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Screens Are Not The Problem Or What Ives Shows About Tech [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-08
On the one hand, this story about how Johnny Ives and Sam Altman apparently just stone cold ripped off another company’s ideas wholesale, down to the name (the TLDR is that a company called Iyo had met with Johnny Ives’ firm before Ives’ firm, now called IO, was bought by Altman to build what sounds very much like the product Iyo told Ives it was going to build) is amusing in a sad kind of way. On the other hand, the focus on the specific kind of product as the Next Big Thing just demonstrates how out of touch our tech overlords really are.
Both Ives’ firm and Iyo were focused on building a device with no screen — something to either supplement or replace your phone. I honestly don’t know where this idea comes from. Screens are good. Screens allow you to see and understand information rapidly, allow you to enter it easily (my numerous typos aside), and allow you to be either private or not a clueless jerk and have your information read aloud to you and three thousand of your closest friends in the train station (yes, headphones help, but they just isolate you further, limiting the value of the information you are receiving.). Non-screen devices, or devices that need to use a phone’s screen, are kind of silly.
The idea that screen time is bad in and of itself is also not a real reason to have a screen-less device. The problem is not time spent looking at the screen as a screen. The problem is what the screen is showing you. The problem is the way you are manipulated by what is on the screen. The problem is misinformation, dark engagement patterns, rage bait. The problem is the algorithm, not the screen itself. And that shows, I think, just how disconnected from reality tech has become.
A screen-less AI device is not a useful device to the vast majority of people. We have proven, through our choices, that we want to carry one device. MP3 players, which are much better at playing, managing, and storing music and related material than phones, have gone the way of the dodo. The last couple of non-phone AI devices lasted about as long as a snowball in Phoenix. But since imitative AI is not yet on its way to being profitable as a service, they need something else to keep them afloat until it is or they find another way to make money. And, of course, an algorithm free service or device is out of the question, because imitative AI systems rely on the same engagement tricks that other services do to keep you coming back.
All of this is depressing, if you think about it. The amount of money that is being spent to prop up these firms is ridiculous and wasteful. They could be trying to build services that help you but protect your privacy. they could be investing in social media that makes you feel better not worse. They could be spending some of the trillions they spend on data centers and compute to improve battery technology. Hell, they could be investing in cheaper flood alert systems. But none of that occurs to them, because they no longer encounter the world in the same way that regular people do.
Their wealth isolates them from the common frictions of the everyday world. And given that a lot of their wealth stems from the abusive practices of current tech firms, they don’t see the problem in the current situation. We have a class of people who control technology but do not understand the needs of the users or how technology adversely affects people because their money either keeps them from experiencing or depends upon them not understanding. The push for screen-less AI devices is just another example of this trend. In many ways. our tech leaders are functional idiots.
Solving the problem is not the easiest thing in the world. The simple solution in theory but likely most difficult in practice is the get rid of the tax and subsidy policies that allow billionaires to exist. People who have to live like the rest of us, to a certain degree anyway, will be more likely to think like the rest of us, care about the same problems as the rest of us. Laughing at them when they do something silly, like push an AI necklace, would help to. But regardless, it is important to not fall for the hype. The people have no special insight into either technology or hat people want or need — quite the opposite. Society has built a world where isolated people who depend upon the pain of others for their money are in control of technology progress. Is it any wonder so much of it is bullshit?
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