tools not toys

The digital dominance of the 21st Century has sorted us into our own tailored versions of online reality, where we drown in ads and information. It's overwhelming, noisy, and ephemeral. It's hard to have a simple conversation, let alone align the globe on a future worth building.

There is no reason the world must stay this way, the internet has already rebirthed some informal skill transfer that once existed. This constitutes a beautiful reawakening of meaningful work for anyone interested, and is one of the most significant changes from prior decades. For that matter there might be more tools than ever for clever parents t... See more

“There’s the old anecdote we were all taught in Psych 101,” Martin said, “which is that physical environment matters. I think a separate device matters here: sometimes you’re reading, and you’re in a slow section, and you have that random thought, like, what was that thing I wanted to buy on Amazon? And you’re there without thinking about it.” A de... See more

We think social media has changed childhood and adolescence for the worse, so much so that it constitutes a “great rewiring of childhood.” Beginning in the 1990s, a childhood based heavily on outdoor play began to fade away and was replaced by a phone-based childhood in the early 2010s, when teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones.

Can we

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The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence,

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We thought we were just having fun times with devices; it turns out we were spreading nuclear waste over the entire surface of the earth. Piling up heaps of radioactive slag inside our homes. Smearing it over our faces at night. And then a generation was born into that poisoned world; we got to watch them take shape, and it became obvious how broke... See more

In the late 1970s, Jef Raskin, a pioneering technologist who was one of Apple’s earliest employees, sketched out a radical vision for the future of computing.

Computers, he argued, should work like home appliances. The ideal computer would require almost no learning curve or upkeep. You wouldn’t have to upgrade its operating system, say, or install ... See more

I’m increasingly convinced, then, that the next big vector for inequality is around this most fundamental of human capabilities. The elites are going to reclaim the ability to chain together more than three thoughts in succession before reaching for a device.

Light isn’t steadfastly against apps, Tang reminds me, other than the endless feed ones. It’s just against the chaos of modern smartphones, and it’s trying to find better ways to get the features people want without the chaos that so often comes with them. It’s a tricky balance to strike.

Light has also been playing with ChatGPT and other AI tools t... See more