Single Purpose Technology

Single purpose technology is any piece of tech that was created to fulfill one need. A common and well-known example of this is a camera. With a camera you can take photos, and with some, videos as well. But you can't browse the web or write a novel or play a game on a camera. It has one use, a single purpose. It once was that almost every piece of technology was single purpose. You had a camera, a phone, a personal computer, and a plethora of paper goods such as an address book and a calendar. But now, we are constantly figuring out ways to combine as many things into one multi-purpose tool as is technologically possible. One device acts as a camera, phone, PC, calendar, address book, television, radio, music player, flashlight, etc. This has a metric fuck-ton of benefits. One, it's easier to keep track of one device than it is to keep track of 50. I don't need to know that I have a flashlight under the bathroom sink because I know there's a decent flashlight in my bed or on my person at all times. It's also, in theory, better for the environment. You don't need mountains of shiny plastic and shinier metals to make all of these products, you just need the little bit that was required to make the one thing.

Now, however, we have encountered a problem with this joyous all-in-one philosophy. We are constantly distracted by mountains of features. I want to send an e-mail to my boss telling him we just lost a $400,000 deal because I overslept and missed a meeting; but as I'm sitting there, writing this e-mail, a notification appears at the top of my screen. My favorite dog-centric TikTok accoun just posted a new video. I tap on the notification. I see a video of a cuty little puppy playing in the snow. I sob. I scroll on TikTok for an additional three hours. I forget about the e-mail. I am fired. If I had, for example, used my work laptop instead; I wouldn't have seen that notification. I would have sent my little e-mail and still been fired, but with more context. This is a stupid example. Let's put it this way then. I want to read a book. I open the Kindle app. I start reading. I get a Discord notification (my non-binary friend, Sock, is having a panic attack about being overstimulated at the mall, we've all been there). I open Discord. I get involved in a conversation. I get a Twitter notification (Princess Diana is alive???). I open Twitter and scroll for too long. I realize I am fatigued. I get up and walk around. I sit back down and forget what I was doing. I open YouTube and watch a video essay about why Animal Crossing is the best escape from late-stage capitalism. In the three hours it took me to do all of that, I could have just shut the fuck up and sat down with a paper book or a dedicated e-reader. I would have soared through a novel in that time. But instead, I learned nothing, produced nothing, and did nothing.

So we've identified the problem, and hinted at one solution, but I want to expand on it. There are tons of people out there innovating and creating new single-purpose technological tools. One of my favorites, as pretentious as it is, is the Freewrite. It's marketed as a digital typewriter which is just a snobby way of describing a physical word processor. We've had these before in the Alphasmart and other similar products in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. What's nice about the Freewrite is it has an e-ink display which offers low stress on the eyes as you work. This thing can literally only process the written word, nothing else. There are no videos, or social media accounts to scroll through. It's just a thing you use to type. For our readers in the chat, there's also the obvious e-reader. Kindle, Boox, and Nook are the big three in terms of e-readers and they're all fantastic at what they do. I use a Kindle Scribe personally which also gives you a silly little pen you can use to write on the Kindle itself. I used it during my time in University to take my notes in class because I was burning through far too many paper notebooks. But there are a plethora of other single-use electronics coming out every year. There are new calculators, alarm clocks, digital planners, game consoles, so on and so forth. Instead of having a tool that can do many things, a new philosophy promotes having many tools that do one thing really well. This is an argument about quality. This is a solution to the never-ending distractions we all face every day on our phones and laptops.