[drzaiusapelord]

I really liked how this was done in the movie 'Her.' There's something especially nice about only having your attention distracted audibly and not visually, especially in public.

I wonder if the smartphone age will go away as quickly as it came. I picture a world where we just have smart wearables like a watch which has a tiny visual interface, but a powerful audio one (speaker, earpiece, put watch up to ear, etc). It seems a lot less intrusive. I imagine as we get better with AI and voice recognition, it'll be as practical as a phone. What I'm able to do with Google Now on my watch is fairly impressive today. We already have the technology to understand things in context like "Navigate to Katz's deli" brings up Google Maps to the deli as opposed to a google search results page about navigating to a cat themed deli, which was the status quo not too long ago with voice search.

I imagine carrying around this big selfie/facebook machine around, constantly charging it, whipping it out all the time, etc will be pretty gauche if wearable-only solutions become competitive.

[jkestner]

For many functional tasks, I can see an auditory UI being superior. But currently most people use their smartphone to skim content. I don't want the equivalent of listening to voicemail for everything.

Not to say that content can't shift for the medium, just as it always does. What would an audio Facebook sound like?

[drzaiusapelord]

Well, I do that now sorta on my watch with its small screen. I scroll through notifications, but no, I don't get the full FB web or mobile experience. I'm not sure how many people actually want that; I often hear complaints about how phones and apps aren't simple anymore. I also believe that we really haven't figured out the best way to use these small screens. I'm surprised at how usable my watch is sometimes with its 320x320 screen at 1.8". For reference the original iphone was 3.5" at 320x480 resolution.

For teens and such I can see the big phone never going away but for most adults, having an inconspicuous wearable just seems like a more refined experience. I imagine there's a logical procession here from desktop > traditional laptop > ultrabook laptop/convertible > tablet > mobile > wearable. You lose functionality with every step, but depending on the use case, it doesn't really matter. For people in my peer group, a wearable that could work without a phone would sell like hotcakes.