What if our phones and computers lasted as long as our washing machines and electric drills? And why don't they?
Smartphones: It's Time to Face Our Global Addiction | Dr. Justin Romano | TEDxOmaha
Phones and tablets are so essential to our daily lives that they should be more reliable, more appliance-like, and easier to use. We’re constantly dealing with little “paper” glitches, or apps that suddenly change their entire purpose, and hardware that inexplicably slows down over time. Some makers are embracing slow computing, where our stuff simply lasts longer and isn’t locked into a relentless upgrade cycle. The Daylight Tablet is the latest example, and while it’s far from perfect, it does point to the future.
"The biggest barriers to 'slow' computing are primarily cultural and economic. Consumers are indoctrinated to seek out the newest features and fastest performance available on the market. Manufacturers therefore have no choice but to continue to innovate to meet this demand, at the expense of long-term reliability, which no longer matters because whatever they make will quickly become obsolete anyway," David Sinclair, CEO of 4Freedom Mobile, told Lifewire via email.
Our phones, tablets, and laptops are incredibly needy. They require active maintenance in a way that devices don’t. Constant app and software updates, constant charging, and ever-increasing security risks. Meanwhile, most of us just want our phones and computers to keep doing what they do. Is Instagram really better now than it was before Facebook started chasing Snapchat and TikTok? Is Slack easier, or a lot harder, to use now that it has about 100x as many features you’ll never use?
