While we’re on the subject of articles you might have missed, this short interview with Tony Fadell is worth a look. Fadell was founder of Nest, the connected home company that’s now part of Alphabet, and before that he was instrumental in the creation of the iPod and iPhone at Apple.

For a man who had such an instrumental role in making screens central to our lives, he has something of a negative take on them:

For my family, we have tech-free Sundays. No one is allowed to use a screen.

I can understand his point of view. I had dinner with extended family and a friend yesterday, and on a table nearby was a family who spent the entire meal on their phones, not communicating with each other.

Fadell had a more positive vision of how you enable those screen-free days, though:

My hope is that in the future, when you walk in the door of your home, you’ll take off your shoes, drop off your backpack, and leave your phone near the front door. You’ll be able to be one-on-one with everybody, but you’ll still have the capability, through connected devices, to be able to call up information if you need it. No more screens. We don’t need more screens.

Sounds rather like those invisible interfaces we were talking about last year, doesn’t it?

Andrew Branch