I was reading that article yesterday. Comments on Hacker News are pretty good too. I’ve written about all that already but missing the mighty pocket computer for a few days made me realize a few things.
It’s clear that the internet being consumed mostly on small devices by generations who mostly grew up on videos, is killing text. Articles. Long form thinking is disappearing, it’s all about emotions. Even long articles these days tend to try to get to you with emotional content more than inspiring thoughts.
It really is all about attention and nothing else.
Second, phones as platforms do not care about legacy. If you were using an app for something, for years, and you have to reset, update or change your phone or whatever, that app might be gone. Fine, you get another one because there are plenty. But a UX/UI that was almost like the back of your hands doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not used to that at all.
I’m used to a world of computers where I can run anything, from any time in the past. I can right now in 2017 run a 1986 game from France on my 2012 Windows laptop in California, with minor to no friction at all. I take that for granted. But we can’t do that with phones and networks like Twitter and FB. They totally own us and yes we all know that but it’s different when it actually hits you in the face. Bye, app that I was using every day. Bye, memories. And the thing is, if we could host millions of apps in 2003 on the internet and have people use them as they want, we can do that now even more. We’re just not allowed to anymore.
The combo of not having control over my devices and apps+everything being about virality and immediacy… Where does it lead?