“Dane and I talked about Monoliths.”

Now I can’t stop thinking about how everything will be a fucking monolith in like, 20 years, and that even some of the newer symbols we use won’t make sense.

The filmstrip stopped making sense so we used a picture of a video camera, but soon (now) the video camera doesn’t even make sense. Most of the video on the web will have been taken on a phone or point-and-shoot.

I can’t even fucking think of a thing that won’t just be a monolithic block of silicon and glass.

And the concept of “save”. I don’t know how you make an icon that represents “commit this to silicon”, but maybe we don’t even need to. Maybe the whole concept of “saving” a file will be a foreign one in the near future.

  • Carry around a little black box in your pocket.
  • Touch it, squeeze it, film it, shake it, point it, swipe it, buy it, toss it.
  • Upload your shit to another black box.
  • Sync that shit to the box in the sky.
  • Pay for shit with this box.
  • Pay for the box.
  • Pay to use the box with other boxes.
  • Get buried in a box.

Jake is a really smart guy. Jake and Sally are probably the two people who are most responsible for taking my brain to places. We were talking Monoliths, and it led me to think. Some thoughts.

And so here they are.

The thoughts, that is.

Jake and Sally are elsewhere.

“Monoliths, indeed.”

We’re heading towards a strange device convergence… everything rectangular and smooth. Form factors, for the most part, are largely unconstrained by technical limitations, and are now largely determined by interactive limitations.

Then again, I can’t swim with an iPhone. Or let it stray from an outlet for more than 24 hours. And hell if I’m gonna read my Kindle on the beach, gettin’ sand all up ins. And I’m certainly not going to roll up an iPad and smash a spider with it.

So, what we gain in multi-functionality and convenience from this convergence (the pocket of my skinny hipster jeans hold a perfectly good phone, calendar, media player, camera, calculator, web browser, gaming system, address book, HD video camera, notepad, GPS device… and no doubt within 10 years this monolithic “thing” will begin to replace the leather wallet that holds my money-ing and insurance-ing and identification-ing and legally-driving things…

…but that wallet and its contents, despite the fact that it won’t videotape a skateboarding dog or tell me where to find Salvadoran cuisine at this time of night in this neighborhood, will continue to function even after getting wet… whether my friends grab me and throw me in a pool, or whether I get caught in a rainstorm… or after sitting in a 20-below car for a whole night… or after getting buried at the beach. Along with my house keys, it still functions perfectly even when I haven’t charged it, or used it for a month.

Modern electronics, as magical as they are, are still preciously fragile things, that depressingly limit the range of acceptable modern human behavior. You wouldn’t dare throw your friend in a pool, because you know you’re going to ruin $600 worth of still-under-contract devices. These things save my ass every day, and my iPhone is the one thing that makes the Bay Area even remotely livable, but the fact that they’re so freaking fragile, so goddamned needy, weighs me down like a millstone about my neck.

When I was brought upon this earth I was not told that I had unwittingly signed up for a lifetime of indentured servitude to my devices. Their care and feeding. And while I love how fucking connected these beasts make me to everything, with all credit going to Bill Buxton I can’t help but think of the Ammassalik tribe of Greenland, who carved detailed maps of the coastline out of driftwood. These maps could be used with gloves on, functioned perfectly below zero, could be used by touch alone beneath the skirt of a kayak, or during those months-long Arctic nights.

What’s more, not only is that shit waterproof, it actually floats in water. That is good design.

One thing that truly struck me during my capstone project (bringing the outdoors indoors and all that jazz) was that we tend to maintain our indoor environments not so much for the needs of humans, but for the comfort of our technology (Jake, feel free to disagree with me here, ye who suffers below-zero weather and crippling blizzards all the while we wear shorts to the Berkeley farmer’s market, this, the third weekend in January). We don’t want paper blowin’ all over the office, we don’t want rain in our laptops, and we sure as hell don’t want the sun reflecting off our 24” monitors. For how sophisticated our technology has become, it is bested by a gentle breeze, ruined by a mug of tea, and is positively useless in direct sunlight.

I welcome the Monoliths as much as the next person. If we want to send one to the moon, we would do well to start with one that can survive a dunk in the toilet.

Or just excavate the one that’s already, you know, on the moon.