tools not toys

“The trouble with the internet, Mr. Williams says, is that it rewards extremes. Say you’re driving down the road and see a car crash. Of course you look. Everyone looks. The internet interprets behavior like this to mean everyone is asking for car crashes, so it tries to supply them.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-mediu

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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

The kids are joining running clubs, buying “dumb” phones, woodworking, rocking Walkmans, joining supper clubs, etc because their lives have been swallowed by digital black boxes, and in this moment of uncertainty (tension re: war, AI, climate), they crave tangibility. It’s simple