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Want to know the future of interfaces? Chop a limb off.

For many people, if not most, the smartphone has become an extension of ourselves. We are constantly connected to it and wouldn’t go anywhere without it. Not even the toilet. Especially the toilet. We have become cyborgs and being required to put our phone away feels like being asked to chop a limb off.

So last Wednesday I had a limb chopped off.

Well, to be precise I had a hip replacement.

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Author making sure they chop the right leg off

As a result, I have realised that the Screen Age is over. Future archaeologists will look back on the discarded shells of these archaic devices with bemusement, wondering if they had some sort of ritual significance. And all the over-hyped launches at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona are the last desperate mad ravings of a dying industry.

Foldable phone - with screens even more breakable than our current easily cracked devices.

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The Huawei Mate X

Massive battery - with phone attached

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The Energizer Power Max P18K Pop aka a house brick

Keyboard phone - enough already BlackBerry…

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Blackberry Key2 Red

Utter nonsense! Forward to the Past, not Back to the Future.

As I dictated these thoughts using Google Docs Voice Typing, I adjusted the heating in the room with a quiet word to my Amazon Echo and then listened to another great sci fi audiobook. Nowhere in these imagined futures is there room for foldable fat keyboard phones. The future of the interface is no interface. A world where the world shapes around us through our thoughts, words and deeds; not touches to buttons.

It’s time we all chopped our smartphone limbs off and embraced the screenless future.

Martin Talks

www.matomico.com

www.tech-safaris.com