Mini Essay: Minimal Technologies

I have grown obsessed with technologies that hide themselves away.

Ones that are invisible or so obscured that you'd never suspect their presence if not for experiencing their function. Or taking the modern, like a phone or tablet, and stripping it back to its core, such that your interactions with it are purely extensions of you.

You wield these technologies rather than them wielding you.

The opposite, especially in this world of burgeoning AI advancements, is typical. Your phone and your laptop dictate your day. They are no longer tools, but masters. We don't allow for boredom or intrigue, only bombardment. Constant stimulation. Notifications ping your phone with a buzz, your screen alight. Your watch taps you. You feel a ghost vibration in your pocket.

Our lives are overrun with distractions. We have the time; we don't have the focus. The demands of modernity require that you are ever-reachable and ever-working, forcing an ever-presence that means you are rarely, if ever, truly present. We are demanded to multitask. Never to idle. Our information technologies - social media - demand our attention, thus demanding the attention of others. We consume and consume, creation shallow as breath.

But what if we created technologies that were focused?