Imagining the Screen-Free Future

Screens are designed to pull our attention into them. Smartphones might be portable, but they are not designed to let us live in the present. Instead, the portability is a curse. Screens are designed to keep keep you scrolling through the corporation's virtual world, seeing ads and partnered content as often as possible, wherever you go, whenever you have a minute.

We propose the opposite. We propose a world where smartphones are abolished. Instead, we have computers that are designed to make their virtual world become real, so that it can requires no more (or less) attention than the real-world around it.

Scrolling through a screen-free feed on an evening commute | Berkeley, 2023

Computers will still exist and do a lot of the same things, but with a radical new approach. We will still catch up on some personalized reading on the morning train ride, or do the daily word guessing game and compare answers during lunch, or spend an evening battling a friend in an intense real-time strategy dual. We will still use computers to record and mix a guitar track with vocals, or edit another draft of a novel. However, we will do so with different expectations.

In the screen-free future, we will expect a good computer to be quiet and off-line, meeting us where we are at, and only entering our world as a guest. A good computer should not invite attention inward with a screen, but instead freely gift us physical artifacts to be taken away and used independently. In this attention-preserving world, we will expect to need a good computer less, not more.

We now have a bit of a riddle on our hands. In this future, computer use is still everywhere (ubiquitous computing); however, people expect computers to be out of sight and out of mind, so we can focus on the present. This might sound like an impossible contradiction. How can computer-use be everywhere, but also be separate from a computer? How can we use a computer, without, well, being at a computer?

Ubiquitous Computing That's Nowhere To Be Seen

All around the world, we dream of achieving the good life. At one point, always getting the ”next best thing“ seemed obvious, but perspectives are changing, quickly, and globally. Now, many instead seek remedies for screen addiction, ways to counter social media misinformation, and relief from the incessant buzzing of cellphone notifications that jolt us away from appreciating the moment.

And yet, habits are hard to break. If somethings seems convenient in the short term, it's hard to say no. We must re-create people's expectations of technology, but according to these new-found desires. Where do we even begin? To answer that question, continue with Part 2: EXCAVATING THE SCREEN-LESS PAST