Manifest for the post-screen era
The screen is friction.
It was designed this way: its materiality was necessary to provoke interaction with these intangible data. A prism to make the immaterial tangible.
From a default device, it has become synecdochic: it embodies and represents the virtual, the digital world in its entirety.
The criticisms are well-founded: the screen captivates, it distracts, it distances. We witness moments of beauty through it; we view our concerts through its prism; our eyes are drawn to it, our posture¹ has evolved to immerse ourselves entirely. A sensory prosthesis², but one that separates. It separates us from our bodies, our surroundings, our loved ones.
If it gathers criticisms, it’s because it has become the default monopoly for access to knowledge, to new connections and new spaces. An addictive device, now the forced embodiment of the flow and its dizzying density. This flow of data, held behind these black mirrors. Some refer to them as windows to the world. But the screen only gives the illusion of opening. In reality, the screen encloses.
Furthermore, it prevents us from contemplating our relationship with the digital.
To think of the information bubble, which has become pervasive, only through the prism of the screen, is to prevent ourselves from thinking about its global system and our interconnection with this sphere. It hinders us from thinking about its omnipresence and its effects. It hinders us from imagining other forms of interactions.
What would happen if instead of lightly touching the surface of another reality with our fingertips, this boundary of the screen vanished?
What would become of our relationship with our environment, our bodies, our close ones?
What would the fusion of the real and the virtual, the overlap of our perceptions, provoke?
What would an immersive, fluid, global yet anchored, localized, persistent internet be like?
Risk resides in the path dependency. Reproducing comforting, familiar interfaces and bringing with them the pitfalls of the past, cognitive addiction mechanisms, and perceptual biases.
Spatial computing does not require windows, notifications, and buttons. Mixed reality offers the opportunity for a reset, a new relationship with the virtual world, far from the cursor and click, icons, and pop-ups. It took years to move beyond skeuomorphism in the design of our digital environments, with its goal of affordance promoting an instinctive understanding of our interfaces and their adoption. Let’s avoid falling once again into the creation of visual metaphors inherited from a tool designed for its time.
To fully succeed in this transition and with it, our emancipation, we must think haptic, voice, spatialized sounds, EMG control, AI, and IoT. We need to challenge our reflexes and transcend our habits by driving the convergence of our innovations to pool their strengths and amplify their impact.
It is time to reclaim our augmented environments. To imagine a personalized reality. To design together these intangible yet inhabited and shared spaces.
We must re-imagine a corporeality of cyberspace. Dream of a sensuality of the digital. Reclaim our attention. Reinvent our interactions.
[1]: Alessandro Barrico, “The Game: A Digital Turning Point” 2018
[2]: Bernard Stiegler, “Dans la disruption” 2016