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That is a common trope. But what if it is only half true? Tech has been moving in the direction of oversimplifying technology and telling people white lies (suc

That is a common trope. But what if it is only half true? Tech has been moving in the direction of oversimplifying technology and telling people white lies (such as that they can be private and secure on the internet). They created tablets and phones, removed any "quirky" options that might cause their owners to think a little harder , and often dumbed down devices. I think smartphone is a misnomer, it's not smart, and it doesnt really think for you, it just removes most of the optionality for creativity leaving a device that does one thing well: consume mindnumbing amounts of trivial information. All people are weird, just ask them to explain their dream or paint a picture if you want to be disturbed by their weirdness. But when all that creativity is funneled through single-purpose devices, it evaporates. We need to add back complexity and optionality to devices and interfaces.

jasode 7y ago
>That is a common trope. But what if it is only half true? It's mostly true and the "mainstream mass audience" has always exhibited low active participation rates. There's a wikipedia article[1] about this that happens to focus on the internet and its low ratio of contributors. However, this phenomenon of passive consumption has been happening all through history before the internet and it is independent of technology. Whether it's the Gutenberg Press or earlier primitive technology as simple as the quill pen & paper, there's always been a very small group of people that create the content vs the much larger group that consumes it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)
- buboard 7y ago
  > It's mostly true and the "mainstream mass audience" has always exhibited low you 're speaking of a different thing, and as u said participation was low even before the internet's eternal september of 2005-10 happened.
  - jasode 7y ago
    >you 're speaking of a different thing. No, I was responding to your claim of smartphone technology being the barrier to creativity by the mainstream audience: >smartphone [...], it just removes most of the optionality for creativity leaving a device that does one thing well: consume mindnumbing amounts of trivial information.[...] But when all that creativity is funneled through single-purpose devices, it evaporates. That claim assumes that there's a pent up wave of creativity that's being held back by smartphones. However, that misunderstands the fact that new technology doesn't really change the ratio of the people expressing creativity vs those that consume it. There wasn't really any massive creativity to "evaporate"; the desire to "be creative" was never there in the mainstream audience. You can't put the blame on technologies such as smartphones / Gutenberg press / pen & paper.
    - buboard 7y ago
      Yes that is true, but it is the content from the 1% that is also degraded.But i do put the blame on tablets/phones. Kids have visibly lost the creativity they might have with a desktop computer (be it word processing / a spreadsheet/ photo editing or writing their first programs). And we as developers are also affected. It used to be that anyone could run P2P nodes for file sharing etc. This no longer happens, the P2P web is not taking off, and nothing of equivalent value has replaced it.
friendlybus 7y ago
>Tech has been moving in the direction of oversimplifying technology Completely agree with that. There's an animator (nina paley) that keeps an old computer with Macromedia Flash on it for the sake of keeping that sweet spot of software power or complexity and creativity. It's weird seeing productivity tools reduce and guide their functionality towards what the devs think we mean to use the tool for. Getting more power and more complexity is still desirable in production. The ML procedural tools coming in productivity software will help with that, but the overall design ethos has been to cut out and simplify things that didn't need to go.
- buboard 7y ago
  And i know a musician who uses a commodore 64 - agreed though, that 's on a different level > guide their functionality towards what the devs think we mean I think it's the fault of management. Software used to always have a few quirky buttons that almost nobody used, yet they were there for the sake of completeness. But ever since quarterly corporate revenue and engagement turned to a penile size contest, it's all about the bottom line. If it doesnt affect our bottom line, cut it off, which ends up leaving people with little more than a Skinner box in their hands.
yoz-y 7y ago
Phones/tablets are not good at creating web pages or writing code, but what about the other innumerable creative uses they are good for? Photography and video making has never been simpler. An iPad is as good a digital painting device as a beefy PC combined with a heavy Cintiq now. Plug a microphone (or not) into a phone and it becomes a portable recording studio with an included editor. Phones were never good at producing web pages, it's not like their presence has somehow now removed the ability from the PC.
- buboard 7y ago
  > Photography and video making has never been simpler. Agree, but largely because their form factor allowed them to replace the camera. Cameras and photography are creative, and this carried over to the phone form factor, not the other way around. Cookie-cutter instagram filters and other prepackaged disney stuff is very lowly creative though. And I wouldn't say it has enabled creativity for either sound or painting. It made sound recording easier yes, but it did not push the boundaries of what is possible to make with digital sound. The same with painting. IMHO, real creativity is always at the boundaries of what is available, and always pushes it a little further.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    My point is that mobile had mostly positive effect on availability of tools for the masses. It pushes the boundaries in quantity, a lot more people now actually can record video at all. At the same time the number of people who can create wacky websites has not decreased, all of the tools are still out there. Phones may have simplified interfaces but they did not make the complex programs disappear.
  - chriswarbo 7y ago
    Many people carry their phone everywhere, which was/is much less common for discrete cameras, dictaphones, etc. This also lowers the barrier to entry.

jasode 7y ago

>That is a common trope. But what if it is only half true? It's mostly true and the "mainstream mass audience" has always exhibited low active participation rates. There's a wikipedia article[1] about this that happens to focus on the internet and its low ratio of contributors. However, this phenomenon of passive consumption has been happening all through history before the internet and it is independent of technology. Whether it's the Gutenberg Press or earlier primitive technology as simple as the quill pen & paper, there's always been a very small group of people that create the content vs the much larger group that consumes it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

buboard 7y ago
> It's mostly true and the "mainstream mass audience" has always exhibited low you 're speaking of a different thing, and as u said participation was low even before the internet's eternal september of 2005-10 happened.
- jasode 7y ago
  >you 're speaking of a different thing. No, I was responding to your claim of smartphone technology being the barrier to creativity by the mainstream audience: >smartphone [...], it just removes most of the optionality for creativity leaving a device that does one thing well: consume mindnumbing amounts of trivial information.[...] But when all that creativity is funneled through single-purpose devices, it evaporates. That claim assumes that there's a pent up wave of creativity that's being held back by smartphones. However, that misunderstands the fact that new technology doesn't really change the ratio of the people expressing creativity vs those that consume it. There wasn't really any massive creativity to "evaporate"; the desire to "be creative" was never there in the mainstream audience. You can't put the blame on technologies such as smartphones / Gutenberg press / pen & paper.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Yes that is true, but it is the content from the 1% that is also degraded.But i do put the blame on tablets/phones. Kids have visibly lost the creativity they might have with a desktop computer (be it word processing / a spreadsheet/ photo editing or writing their first programs). And we as developers are also affected. It used to be that anyone could run P2P nodes for file sharing etc. This no longer happens, the P2P web is not taking off, and nothing of equivalent value has replaced it.

friendlybus 7y ago

>Tech has been moving in the direction of oversimplifying technology Completely agree with that. There's an animator (nina paley) that keeps an old computer with Macromedia Flash on it for the sake of keeping that sweet spot of software power or complexity and creativity. It's weird seeing productivity tools reduce and guide their functionality towards what the devs think we mean to use the tool for. Getting more power and more complexity is still desirable in production. The ML procedural tools coming in productivity software will help with that, but the overall design ethos has been to cut out and simplify things that didn't need to go.

buboard 7y ago
And i know a musician who uses a commodore 64 - agreed though, that 's on a different level > guide their functionality towards what the devs think we mean I think it's the fault of management. Software used to always have a few quirky buttons that almost nobody used, yet they were there for the sake of completeness. But ever since quarterly corporate revenue and engagement turned to a penile size contest, it's all about the bottom line. If it doesnt affect our bottom line, cut it off, which ends up leaving people with little more than a Skinner box in their hands.

yoz-y 7y ago

Phones/tablets are not good at creating web pages or writing code, but what about the other innumerable creative uses they are good for? Photography and video making has never been simpler. An iPad is as good a digital painting device as a beefy PC combined with a heavy Cintiq now. Plug a microphone (or not) into a phone and it becomes a portable recording studio with an included editor. Phones were never good at producing web pages, it's not like their presence has somehow now removed the ability from the PC.

buboard 7y ago
> Photography and video making has never been simpler. Agree, but largely because their form factor allowed them to replace the camera. Cameras and photography are creative, and this carried over to the phone form factor, not the other way around. Cookie-cutter instagram filters and other prepackaged disney stuff is very lowly creative though. And I wouldn't say it has enabled creativity for either sound or painting. It made sound recording easier yes, but it did not push the boundaries of what is possible to make with digital sound. The same with painting. IMHO, real creativity is always at the boundaries of what is available, and always pushes it a little further.
- yoz-y 7y ago
  My point is that mobile had mostly positive effect on availability of tools for the masses. It pushes the boundaries in quantity, a lot more people now actually can record video at all. At the same time the number of people who can create wacky websites has not decreased, all of the tools are still out there. Phones may have simplified interfaces but they did not make the complex programs disappear.
- chriswarbo 7y ago
  Many people carry their phone everywhere, which was/is much less common for discrete cameras, dictaphones, etc. This also lowers the barrier to entry.