Wrapping up #

In all honesty, I’m not exactly sure what everything I just wrote is about. Mostly it’s just a lot of ranting, but hopefully it has been interesting. To round things off with a bit of a closing note though, I don’t actually foresee many of the things I mentioned becoming common place or many even being possible, if not simply because they’re requiring so many people to agree on standards, but there is one glimmer of hope, and it’s one of proof of uniformity. The terminal. Yes. This terminal:

The terminal emulator above is still compatible with the VT220 from 1983 (as are most terminal emulators) yet from it, with a good shell (like ZSH) I can do everything I can really think of: browse the web, chat with friends, listen to music, basically anything. I’m not saying we should all stop using chrome, but I think part of the reason so many neck beards and sysadmins still use the terminal is you can do so much with it, everything that uses it as a common interface, and it has programming capabilities. You can automate or string together just about anything, exactly as I described above.

Finally, I’d like to say I understand we don’t all get the choice, be it by monetary, physical, or other restrictions, to have a ‘perfect’ work environment. If you live in the city there will be noise, If you live in the country, you may be limited by your internet connection, I get that. Obviously I don’t expect everyone to go out and make their own versions of some of the high-tech, borderline art installations that I linked either. I also don’t think everyone’s down to go get an RFID tag in their hand. I just wanted to present what I see as ’the future’. It probably won’t come in 2023 or even 20023. I do, however, hope this has inspired you to look at the way you work, the environment you work in, and how you can improve it.

Other hardware and software pushing things forward: #

https://hookproductivity.com – Link all the things

Atlas Informatics (TechCrunch Article) - search all the things

https://apse.io – a photographic memory of all the text that goes across your screen

https://desktopneo.com – a UI mockup for a better system

https://arcan-fe.com/2020/02/10/leveraging-the-display-server-to-improve-debugging/ - it’s in the URL

Other people that have ranted about similar things, but usually a bit more politely: #

A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment (Michael McThrow)

What do I care the open web is dying? (Abhinav Sharma, Cofounder Insight. ex Mozilla & Facebook)

I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin (TechCrunch)