The first reading, “A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design,” delves into the future of technology and how Bret Victor has a problem with it. Victor reveals how the future they are portraying consists of swiping through a touchscreen for every task. He believes that this limits the use of our hands as we aren’t doing anything with them other than swiping. Victor wants to see a future where we can grab, throw, hold, and feel technology rather than just swiping through a screen. Reflecting back on this reading, I completely disagree with Victor’s narrative. The whole point of technology innovation is to make things more accessible and user-friendly. It is supposed to make tasks easier to do and faster as well. If all we’re doing with our hands is swiping, is that really a bad thing? Victor’s issue is that we’re not using our hands enough. In reality, we’re using our hands to do a lot of other things like cooking, laundry, making our bed, etc. So if we’re using our hands to do all these things, is it really bad that the innovation of technology means all we’re doing with just technology is swiping? Moreover, Victor also fails to take into account that technology, where we don’t require using much of our body, is beneficial to several people of determination who may have a hard time interacting with limited mobility or cognitive function.
The second reading, “Responses: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design,” is a response posted by Brent Victor where he responds to the questions he received after posting the initial rant. However, his responses to most of the questions don’t even look like responses but rather an angry teenager responding to hate comments. By mentioning that he is no longer going to respond to any more questions, it is as though he has turned off the comments on his Instagram post due to fear of being shamed by the public. One question someone asked was about using voice for more interactive technology. Victor responded by saying that we should just use our voice for asking questions and issuing commands. With that logic, one could respond by stating that why don’t we just use our hands as well for doing tasks like cooking, laundry, etc.? Why do we need to use more of them for interactive technology? The whole rant by Victor made no sense and it is not a surprise that he no longer works in making such technology.
The main connecting factor between both these readings is that it was written by Brent Victor, who only thinks that he is right and everyone else is wrong. In both these readings, Victor wants the future of technology to be less user-friendly and more handsy. It is as though Victor thinks the future of technology revolves around his needs and desires alone rather than the needs and desires of the rest of the world.