Recently I got my hands on an old PDA. This thing is a gameboy built for business. While billions of handsets, laptops, and tablets have been made and thrown away since 1999, the visor has survived. Its strength is what many would consider its greatest weakness. It has the CPU power that slightly exceeds that of a modern tv remote or car fob. It has no need for high powered built in batteries, it runs off of 2 humble AAA batteries. Devices with those kinds of batteries eventually fail, and without an easy or cheap way to replace them, the device is tossed out.

This thing can do all of the things you don’t use your phone for anyway, such as making an hourly schedule and todo lists. It has a phone book, but it can’t make calls. It can display emails but it can’t fetch them. It excels at none of the things you spend 7 hours a day doing on your phone, like shopping or scrolling the gram. Trying to read anything on this device is tedious and difficult as the screen is not lit whatsoever and the font choice was probably inspired by a Casio calculator.

Is it useful? 🤷🏻‍♂️ I think it would be OK at making a todo list and making notes or storing contacts in the event that my phone dies or gets stolen and I needed to make an emergency call. It’s obviously more of just a nostalgic piece of tech that reminds me of simpler times.

I’ve considered using this around the house if taking a day off from the internet but IDK. The visor cannot be hacked remotely, as it has no wifi or internet access, and also can’t leak my data… but I’m not sure it protects data I can’t safeguard in other ways.

Why I Like Dumb Devices

Recently I have been using low power devices like ebook readers and analogue watches, stand alone point and shoot digital cameras with old CCDs.. and I do enjoy a device that is built to do one or two things. There is no potential for distraction and they’re often used with physical buttons rather than touch screens.

Real buttons and clicky dials create a physical barrier to using the graphic interface of the tool. You have to think about what you want to do, often you get the sequence wrong, and have to do it again. Touch screens remove the barrier, they’re intuitive, even small children can learn how to use a tablet to open an app or take a photo. Since the cognitive cost to using a touch based device is quite low we often find ourselves mindlessly fidgeting with them. This ease of use leads to tons of wasted time every day.

Is it silly to make life harder if it makes life better?