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Why I Built a Dumb Cell Phone with a Rotary Dial
In 2007, when touchscreens first started coming on the scene, I was excited, like everyone. As a lifelong science-fiction fan, they always seemed to me to be the obvious choice for future user interfaces. But, for over a decade, I’ve been living in what feels like a bad dream. The devices we have now are not what science fiction promised. When you grow up using a personal computer with a keyboard and a mouse, you come to expect precision, and the computers of the future—including smartphones—should only be an improvement on that. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, all the computers are touchscreens, cluttered with detail in a good way. The creators of that show imagined what the next step would be beyond the incredibly dexterous control personal computers offered. The crew of the Enterprise weren’t poking at big, colorful blocks with context-dependent responses to swipes, with even the most basic functionalities hidden within menus. Most importantly, the computers were used for “computery” things. Mapping the stars. Translating alien languages. Analyzing genomes. There was no hint of social media, or that people would stop talking in favor of the apparently…Read More…
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