Re: The Best Interfaces We Never Built

2025-06-15 21:23

I read Christopher Butler's The Best Interfaces We Never Built just as I was thinking of setting up all my laptops, desktops, and phones around the place as dedicated single-purpose devices.

Referring to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, he writes Each screen served a specific, stable purpose throughout a work session. And further adds Instead of spending time repositioning and reprioritizing windows — a task that has somehow become a significant part of modern computer use — dedicated displays would allow us to assign specific screens for ambient monitoring and others for focused work. The psychological impact could be profound.

I'm not quite sure how my setup would end up yet, though I'm envisioning a bit of aesthetics around it too. I'd like to build a standing workstation in the garage for the desktop commputer for example. My old Android phone could become my music streaming device. The old Lenovo all-in-one desktop computer could become a word processor. The PC desktop a backup machine. My old laptop a pentester. This newer laptop I'll probably keep as multi-purpose.

They all have at least 256gb of storage too, so each could be a dedicated backup device specific to a media type.

It was a good read, and got me thinking.