone -- less immersive, less addictive, more conducive to multitasking, less socially awkward, and perhaps even a salve for our politics and social relations. Who will bring us this future? Amazon and Google are clearly big players, but don't discount the company that got us to Peak Screen in the first place. With advances to the Apple Watch and AirPods headphones, Apple is slowly and almost quietly creating an alternative to its phones... If it works, it could change everything again.
Warning that screens are insatiable vampires for your attention, the piece argues we should be using our phones more mindfully -- and exploring "less immersive ways to interact with the digital world" like Google and Amazon voice assisants.
"The sooner we find something else, the better."
What in Sam Hill were we all doing with those senses before all this technical shit?
I'm 72 years old and I'm totally guilty of looking at something for 11 fucking hours a day.
How about an article about how dancing the Twist causes injuries?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Must be written by a millennial. Growing up pre-smartphone we read books, newspapers, played board games or stared out the window. This isn't a problem to be solved, it's an evolved improvement. We can do all those things in a fraction of a time compared to the previous mode switching required. Setting up an old fashioned board game requires 10 minutes or so, there's always bitching about cheating, modern technology solves all of that. Looking out the window at something interesting required going somewhere, and usually spending money. Now there's Youtube. My dad who hasn't left his town in over a decade due to being traumatized by 9/11 (saw the 2nd plane hit in person from his office) enjoys screens as a way of exploring the world without being exposed to danger.
This is not to say there aren't benefits to improved voice assistants. But screens are fine. And honestly if ads shift to "these movie times for Inifinity Wars are brought to you by Coca-Cola" prompts from the voice assistant, that's not so terrible either. Radio has ads too, after all.