In A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design, it honestly feels like Bret Victor is calling everyone out for settling. He’s basically saying that what we think is “advanced” interaction is actually kind of limited, and the line about an interface being “less expressive than a sandwich” made it sound funny at first but also a bit embarrassing once you think about it. Like our hands can do so much in real life, but then we go to screens and everything becomes flat, just tapping and swiping on what he calls “pictures under glass.” It made me realize how normal that feels even though it’s actually such a reduced version of interaction.
Then in Responses to A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design, it feels more grounded because people are basically asking, okay but what now? And he admits that “the solution isn’t known,” which I actually liked because it didn’t feel like he was pretending to have everything figured out. It made the whole thing feel less like complaining and more like pushing people to think further instead of just accepting what already works. When he says things like the iPad is “good! For now!” it kind of shows that he’s not rejecting current tech, just refusing to treat it like the final version.
Putting both together, it feels less like he’s saying everything is wrong and more like we got comfortable too fast. The idea that “the future is a choice” stuck with me because it makes it feel like if interaction stays limited, it’s not by accident, it’s because people stopped questioning it.