> But simply throwing your phone into the sea isn’t a viable alternative for most of us
It really is. I've done it (albeit not literally).
>Hell, I’d just like a break from the constant flood of notifications screaming for my attention at all hours of the day.
>Say I’m on a work trip and my husband sends me a cute video of our kid — how exactly do I watch that on a screenless AI Pin? How do I text my sister about something gross that happened to me without telling everyone else in my immediate vicinity about it, too?
Then you have to figure out if the downsides are worth the benefits. The tricky thing, much like other addictions, is that you don't realise what a heavy price you are paying until you try without.
>If there’s a path to this screenless future, it needs to be paved with a few screens in the present.
Different person but anyway. Well, in work I use a computer and it has a screen, so my existence is not at all without screens. Now, I communicate with family and friends in real life and sometimes in phone, my phone is very old and while it technically has a small non-touchscreen it's useless for anything other than brief SMS messages. I've got a computer also in my home but I don't use facebook or any chat programs, only a few anonymous niche sites comparable to hacker news to stay tuned to what's happening in the world and gather information of the topics I like. I would probably go insane if my family and friends were bombarding me with smalltalk all the time.
Zero notifications outside work hours, I'll check my email a few times a week if I'm not expecting anything. Life is good. I'd say the absolute majority of the information we receive is either non-important or outright harmful and it's beneficial to block as much as you can possibly can.
Not sure where I said I was screenless. However, I have no smartphone, no social media (apart from occasionally poking the HN bear), no personal laptop, no smart watch, etc.
> That’s why Humane’s pitch rings true in a way — it’s easy to imagine just walking around existing rather than checking your phone every five minutes. It sounds wonderful! But simply throwing your phone into the sea isn’t a viable alternative for most of us, so how do we stay connected and sift through the noise without disconnecting entirely?
I believe I misread this article the first time through, because of the quote about wanting to zone out and play Wordle at the DMV. I thought she was arguing that we should just lean in to being addicted to screens. Now I think she's making a better argument, which is that the AI Pin is still a connection to the internet, it's just a worse UI for it than a screen is. So, you're not disconnecting from anything when you use the AI Pin, you're just not able to use that connection as easily as you can with a screen—so what's the point? When you need to disconnect, you should actually disconnect, and when you need to be a slob staring at a screen, be a slob staring at a screen.
I'm sorry but I already have an uncomfortable relationship with my phone uploading massive amounts of data to other companies. Why the absolute freak would I want to dump more of my personal life (an always on camera, and mic) into an even less diverse set of hands (a single company)?
Not only that it wouldn't be a sea of hard to parse through data it'd be (by design) uploaded to an assistant that you can just ask questions to.
Police officer:
- where is his next meeting?
- is he currently armed?
- has he been sleeping well?
- did he take his pills today?
- when does he usually go to his car?
It really is. I've done it (albeit not literally).
>Hell, I’d just like a break from the constant flood of notifications screaming for my attention at all hours of the day.
>Say I’m on a work trip and my husband sends me a cute video of our kid — how exactly do I watch that on a screenless AI Pin? How do I text my sister about something gross that happened to me without telling everyone else in my immediate vicinity about it, too?
Then you have to figure out if the downsides are worth the benefits. The tricky thing, much like other addictions, is that you don't realise what a heavy price you are paying until you try without.
>If there’s a path to this screenless future, it needs to be paved with a few screens in the present.
This statement makes no sense.