11 ms·

The Screenless Office

187 points by marttt 9y ago

BillinghamJ 9y ago
Sorry... what?! This seems absolutely absurd. Not to mention an incredible waste of paper.
- dovik 9y ago
  Not absurd: artistic!
  - falcolas 9y ago
    The latter does not preclude the former. :) That said, the wastefullness of it doesn't appeal to me, though some of the ideas behind it do. I would think an adaptation of a e-ink display would be much more practical and much less wasteful, while conveying similar meaning.
- zrail 9y ago
  It’s art. Commentary on our current state of affairs.
- qubex 9y ago
  I second that. It’s absolutely impractical.
  - qubex 9y ago
    It’s hilarious that I’m getting down-voted on Hacker News for this. Does anybody actually disagree with me?
    - egwynn 9y ago
      I don't disagree with you, it is impractical. But the whole point of the project is to challenge the exact tech conventions that lead one to conclude that it's impractical. So while I agree with you, saying "it's impractical" seems to miss the point.
      - qubex 9y ago
        I appreciate a whole host of conceptual, provocative, performance, and abstract art. I even enjoyed the frisson of the idea of the famous goldfish-in-the-blender. But I have difficulty assigning an actual cognitive validity to this project. It’s probably just me.
        egwynn 9y ago
        Judging by the readily quantifiable responses on HN expressing disapproval, I definitely don't believe it's "just you". As far as "cognitive validity" is concerned, the closest you'll get to an answer from the author is their "Why Screenless" section. But you may still be left in "agree to disagree" territory with them.
- nailer 9y ago
  AFAICT it's a mix of vapourware and pseudo-'edgy' ranting.
- ninjamayo 9y ago
  Yep! Let's get rid a forest on this idea alone.
wafflesraccoon 9y ago
This has to be a joke, it feels like a Portlandia skit.
- zrail 9y ago
  It’s art. Read the entire thing, it’s pretty short. The participants page goes into a little detail of the origin of the project.
jasonvorhe 9y ago
I sense a Luddite uprising.
- egwynn 9y ago
  I sense a you didn’t read the post / don’t know what Luddites were. Put less flippantly: The Luddites hated technology because they feared it would take their jobs. While this project calls a lot of strong technological conventions into question, it doesn’t reject technology nearly as fundamentally as the Luddites did. It also has nothing to do with the feared obsolescence of labor.
  - jasonvorhe 9y ago
    I do know who Luddites where and what the site is about. It was meant as tongue in cheek but I think it just wasn't that funny. Sorry about that.
pmlnr 9y ago
On the site, under '3. Slow Computing': "Another aspect of contemporary screen-based culture is the constant psychic conflict often referred to as the "Attention Economy". In just trying to watch one youtube video, a typical user is confronted with dozens of other appeals to focus somewhere else: comments, ratings, related videos, advertisements, video responses, etc. Because screen-based interaction is premised on temporal immediacy, we are, as users forced into a state of hyper-attention where we must constantly fight against the, largely commercial, attempts to make us look at something else. When we remove the screen (and by necessity, simplify the interface) we introduce a new form of temporality, where the speed of interaction might more accurately reflect our ability to percieve and understand information." I think this is the important part of the whole idea. On the other hand, and, in my opinion, you can achieve a similar experience as: 1. use a laptop and/or desktop 2. disable your notification system on your desktop 3. browse the web with an extremely simple browser, like w3m 4. one display 5. full-screen mode 6. don't scroll gradually; read from top to bottom and use pgup/pgdown I found this the best way to focus on content and work, however, most workplaces won't tolerate not responding to instant messages and notifications.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  The rise of Slack and friends is a definite detriment to actually hunkering down and getting work done.
  - publicfig 9y ago
    Removing the "Slack and" from that sentence is a very bleak and dystopian message.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      "Slack and friends" was meant to mean "Slack, Hipchat, Lync, and other similar office instant messaging applications," if you somehow thought I was blaming the recent development of human friendship for our woes.
gaze 9y ago
This is really beautiful. I love the idea of designing interfaces that pinch off the flow of information just a bit so our attention can’t be forced to jump around as fast.
stevewillows 9y ago
One small piece of this has reignited my desire to build something similar to the BERG Tiny Printer [1]. My only issue with such a thing is that I don't want to use thermal paper.. or any paper if I can avoid it. Going forward, I think there may be a market for a small eink tablet (~4.5" or so) that presents curated news, articles, etc -- something ideal for commuting by bus, plane, or any other passive time without loads of animated ads, popups for newsletters, and absolutely nothing 'social.' This leads me toward a desire for proper epub releases for magazines like The New Yorker and stuff that could scale to a smaller screen. Services like Zinio [2], which most libraries provide, would be an excellent tie-in for a small device like this. [1] https://vimeo.com/32796535 https://vimeo.com/32796535 [2] http://zinio.com http://zinio.com
- IanCal 9y ago
  You could probably hack something very simple together with a kindle + email. Construct an ebook of top stories / headlines and email it to your kindle account, all the syncing/etc is then handled for you.
  - Wiles_7 9y ago
    Calibre does it. http://blog.calibre-ebook.com/2011/10/custom-news-fetching.html?m=1 http://blog.calibre-ebook.com/2011/10/custom-news-fetching.h...
    - falcolas 9y ago
      It does, but having used it, it's a real nuisance to clean up on a Kindle reader. You have to go through Amazon's web page to clean up the used articles, and its a bit of a pain. A very cool feature, but ultimately not very practical.
  - stevewillows 9y ago
    yeah, a kindle would be perfect -- but the smaller form factor is key for me. I want something i can slip into a pocket. The automation side wouldn't be too difficult either. It looks like the Himnull project is fairly close, but most likely on the thicker side since it's using a pi. [1] https://hackaday.io/project/16194-himnull-a-raspberry-pi-e-reader https://hackaday.io/project/16194-himnull-a-raspberry-pi-e-r...
ashark 9y ago
I’ve been meaning to put together a music player for my kids that uses one of: qr codes, bar codes, or NFC tags to select the music to play (no screen). The first two having surprisingly expensive readers (you can buy a crappy smartphone for the price of a dedicated usb always-on auto barcode or qr code scanner, and cheap webcams can’t focus correctly for the job of close-up code reading) and the latter confusing the hell out of me for any option that doesn’t use really expensive hobbyist-targeted tags ($0.50/tag or higher) have kept me from going beyond the googling phase.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  One of the things I really miss with electronic book/music collection is the cover art: many of them are scary, unique, atmospheric, beautiful, and very much a living part of the album itself. E-ink devices are brilliant things, but had I encountered Dragonlance without Elmore's paintings - or only in black & white - they may not have made the impression they did. So a collection with large, good quality cover art, combined with qr codes that enables/plays/downloads the relevant book/album to your device is a pretty neat idea.
- j_s 9y ago
  Maybe an old CueCat could work as a cheap barcode scanner? https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cuecat&_udhi=15 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cuecat&_udhi=15
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- captainmuon 9y ago
  I had a similar idea. Since we have a lot of old Disney films on VHS, I would like to be able to put the box in a place and have the system and play back the HD version from my media center. I investigated RFID/NFC tags, but what would also be cool would be a kind of ultra flat scanner. I imagine something purely optical, with no moving parts. You have a glass plate, maybe a few cm high, that you put the object to be scanned on, and the light is reflected into the plate on to a small CCD sensor hidden on the side or somewhere else. It doesn't have to have a great resolution, just enough to distinguish different movies. I tried googling, but it seems something like that doesn't exist (probably the achievable resolution is too bad for real world usage). Its a bit unfortunate, I'd like to bring back a bit of physicality to my computer interactions.
breakpointalpha 9y ago
Not to take away from what is being done in this project, but I had to read the HN comments to figure out that this was a set of software for printers. The project could really use some better copy on the landing page.
- falsedan 9y ago
  The landing page is as well-written and informative as 80% of the product announcement posted here, and I agree with you.
  - arkades 9y ago
    80% of the product announcements posted here are greeted with “the landing page needs better copy, I couldn’t figure out what it’s supposed to do.” So, while I agree with you, it really doesn’t undermine OP at all. Especially as it’s common to see people get value from that response; we see creators quite often personally respond with “oh, crap, I didn’t realize, let me work on that.”
    - falsedan 9y ago
      What is OP (the article?), and what is undermine?
      - gknoy 9y ago
        I've always taken "OP" to mean "Original Poster" or "Original Parent" -- similar "GP" is often used to mean "Grandparent Poster", as in the post whose reply we are replying to. :)
- Kamshak 9y ago
  idk if this was updated but i figured this out from the landing page in ~10secs. It's in sentence 3-4 on the page. If you're not reading the copy but instead comments only why complain about the landing page
  - 9y ago
quickben 9y ago
Very interesting to see how this turns out for artists. From one side, there are studies that show that brief interruptions boost the brain searching for creative solutions. From another side, nothing gets done because FB, Reddit, cats and the likes tend to pull one in longer than expected. If somebody interupts you they go away after the issue, social media is there with another item forever. Maybe we are seeing something fundamentally new, coming slowly with this idea?
mikeokner 9y ago
A photo would really be worth 1,000 words on that landing page.
rbanffy 9y ago
"The Screenless Office is a system for working with media and networks without using a pixel-based display." Oh boy... I miss the sound of teletypes, typewriters and, of course, vector based displays ;-) No, seriously, I miss all those things... I'd kill (no, not really, but close) for a CDC 6600 console, a Tektronix calligraphic display terminal or an IBM 2250.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Are any of those available on ebay? Alternatively, can those things be remade using modern tooling and/or the availability of cheap electronics from china?
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    > Are any of those available on ebay? Sometimes a TTY appears. IBM Selectrics are easy to find. CDC and Tektronix stuff is much harder/borderline impossible. Building a vector CRT like the CDC and the 2250 is a major engineering undertaking these days and I don't even want to start what would it take to build a storage tube like Tek had. I think a x,y display can be built off a CRT that miraculously escaped recycling and, by modulating RGB cannons, you may even get color vectors for free. I'd love to do such a project, but the analog parts are way above my head. Haven't touched that since college.
Tepix 9y ago
It's curious that they don't seem to use speech synthesis and voice recognition as another screen alternative at all.
rekado 9y ago
On Diversity: > Our perception of the world around us and how we see ourselves in, it is mediated by the decisions of a few privileged managers, programmers and designers[...]. To suggest any other way of living in a networked society is to risk being percieved as blasphemous, uncool, out-of-touch, escapist or simply absurd. These interfaces have become so embedded in our conception of reality that we now have a crisis of the imagination, where it is difficult to even think of anything different. I think that we are indeed losing computing diversity. Even something as boring as an Emacs-based computing experience (i.e. doing everything in Emacs) is often considered other-wordly or out-of-touch. Not having (and not wanting) a "smartphone" is another thing that is often responded to as almost unthinkable.
symlinkk 9y ago
Am I wrong or is there nothing on that website that shows this thing actually working?
GrumpyNl 9y ago
The waste of paper will be enormous with a office setup like that. Just use dedicated ereaders or something like that.
ktpsns 9y ago
When I read the headline screenless office, I thought about getting rid of monitors and desk chairs and replace them with high-resolution virtual reality headsets. I really want to be in the future when I don't need to sit all day at a desk staring at a screen.
- encrystation 9y ago
  That's be pretty cool. Or a step further with augmented reality; No need to print anything when you can just instantiate a persistent virtual "printout" and file them in virtual zero-g above your head, or anywhere in your own "slice" of the physical office
- egwynn 9y ago
  What would be inside the VR headsets if not more screens?
- TremendousJudge 9y ago
  you do realize that virtual reality headsets have screens
- pmlnr 9y ago
  Now imagine doing this for years: every morning you walk into a windowless, empty room. Put VR on, work our 9-5. Get VR off, back in the windowless, empty room. It would completely destroy me within days.
agentultra 9y ago
I've found workflows with my reMarkable tablet that allow me to spend less time in front of a screen. I find getting away from my workstation to go think is immensely valuable. With my org-based publishing system I can put code, diagrams, and documents that render to PDF and sync to the device which allows me to "go offline" for a bit and edit, reflect, and remix those thoughts. It's not quite as extreme as Screenless but I'm totally down with the message. I'd like for my reMarkable to eventually be more capable of uploading my gestures to my server where I'm running recognition software that can talk to my compilers, theorem provers, etc and send me back more information. I'd like to work in a space where the devices and artifacts surrounding me are more intuitive and conducive to the way I think rather than blending myself in with the way someone else designed the experience of thinking for me.
hawktheslayer 9y ago
I printed up this website on my dot matrix printer to read for later.
chimmy_chonga 9y ago
> Currently, it exists as a working prototype with software "bureaus" which allow a user to read and navigate news, web sites and social media entirely with the use of various printers for output and a barcode scanner for input. Seems like a lot of wasted paper
usermac 9y ago
Found a youtube video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LwrUpFVPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LwrUpFVPI
redsec 9y ago
What about all the papers and ink that this project is using ?
- maemilius 9y ago
  This. I can kinda get behind what they're trying to do, but damn that uses a lot of paper...
deleted 9y ago
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egwynn 9y ago
I'm seeing tons of comments about this thing being wasteful or impractical, as if these weren't specifically discussed in the source material. They were. They know. Here's their statement from the "Why" page: By calling this creation an "Artistic Operating System", we assert that it should be unique and personal, even peculiar in its way of representing and interfacing with the rest of the media world. In this sense, it is freed from the implicit social requirement that new technological projects conform to standard principles of progress, universality and efficiency. There's no need to claim to be the "Next Big Thing" or to even suggest that anyone, other than the creators of this device, should use it. However, its existence serves as a polemic for a more diverse, inclusive and participatory interface culture where new technological systems might be judged for their poetic qualities instead of marketability.
- mfukar 9y ago
  > ...poetic qualities instead of marketability. Implying, of course, that comparable levels of usefulness are already established. I will reserve my judgment until I see an actual practical demonstration that establishes that usefulness.
  - egwynn 9y ago
    I'm not sure I know what you mean by "usefulness". I know that sounds weird, but they say they're not aiming to meet "standard principles of progress, universality and efficiency". So it sounds to me like the emotional/psychological impact on the user may be a higher priority for them than "good old fashioned productivity".
  - spaceseaman 9y ago
    The statement assumes that one considers the poetic qualities as significant as marketability - not useful. You seem to have misunderstood the creators' intentions as they have no interest in providing you a "practical demonstration" or anything practical at all. Art has little direct use - Michelangelo's David has very little practical value, yet it's significance is immense. The creators of this project do not care for the practical value of any of this. They wish to experiment in the hope that some poetic qualities of their work will be deemed significant enough to carry on into new works (some of which may actually be useful).
nihil75 9y ago
When you're not good enough to innovate- Call it "art".
heavenlyblue 9y ago
Highly ecological. Hurray for the liberally-minded artists.
cmiles74 9y ago
I work as a software developer, I don't think I can really get away from having a screen as the central fixture on my desk. That said, for those whose work is not so centrally fixed around computing, elevating a monitor to the most central location on their desk strikes me as far less helpful. My partner works works with college students, they are a counselor and adviser; meeting with students is the primary focus of their work. I was surprised to see, however, that the computer and display was still a big part of their desk. They have one of those L-shaped workstations with the front portion cleared so they can talk to students and the wall-side dominated by the computer's display. Does the screen need to dominate their workspace? What sort of constant attention drain does the display represent on them and the students? I also believe it leads to unreasonable work performance related expectations, namely that they are entirely up-to-date on the most recent received email messages and memos, etc. Most of their time is spent working with students, the computerized portion of their work is mostly in the morning, brief snippets in between appointments and the end of the day. This "screenless" idea seems somewhat extreme, but perhaps having the computing device in a clearly diminutive form-factor would go a long way towards changing their relationship with the machine, as well as expectations for how much time they spend reading email, memos, etc. I definitely think it's worth exploring. In my opinion, the "open" office plans seem the most extreme version of this idea that the computing device should be central to one's workspace (and by extension, one's work). In some of these plans, there's almost no personal space at all, certainly no room for decoration or personal touches. On the contrary, the entire space is defined by the computer. http://vanessaauditore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/privacy-in-the-open-plan-office.jpeg http://vanessaauditore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/privac...
richrichardsson 9y ago
Only 2 words sprang to mind: one was "Hipsters" the other rhymes with "tucking".
- egwynn 9y ago
  I agree 100%. So glad someone's finally bucking the prevailing hipster trends these days.
gumby 9y ago
I don't think this is for me but I love this crazy idea and I love that someone is pushing the boundaries of my assumptions.
mwcampbell 9y ago
This is, of course, a response to the "paperless" movement. The trouble is that the movement away from paper and toward digital can be about more than the capitalist drive for efficiency. One of the words the author used was "universality". For me, that has a moral component as well. Consider that information stored in a digital textual encoding is universally accessible. For example, blind people can read it through text-to-speech or a refreshable Braille display. Text-to-speech is also useful for people who have trouble reading due to cognitive disabilities. So, print things out for your own consumption if you like, but please don't require others to consume information in that form. And, insofar as "the _________ office" refers to a group environment, I think the best word to fill in that blank is "universal" or "inclusive". BTW, when I heard "screenless", I imagined an office full of people using speech synthesizers as blind people do. In the blind community, "screenless" refers to a talking device with no screen (very often a device made specifically for blind people that lags behind the mainstream, but that's another story).
- msb 9y ago
  While I agree with your sentiment, I would argue that translating digital information for physical consumption (paper, e-ink, etc.) does lead to improved access for people with disability. Digital textual encoding is only universally accessible if the context it is situated within is also textually encoded. The lack of context (i.e., poor accessibility compliance) across digital mediums is the single largest inhibitor for the visually impaired community. Once digital information is prepared for print, the source of output is simply a matter of changing peripherals (printer, braille embosser, braille display, text-to-speech). The authors may not have intended to directly address the needs of disability, but I do not think that their use of "universality" is misplaced. We should applaud any effort that encourages society to think beyond the constraints of the graphical interface.
fusiongyro 9y ago
I am surrounded by books I hardly ever read, because I can get instant access to information without moving, thanks to my screen. But there are problems: 1) my screen also gives me instant access to an amazing vastness of distractions, and 2) the quality of information in the books around me is often much higher than the quality of information I can get instantly. But because of 1), I don't appreciate 2). I think it would be interesting to experience a screenless office. Obviously I would think more deeply about things. Some of that thought would be "wasted," in the sense that I would be working things out I could simply look up on Stack Overflow. But I think there is a cognitive difference between working something out yourself and copying someone else's answer. In the former case, it feels like you are sort of exercising your own capacity to think, and in the latter case you can remain somewhat disengaged. The former is like walking a path, the latter is like watching a video of someone else walking it. While paper is a renewable resource, this project is more of a thought experiment. Are we happy with the way we have become dependent on screens for computing? Every technology brings some tradeoffs—are we happy with the tradeoffs we are implicitly accepting? If not, what are we willing accept in return for change?
ianai 9y ago
I love the idea of having more ways to interact with computers/the internet. Pixels have been great, but I’d suggest technology based on them won’t ever fully hit a true “new phase” until much more can be done without pixels.
Arzh 9y ago
Very dumb, perfect execution. 10/10 would art again.
tomcooks 9y ago
Nice project and great food for thought. Why waste paper when you can use e-paper and achieve the same result, minus treeageddon?

187 points by marttt 9y ago

BillinghamJ 9y ago

Sorry... what?! This seems absolutely absurd. Not to mention an incredible waste of paper.

dovik 9y ago
Not absurd: artistic!
- falcolas 9y ago
  The latter does not preclude the former. :) That said, the wastefullness of it doesn't appeal to me, though some of the ideas behind it do. I would think an adaptation of a e-ink display would be much more practical and much less wasteful, while conveying similar meaning.
zrail 9y ago
It’s art. Commentary on our current state of affairs.
qubex 9y ago
I second that. It’s absolutely impractical.
- qubex 9y ago
  It’s hilarious that I’m getting down-voted on Hacker News for this. Does anybody actually disagree with me?
  - egwynn 9y ago
    I don't disagree with you, it is impractical. But the whole point of the project is to challenge the exact tech conventions that lead one to conclude that it's impractical. So while I agree with you, saying "it's impractical" seems to miss the point.
    - qubex 9y ago
      I appreciate a whole host of conceptual, provocative, performance, and abstract art. I even enjoyed the frisson of the idea of the famous goldfish-in-the-blender. But I have difficulty assigning an actual cognitive validity to this project. It’s probably just me.
      - egwynn 9y ago
        Judging by the readily quantifiable responses on HN expressing disapproval, I definitely don't believe it's "just you". As far as "cognitive validity" is concerned, the closest you'll get to an answer from the author is their "Why Screenless" section. But you may still be left in "agree to disagree" territory with them.
nailer 9y ago
AFAICT it's a mix of vapourware and pseudo-'edgy' ranting.
ninjamayo 9y ago
Yep! Let's get rid a forest on this idea alone.

wafflesraccoon 9y ago

This has to be a joke, it feels like a Portlandia skit.

zrail 9y ago
It’s art. Read the entire thing, it’s pretty short. The participants page goes into a little detail of the origin of the project.

jasonvorhe 9y ago

I sense a Luddite uprising.

egwynn 9y ago
I sense a you didn’t read the post / don’t know what Luddites were. Put less flippantly: The Luddites hated technology because they feared it would take their jobs. While this project calls a lot of strong technological conventions into question, it doesn’t reject technology nearly as fundamentally as the Luddites did. It also has nothing to do with the feared obsolescence of labor.
- jasonvorhe 9y ago
  I do know who Luddites where and what the site is about. It was meant as tongue in cheek but I think it just wasn't that funny. Sorry about that.

pmlnr 9y ago

On the site, under '3. Slow Computing': "Another aspect of contemporary screen-based culture is the constant psychic conflict often referred to as the "Attention Economy". In just trying to watch one youtube video, a typical user is confronted with dozens of other appeals to focus somewhere else: comments, ratings, related videos, advertisements, video responses, etc. Because screen-based interaction is premised on temporal immediacy, we are, as users forced into a state of hyper-attention where we must constantly fight against the, largely commercial, attempts to make us look at something else. When we remove the screen (and by necessity, simplify the interface) we introduce a new form of temporality, where the speed of interaction might more accurately reflect our ability to percieve and understand information." I think this is the important part of the whole idea. On the other hand, and, in my opinion, you can achieve a similar experience as: 1. use a laptop and/or desktop 2. disable your notification system on your desktop 3. browse the web with an extremely simple browser, like w3m 4. one display 5. full-screen mode 6. don't scroll gradually; read from top to bottom and use pgup/pgdown I found this the best way to focus on content and work, however, most workplaces won't tolerate not responding to instant messages and notifications.

emodendroket 9y ago
The rise of Slack and friends is a definite detriment to actually hunkering down and getting work done.
- publicfig 9y ago
  Removing the "Slack and" from that sentence is a very bleak and dystopian message.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    "Slack and friends" was meant to mean "Slack, Hipchat, Lync, and other similar office instant messaging applications," if you somehow thought I was blaming the recent development of human friendship for our woes.

gaze 9y ago

This is really beautiful. I love the idea of designing interfaces that pinch off the flow of information just a bit so our attention can’t be forced to jump around as fast.

stevewillows 9y ago

One small piece of this has reignited my desire to build something similar to the BERG Tiny Printer [1]. My only issue with such a thing is that I don't want to use thermal paper.. or any paper if I can avoid it. Going forward, I think there may be a market for a small eink tablet (~4.5" or so) that presents curated news, articles, etc -- something ideal for commuting by bus, plane, or any other passive time without loads of animated ads, popups for newsletters, and absolutely nothing 'social.' This leads me toward a desire for proper epub releases for magazines like The New Yorker and stuff that could scale to a smaller screen. Services like Zinio [2], which most libraries provide, would be an excellent tie-in for a small device like this. [1] https://vimeo.com/32796535 https://vimeo.com/32796535 [2] http://zinio.com http://zinio.com

IanCal 9y ago
You could probably hack something very simple together with a kindle + email. Construct an ebook of top stories / headlines and email it to your kindle account, all the syncing/etc is then handled for you.
- Wiles_7 9y ago
  Calibre does it. http://blog.calibre-ebook.com/2011/10/custom-news-fetching.html?m=1 http://blog.calibre-ebook.com/2011/10/custom-news-fetching.h...
  - falcolas 9y ago
    It does, but having used it, it's a real nuisance to clean up on a Kindle reader. You have to go through Amazon's web page to clean up the used articles, and its a bit of a pain. A very cool feature, but ultimately not very practical.
- stevewillows 9y ago
  yeah, a kindle would be perfect -- but the smaller form factor is key for me. I want something i can slip into a pocket. The automation side wouldn't be too difficult either. It looks like the Himnull project is fairly close, but most likely on the thicker side since it's using a pi. [1] https://hackaday.io/project/16194-himnull-a-raspberry-pi-e-reader https://hackaday.io/project/16194-himnull-a-raspberry-pi-e-r...

ashark 9y ago

I’ve been meaning to put together a music player for my kids that uses one of: qr codes, bar codes, or NFC tags to select the music to play (no screen). The first two having surprisingly expensive readers (you can buy a crappy smartphone for the price of a dedicated usb always-on auto barcode or qr code scanner, and cheap webcams can’t focus correctly for the job of close-up code reading) and the latter confusing the hell out of me for any option that doesn’t use really expensive hobbyist-targeted tags ($0.50/tag or higher) have kept me from going beyond the googling phase.

pmlnr 9y ago
One of the things I really miss with electronic book/music collection is the cover art: many of them are scary, unique, atmospheric, beautiful, and very much a living part of the album itself. E-ink devices are brilliant things, but had I encountered Dragonlance without Elmore's paintings - or only in black & white - they may not have made the impression they did. So a collection with large, good quality cover art, combined with qr codes that enables/plays/downloads the relevant book/album to your device is a pretty neat idea.
j_s 9y ago
Maybe an old CueCat could work as a cheap barcode scanner? https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cuecat&_udhi=15 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cuecat&_udhi=15
deleted 9y ago
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captainmuon 9y ago
I had a similar idea. Since we have a lot of old Disney films on VHS, I would like to be able to put the box in a place and have the system and play back the HD version from my media center. I investigated RFID/NFC tags, but what would also be cool would be a kind of ultra flat scanner. I imagine something purely optical, with no moving parts. You have a glass plate, maybe a few cm high, that you put the object to be scanned on, and the light is reflected into the plate on to a small CCD sensor hidden on the side or somewhere else. It doesn't have to have a great resolution, just enough to distinguish different movies. I tried googling, but it seems something like that doesn't exist (probably the achievable resolution is too bad for real world usage). Its a bit unfortunate, I'd like to bring back a bit of physicality to my computer interactions.

breakpointalpha 9y ago

Not to take away from what is being done in this project, but I had to read the HN comments to figure out that this was a set of software for printers. The project could really use some better copy on the landing page.

falsedan 9y ago
The landing page is as well-written and informative as 80% of the product announcement posted here, and I agree with you.
- arkades 9y ago
  80% of the product announcements posted here are greeted with “the landing page needs better copy, I couldn’t figure out what it’s supposed to do.” So, while I agree with you, it really doesn’t undermine OP at all. Especially as it’s common to see people get value from that response; we see creators quite often personally respond with “oh, crap, I didn’t realize, let me work on that.”
  - falsedan 9y ago
    What is OP (the article?), and what is undermine?
    - gknoy 9y ago
      I've always taken "OP" to mean "Original Poster" or "Original Parent" -- similar "GP" is often used to mean "Grandparent Poster", as in the post whose reply we are replying to. :)
Kamshak 9y ago
idk if this was updated but i figured this out from the landing page in ~10secs. It's in sentence 3-4 on the page. If you're not reading the copy but instead comments only why complain about the landing page
- 9y ago

quickben 9y ago

Very interesting to see how this turns out for artists. From one side, there are studies that show that brief interruptions boost the brain searching for creative solutions. From another side, nothing gets done because FB, Reddit, cats and the likes tend to pull one in longer than expected. If somebody interupts you they go away after the issue, social media is there with another item forever. Maybe we are seeing something fundamentally new, coming slowly with this idea?

mikeokner 9y ago

A photo would really be worth 1,000 words on that landing page.

rbanffy 9y ago

"The Screenless Office is a system for working with media and networks without using a pixel-based display." Oh boy... I miss the sound of teletypes, typewriters and, of course, vector based displays ;-) No, seriously, I miss all those things... I'd kill (no, not really, but close) for a CDC 6600 console, a Tektronix calligraphic display terminal or an IBM 2250.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Are any of those available on ebay? Alternatively, can those things be remade using modern tooling and/or the availability of cheap electronics from china?
- rbanffy 9y ago
  > Are any of those available on ebay? Sometimes a TTY appears. IBM Selectrics are easy to find. CDC and Tektronix stuff is much harder/borderline impossible. Building a vector CRT like the CDC and the 2250 is a major engineering undertaking these days and I don't even want to start what would it take to build a storage tube like Tek had. I think a x,y display can be built off a CRT that miraculously escaped recycling and, by modulating RGB cannons, you may even get color vectors for free. I'd love to do such a project, but the analog parts are way above my head. Haven't touched that since college.

Tepix 9y ago

It's curious that they don't seem to use speech synthesis and voice recognition as another screen alternative at all.

rekado 9y ago

On Diversity: > Our perception of the world around us and how we see ourselves in, it is mediated by the decisions of a few privileged managers, programmers and designers[...]. To suggest any other way of living in a networked society is to risk being percieved as blasphemous, uncool, out-of-touch, escapist or simply absurd. These interfaces have become so embedded in our conception of reality that we now have a crisis of the imagination, where it is difficult to even think of anything different. I think that we are indeed losing computing diversity. Even something as boring as an Emacs-based computing experience (i.e. doing everything in Emacs) is often considered other-wordly or out-of-touch. Not having (and not wanting) a "smartphone" is another thing that is often responded to as almost unthinkable.

symlinkk 9y ago

Am I wrong or is there nothing on that website that shows this thing actually working?

GrumpyNl 9y ago

The waste of paper will be enormous with a office setup like that. Just use dedicated ereaders or something like that.

ktpsns 9y ago

When I read the headline screenless office, I thought about getting rid of monitors and desk chairs and replace them with high-resolution virtual reality headsets. I really want to be in the future when I don't need to sit all day at a desk staring at a screen.

encrystation 9y ago
That's be pretty cool. Or a step further with augmented reality; No need to print anything when you can just instantiate a persistent virtual "printout" and file them in virtual zero-g above your head, or anywhere in your own "slice" of the physical office
egwynn 9y ago
What would be inside the VR headsets if not more screens?
TremendousJudge 9y ago
you do realize that virtual reality headsets have screens
pmlnr 9y ago
Now imagine doing this for years: every morning you walk into a windowless, empty room. Put VR on, work our 9-5. Get VR off, back in the windowless, empty room. It would completely destroy me within days.

agentultra 9y ago

I've found workflows with my reMarkable tablet that allow me to spend less time in front of a screen. I find getting away from my workstation to go think is immensely valuable. With my org-based publishing system I can put code, diagrams, and documents that render to PDF and sync to the device which allows me to "go offline" for a bit and edit, reflect, and remix those thoughts. It's not quite as extreme as Screenless but I'm totally down with the message. I'd like for my reMarkable to eventually be more capable of uploading my gestures to my server where I'm running recognition software that can talk to my compilers, theorem provers, etc and send me back more information. I'd like to work in a space where the devices and artifacts surrounding me are more intuitive and conducive to the way I think rather than blending myself in with the way someone else designed the experience of thinking for me.

hawktheslayer 9y ago

I printed up this website on my dot matrix printer to read for later.

chimmy_chonga 9y ago

> Currently, it exists as a working prototype with software "bureaus" which allow a user to read and navigate news, web sites and social media entirely with the use of various printers for output and a barcode scanner for input. Seems like a lot of wasted paper

usermac 9y ago

Found a youtube video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LwrUpFVPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3LwrUpFVPI

redsec 9y ago

What about all the papers and ink that this project is using ?

maemilius 9y ago
This. I can kinda get behind what they're trying to do, but damn that uses a lot of paper...

deleted 9y ago

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egwynn 9y ago

I'm seeing tons of comments about this thing being wasteful or impractical, as if these weren't specifically discussed in the source material. They were. They know. Here's their statement from the "Why" page: By calling this creation an "Artistic Operating System", we assert that it should be unique and personal, even peculiar in its way of representing and interfacing with the rest of the media world. In this sense, it is freed from the implicit social requirement that new technological projects conform to standard principles of progress, universality and efficiency. There's no need to claim to be the "Next Big Thing" or to even suggest that anyone, other than the creators of this device, should use it. However, its existence serves as a polemic for a more diverse, inclusive and participatory interface culture where new technological systems might be judged for their poetic qualities instead of marketability.

mfukar 9y ago
> ...poetic qualities instead of marketability. Implying, of course, that comparable levels of usefulness are already established. I will reserve my judgment until I see an actual practical demonstration that establishes that usefulness.
- egwynn 9y ago
  I'm not sure I know what you mean by "usefulness". I know that sounds weird, but they say they're not aiming to meet "standard principles of progress, universality and efficiency". So it sounds to me like the emotional/psychological impact on the user may be a higher priority for them than "good old fashioned productivity".
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  The statement assumes that one considers the poetic qualities as significant as marketability - not useful. You seem to have misunderstood the creators' intentions as they have no interest in providing you a "practical demonstration" or anything practical at all. Art has little direct use - Michelangelo's David has very little practical value, yet it's significance is immense. The creators of this project do not care for the practical value of any of this. They wish to experiment in the hope that some poetic qualities of their work will be deemed significant enough to carry on into new works (some of which may actually be useful).

nihil75 9y ago

When you're not good enough to innovate- Call it "art".

heavenlyblue 9y ago

Highly ecological. Hurray for the liberally-minded artists.

cmiles74 9y ago

I work as a software developer, I don't think I can really get away from having a screen as the central fixture on my desk. That said, for those whose work is not so centrally fixed around computing, elevating a monitor to the most central location on their desk strikes me as far less helpful. My partner works works with college students, they are a counselor and adviser; meeting with students is the primary focus of their work. I was surprised to see, however, that the computer and display was still a big part of their desk. They have one of those L-shaped workstations with the front portion cleared so they can talk to students and the wall-side dominated by the computer's display. Does the screen need to dominate their workspace? What sort of constant attention drain does the display represent on them and the students? I also believe it leads to unreasonable work performance related expectations, namely that they are entirely up-to-date on the most recent received email messages and memos, etc. Most of their time is spent working with students, the computerized portion of their work is mostly in the morning, brief snippets in between appointments and the end of the day. This "screenless" idea seems somewhat extreme, but perhaps having the computing device in a clearly diminutive form-factor would go a long way towards changing their relationship with the machine, as well as expectations for how much time they spend reading email, memos, etc. I definitely think it's worth exploring. In my opinion, the "open" office plans seem the most extreme version of this idea that the computing device should be central to one's workspace (and by extension, one's work). In some of these plans, there's almost no personal space at all, certainly no room for decoration or personal touches. On the contrary, the entire space is defined by the computer. http://vanessaauditore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/privacy-in-the-open-plan-office.jpeg http://vanessaauditore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/privac...

richrichardsson 9y ago

Only 2 words sprang to mind: one was "Hipsters" the other rhymes with "tucking".

egwynn 9y ago
I agree 100%. So glad someone's finally bucking the prevailing hipster trends these days.

gumby 9y ago

I don't think this is for me but I love this crazy idea and I love that someone is pushing the boundaries of my assumptions.

mwcampbell 9y ago

This is, of course, a response to the "paperless" movement. The trouble is that the movement away from paper and toward digital can be about more than the capitalist drive for efficiency. One of the words the author used was "universality". For me, that has a moral component as well. Consider that information stored in a digital textual encoding is universally accessible. For example, blind people can read it through text-to-speech or a refreshable Braille display. Text-to-speech is also useful for people who have trouble reading due to cognitive disabilities. So, print things out for your own consumption if you like, but please don't require others to consume information in that form. And, insofar as "the _________ office" refers to a group environment, I think the best word to fill in that blank is "universal" or "inclusive". BTW, when I heard "screenless", I imagined an office full of people using speech synthesizers as blind people do. In the blind community, "screenless" refers to a talking device with no screen (very often a device made specifically for blind people that lags behind the mainstream, but that's another story).

msb 9y ago
While I agree with your sentiment, I would argue that translating digital information for physical consumption (paper, e-ink, etc.) does lead to improved access for people with disability. Digital textual encoding is only universally accessible if the context it is situated within is also textually encoded. The lack of context (i.e., poor accessibility compliance) across digital mediums is the single largest inhibitor for the visually impaired community. Once digital information is prepared for print, the source of output is simply a matter of changing peripherals (printer, braille embosser, braille display, text-to-speech). The authors may not have intended to directly address the needs of disability, but I do not think that their use of "universality" is misplaced. We should applaud any effort that encourages society to think beyond the constraints of the graphical interface.

fusiongyro 9y ago

I am surrounded by books I hardly ever read, because I can get instant access to information without moving, thanks to my screen. But there are problems: 1) my screen also gives me instant access to an amazing vastness of distractions, and 2) the quality of information in the books around me is often much higher than the quality of information I can get instantly. But because of 1), I don't appreciate 2). I think it would be interesting to experience a screenless office. Obviously I would think more deeply about things. Some of that thought would be "wasted," in the sense that I would be working things out I could simply look up on Stack Overflow. But I think there is a cognitive difference between working something out yourself and copying someone else's answer. In the former case, it feels like you are sort of exercising your own capacity to think, and in the latter case you can remain somewhat disengaged. The former is like walking a path, the latter is like watching a video of someone else walking it. While paper is a renewable resource, this project is more of a thought experiment. Are we happy with the way we have become dependent on screens for computing? Every technology brings some tradeoffs—are we happy with the tradeoffs we are implicitly accepting? If not, what are we willing accept in return for change?

ianai 9y ago

I love the idea of having more ways to interact with computers/the internet. Pixels have been great, but I’d suggest technology based on them won’t ever fully hit a true “new phase” until much more can be done without pixels.

Arzh 9y ago

Very dumb, perfect execution. 10/10 would art again.

tomcooks 9y ago

Nice project and great food for thought. Why waste paper when you can use e-paper and achieve the same result, minus treeageddon?