In 1990, Steve Jobs famously said that personal computers were "a bicyle for the mind". A deeply personal tool that could multiply the possibilities of its user, become a trusted partner, an extension of yourself.
I sit in front of a Mac all day and that's not how it feels.
My computer is immensely powerful. It can do a 1000 things at once. But I can’t.
I can't focus when I use it. It's like some invisible boss kicked me out of my office and forced me to work in an open floor plan.
I don't want to be notified, I don't need a tour of your new features, I don't want to be reminded to take a break, I want to feel at peace. Content, slow but steady.
The way I feel when I ride my bike.
Yet my computer feels indispensible. I panic at the mere thought of being deprived of it. And it’s so comfortable that I spend most of my time using it anyway, even when a much simpler tool would be enough.
I get angry and frustrated if anything slows me down. Without WiFi and the cloud, I am gasping for air. My hugely powerful Mac is suddenly useless when it's cut off from this huge, sprawling, wasteful infrastructure I have no control over.
That's not a bicycle. It's an SUV for the mind.
this is a bicycle
This is a Thinkpad X61s. It was released by Lenovo in 2007.
I had one when I was a student. The CPU got hot and the fan got loud, the screen sucked, battery life was poor. On the plus side it is cheap, small and durable, repairable and modular.
Now this is a bicycle.
What if, instead of buying an SUV, we could retrofit an old bike with a pedelec? What if we could chose our own kind of progress, comfort, focus without the constant advertisement and surveillance?
hardware
software
