Tim Boucher

I won’t go on and on about it here, but I’m not in favor of letting kids play with cell phones. I don’t have one myself for good reason – I think they are just too addictive, and the only way to avoid it is to just not have one. I understand in the real world, compromises must be made, and one of those I made recently was in finding and purchasing this interesting example of does one thing (DOT) technologies that I wrote about recently.

It’s a lowly SD card reader for a hunting trail cam made by Wildgame Innovations. It’s called the Trail Pad Swipe, and it looks like there’s a larger version called the Trail Pad Tablet that is maybe along the same lines. It’s intended use seems to be enabling you to check images in the field from the SD card in a trail camera (which I do have one for fun & wildlife observation, btw, so this is always a possible fallback use, even if one I don’t engage with as an activity much lately – I gotta get one set up again this winter!).

The things I want out of a device like this for my intended use case is actually to reduce the functionality of the Almighty Cell Phone™, and the like… cold sleek fetishistic neo-brutalist beauty of the object itself. I want a device, in other words, that is shittier, and less “sticky” behaviorally than a cell phone.

And that is not. Fucking. Riddled. With. Ads. And. Trash. Holy. Shit.

So what is the “DOT” that an SD card reader does? It reads SD cards. It does not surf the internet, connect to wifi, let you check your email, send you notifications, draw you down endless corridors of social media, apps, and other bullshit and train you from a young age to obey the hegemony that says that all of those things are necessary and normal components of life at any age (hint: they are not), let alone in childhood.

Anyway, people can do what they want, what I am doing is finding an alternative that does one thing, while taking advantage of the benefits that supervised use of digital devices might bring educationally.

Based on my experience, it seems that you can put JPG images and AVI files onto an SD card from your laptop pretty easily – though I had a lot of trouble getting AVI file outputs from other video codecs using a Mac. That’s unresolved, but I was able to download some AVIs and tested them on the device. They played no problem, which is great news. It also has a headphone jack for listening. I’d prefer a speaker too, but will accept it given the challenge of finding anything at all that fits in this product space.

A basically more rough replacement for a cell phone or small tablet that does “nothing” except read two file formats on SD cards is not exactly on everybody’s shopping list. But one thing I’ve thought a lot about is that why, as consumers, are we all forced to use the same shopping list either? Why can’t we easily, for example, order up the components we want in the configuration we want, and like… some AI factory in outer space assembles them and sends it to me via parachute at a very reasonable price?

That’s a future I would actually be okay with, because it would mean that I would still have some measure of control over devices and their functioning, and I could pick from the available options to find one that suits me. Even if that meant choosing to live in such a way that none of them suited me. Choosing to live without them. That’s another obvious solution down this road, but I’m not entirely there yet, so it’s better to shape it in a direction I can live with.

I can live with SD cards, because I can decide what goes onto them. In my research for do one thing technologies here, I came across a device whose name I now forget (Yoto), but you can buy (proprietary) credit-card sized branded audio recordings of popular books (that I already own in print). But you can also buy blanks and make your own. I guess that’s cool, but I could also now with this SD card reader buy any random cheap SD cards, and now load the entire Wikiart image data set on it (or a similar large image set of the natural sciences), and we’re off to the races.

The only “flaw” I’ve seen in this device is that while it does allow the swipe action (and a shitty slow zoom) for going picture to picture on the photo galleries, it doesn’t allow for flipping the device on its side to view portrait-orientation pictures correctly. Instead, it squishes them to fit in the landscape-orientation view screen. Also, I don’t think there’s a way in the video player to pick back up where you left off, or fast forward or rewind videos, but I also need to look at it again more closely.

It’s funny though: it’s “bad” in one way that it can’t do all of those things, but in another way, what I want to find and share is the limits of technology, and figuring out experientially what are the good and bad parts of it (along with its outcomes), and which ones, in which configurations do we actually want to have in our lives. That, to me, is ultimately the point of all of this, and one of the biggest things we need to figure out individually and collectively in our lives.

Getting into wifi radio systems has given me a new understanding and appreciation of what I actually want out of technologies. I want technologies that Do One Thing, or as I’m calling it DOT.

I don’t want to multitask. I don’t want a million apps to flip through and figure out if any of them actually does the thing I want or if I have to sign up or pay some monthly fee or get into bullshit in-app purchases. That’s all dead to me. I just want technology that does one thing, and does it well. Or one narrow slice of things that are all tightly related and which support each other.

I don’t want a lot of options and choices and settings and updates. I want technologies that do one thing. DOT. And well. DOT+DIW.

In the world of wifi radio, I now have a handheld Ocean Digital and a fixed Sangean WFR-32. Here is a video overview of the Sangean:

It can be difficult to find good information and reviews about some of these Chinese wifi radio systems like this.

I will say that the system is a bit weird to get used to. There’s an app for iOS (works on iPad, which is not always the case) that seems to be the easiest way to add stations to it, though you can do it through a sub-menu. There’s also this, which I still don’t understand, and it can accept signals from Spotify (at least through Spotify Connect, I’m not sure if you can easily search songs in it), Tidal, Qobuz, others.

Anyway, each time you limit functionality like this, you introduce weird quirks into a device and its functioning. We’ve been trained I guess by marketing to think that more functions, more options, more possibilities, more tools jammed into a device is always better. But is it really?

If you own a Swiss Army Knife, when is the last time you used anything but the actual knife blade in it? I saw someone say somewhere (original reference lost), that sometimes you need the chef’s knife. The thing that does one thing, and does it well. It cuts.

Mailbug seems to me like another example of this which I remain intrigued by, though my use case and requirements are a bit different. I don’t own one (yet) for that reason, but the possibilities – in fact, the lack of possibilities – is something I keep coming back to in my thoughts.

I’ve been researching a lot the wave of emerging e-ink external monitors compatible with Mac, and that has been interesting to see where things stand. As it currently is, the technology is severely limited by its refresh rate, which is nowhere near the ‘normal’ monitors people use. So you can end up with artifacting in some circumstances, ghosting, etc. It’s difficult to find these in Canada from any brand, and there appear to be only three main series I see often referenced: Dasung Paperlike, Onyx Boox Mira, Philips E Ink Business Monitor 13.3.

I think I have a lead on a Mira in Canada that I am waiting on, so I’ll show a video about that device:

I often already run my Mac screen in black and white but for the amount I’m on it as a writer and whateverer, it doesn’t solve the eyestrain issue like e-ink potentially does, and which other people who have adopted this monitor technology (and smartphone e-ink tech is picking up as well). Here’s one such video that I appreciated:

I like this idea of limitations as being (sometimes) beneficial, of cutting down the distraction and the “flicker” so to speak of modern screen-ified life. I don’t expect yet another device to bring me ultimate happiness, but I’m going through a time of great winnowing down what may ultimate best relationship with technology is. And I think it’s this: do one thing. DOT.

There are probably other words for technologies like this: calm technologies, anti-addictive devices, single-tasking?

My old school 90s AlphaSmart Neo 2 keyboard is one of my favorite technologies, and it is extremely DOT. You can type on it, there are 8 buttons up top for files. 2 AA batteries that last forever, with a small LCD screen. The feel is so good. You’re just typing. You’re just writing. You can get lost in it. No notifications, no distractions, no bullshit. Does one thing, does it well.

For me, this isn’t just a short term “digital detox,” this feels like a sea change, a fundamental shift in understanding and experiential improvement. This is a break from how I approached technology previously. The ability to do just one thing in the end gives you the space to do (or not do) everything else unencumbered.