
Google Experiments – Paper Phone - cchoffme
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/paper-phone
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ssivark
ROFL, cute! :-)

I started watching the video with a snarky expectation of “aka a book”, but
it’s nice how:

1\. The contents are personalized and time specialized (Eg: today’s tasks and
maps).

2\. There is _no infinite scroll_ or _pull to refresh_! Which means that you
avoid the worst of your addictive behavior, and have a chance to be present in
the real world, because your phone only has a few things that you need to
catch up with.

Now, suppose we wish to avoid using paper. We could get something equally good
by just disconnecting from the internet and allowing apps only a small cache —
if apps were willing to cooperate.

The only reason that won’t work is because apps are in a zero-sum race to the
bottom to hog user attention. So, the abundance (“hot” according to McLuhan)
of the networked electronic medium (color/interactive media, and effectively
infinite content) becomes a firehose that is turned against the user. The only
role of paper in this idea is to impose constraints — b/w printing, non-
interactive and 2 pages of content.

It is very interesting how the key value add seems to be _reintroducing_
constraints i.e. “scarcity”. Who would’ve thunk?!

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Grustaf
> The only reason that won’t work is because apps are in a zero-sum race to
> the bottom to hog user attention.

I don't think this is entirely true. If micro payments worked, or if you have
some kind of subscription model, you don't want people to use your app as much
as possible (the more they use it the higher your costs), you just want them
to find it so useful that they keep updating/subscribing to it.

> The only role of paper in this idea is to impose constraints

While I do love constraints, I don't think that's the whole point. Paper is
superior to screens in a number of ways. For a given piece of information,
it's much more convenient and readable, it's just not interactive.

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GaryNumanVevo
I recently laser cut a "Pixel 4 XL" in acrylic to see if I liked the form
factor before considering it. I put my other phone in my desk for a day and
just carried around this brick of plastic where my phone usually goes. The XL
form factor is alright, but I really loved just fidgeting with a phone-like
form, flipping it in my hand, putting it in my pocket, all without any
notification buzzes or unread emails.

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mrieck
To break habits it should have the same form factor as a phone case. Even
better if it was a reloadable flipbook phonecase with super-thin paper.

If you can swipe through the flipbook you'd get a similar feeling as using a
phone but because it wouldn't be infinite you'd stop after getting to the end.
Allow yourself to reload X amount of times per day and it'd be the perfect way
to break addictive phone use habits.

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RenRav
I was expecting a scroll of paper fitted into a phone shaped box or something,
such that you could literally scroll it.

That was still interesting, the title alone got me excited and thinking 'what
could it be?'

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pattisapu
Maybe at a few spaced intervals a list of the texts received could be printed,
with blanks in which to handwrite responses, to feed back in somehow later.

Lots of fun possibilities.

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Grustaf
Fun idea, could work if combined with a dumb phone, or an apple watch. The
only problem is you know they will eventually fill the book with ads...

