What Screens Want

I’ve had this piece open in a Safari tab for months and I regret that I’ve taken so long to read it. Adapted by Frank Chimero from the talk he gave at the Build conference in November, 2013, What Screens Want is an outstanding essay, both visually and conceptually. Ostensibly about responsive design and web and interaction design generally, the piece ends up getting at the heart of what this design is all about: making technology work better for humans. It’s about how we’re current trapped by a vision of the web that’s about commerce and transactions and not at all about making the world a better place.

We used to have a map of a frontier that could be anything. The web isn’t young anymore, though. It’s settled. It’s been prospected and picked through. Increasingly, it feels like we decided to pave the wilderness, turn it into a suburb, and build a mall. And I hate this map of the web, because it only describes a fraction of what it is and what’s possible. We’ve taken an opportunity for connection and distorted it to commodify attention. That’s one of the sleaziest things you can do.

If you care about creating a better internet, take the time to read What Screens Want. It’s well worth it.

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