Let's Go Back to Hardware

By hardware I mean Sony-walkman style physical buttons UIs.

By hardware I don't mean datacenters, "smart" phones, fullscreen UIs.

Why go back to hardware? Because of many things:

1. To be human in the 21st century with so much information at our fingertips is incredible

But we continue to rely primarily on two fingertips: the late evolutionary trait of our two opposable thumbs.

This makes us more primate and less human: we're just tapping away at our phones like idiots. (Be honest: how many of your thumb taps are backspaces because of this revolutionary but now stupid UI?).

2. Software has become increasingly abstracted away

This is neither entirely bad (being away from the metal does make things slower) nor good (many more people can code with no-code and Python).

But, why does everyone have to code? Can't I just "do" things?

The latest LLMs and their customer-facing UI continues to amaze me: like when I explain a half-baked concept to ChatGPT in voice mode and it delivers exactly what I was referring to (Search substitute) or an outline of the ideas associated to mine (Wikipedia substitute).

This is great! But have it be profoundly abstracted away into some mythological Elder / Delphi region of a datacenter.

Give me better ways to interact with it: vision, touch, voice, feel!

3. My eyes are tired

Not physically but experientially. Why do I have to look at everything? Why do I have to read everything?

One of the best tech quality of life improvements was good lightweight wireless earbuds (won't use the Fruit Company brand term) and listening all day to amazing ideas in the voices of people I now feel I know (they're called podcasts).

Screens are terrible for cities and more than 55% of the world's population live in large metropolitan areas.

You've seen them, you know what they look like: idiot zombies walking around in streets, eyes glued to their phones, shifting left and right to get Google Maps to show them which way they're facing (now that is a terrible UI).

I'm certainly one of them. And if by some chance you've never seen one, walk up to your closest shop and stare profoundly at your reflection in the glass pane.

4. Because Humans are much more than just two opposable thumbs

That is if you have two thumbs at all (able-ism at its worst) and a set of eyes (same).

The satisfaction I get from double-tapping or triple-tapping a physical button on a Bluetooth speaker is immense. The software layer dictates a series of actions: Play/Pause, Next/Previous. And a combination of muscle-driven taps can access that sofware layer and deliver results.

Honestly: how do we not have more of this?

(And yes, I know, Apple is getting into it with their new Action Buttons - I think this is great tbh but also keep in mind that they have had that ridiculous and incomprehensible physical mute button which everybody in the world -I won't argue this– keeps on mute since their first iPhone. Also: if you don't use it on mute, seek help).

5. Because... why not?

The software layer will still be there.

LLMs will continue to evolve.

Something new will (there is no doubt) come along and sweep all of this away.

But our bodies will still be here.

These won't have changed in terms of features. But they will have definitely changed in terms of abilities: everyone reading this will have aged or died.

There are people being born right now who will never use a computer in their lives (let alone a computer mouse!) and just rely on smartphones. There are literally millions of people like that in the world right now who were born at least 20 years ago (it's called China, it's called leapfrogging a technology).

In any case, I just want to do more with what I have.

I'm privileged and live in a first-world city (but am from the "Global South"), have a laptop, a smartphone, earbuds, etc...

But I'm even more privileged than that: I have a functioning body, two eyes, two ears, a mouth, a nose (Smell-o-vision I'm looking at you!), I can walk, I can talk, I can move.

Why is my body so limited to the new version of iOS / Android / macOS / Windows?

Doesn't even reading this last sentence feel incredibly limiting?

Why can't I do more with my body with the software tech we already have?

Let's go back to hardware.