The desktop metaphor must die

The true revolution will come when we are able to demand and author change from a grassroots level.

An interface that intentionally exploits the vulnerability of human beings for financial or otherwise selfish gain is inhumane and also despicable.An interface that unintentionally allows the former to take place hasnot been considerate of the full extent of human fragility, and is therefore still inhumane.

Raskin defines the ideal humane interface as “responsive to human needs and considerate of human frailties.”

And when we strip away all the chrome—all the Aero and Paper and Frosted Glass, all the evidence of the “design systems” we have poured billions into developing and maintaining—we come face to face with a skeleton of XEROX PARC’s 1973 invention.

This is because the Desktop was originally designed in 1973 to suit a very different need in computation—the need to mirror digital content with its physical equivalent (WYSIWYG, anyone?). But in a post-Internet world (at the cusp of 5G and the AI singularity, I might add), the way we consume and produce content has largely moved away from the bagg... See more

Human beings simply aren’t equipped with the necessary bandwidth to process the explosion of information that our world has normalized.To make things worse, it turns out that the desktop metaphor underlying so much of our computing was not equipped to handle it either. In response to the increased stimuli, our Desktops simply started generating mor... See more

The desktop AND mobile operating systems that allowed for the former interaction paradigms to exist in unchecked Sandbox-App environments? Inhumane.

The tippity-tappity stream of Stories optimized to maximize ~engagement~? Inhumane.

The endless News Feed casinos that were designed specifically to turn a generation of people into machine-state information banks? Inhumane.