Fred Stutzman, the creator of Freedom and Anti-Social, and now a postdoc at CMU (and like me, a Microsoft Research Lab alum) has a very nice reflection about his popular creation, Freedom. He argues that its popularity shows that the effort to create endlessly “bigger, better and faster” technologies has created a technological environment that is “out-of-sync with our work patterns.” He continues:

Over the past five or ten years, the devices we use for work have exploded in complexity. No longer a word processor or spreadsheet, our computers are now televisions, game machines, and—most importantly—portals to an always-on channel of social exchange. Yet because these changes have been realized in code as opposed to form, we think of the device as static. A computer is just a computer. I see our work devices increasingly failing the market, with disastrous consequences for productivity, progress, and self-worth….

If Freedom is the antidote for anything, it is the antidote for machines that have gone out of sync with basic human work practices. Why have computers not kept pace with the time, adapting to the challenges of work in an environment rife with constant social hum?…

Only through extensive use have I realized that Freedom is about pushing back at the device itself, a device that has failed the work market in a drive toward progress. To come to terms with this uncomfortable lack of sync between our devices and work patterns, first, we must understand that we, humans, are not the problem. Second, we must reconsider our relationships to our devices and, with open minds, examine where our devices have failed us. Third and finally, we must change the ideology of the productivity industry, moving away from bigger, better and faster and towards smaller, better, and slower.

Needless to say, this is an argument I’m sympathetic toward, as it fits with my idea that information technologies distract us not because they’re alien, but because our extended selves have such trouble incorporating them.