As little Computer as possible
Why the computer is not (always) the right tool for you
A good Swiss-knife is a great tool.
It is a must-have if you love to work with your hands. But no serious craftsman wants a Swiss-knife for all its daily chores.
More specialized and less versatile tools are essential to accomplish quality work. The same goes when you work with your brain.
We believe the Computer has become the Swiss-knife of the Information Era. It is what we use for pretty much everything that requires Information processing in our daily lives: work, entertainment, travel, food, etc.
While the computer as an object is probably one of the best designed products you can find. It has one inherent and irredeemable flaw:
The way it isolates us from the world.
Computers are not a problem, the lack of less isolating tools is.
Despite all the computer diffrent form factors (laptops, phones, tablets, gaming consoles, etc) at the end of the day, we’re always alone in front of some screen. Whether one is writing the future Booker Prize, watching cat videos or composing a music masterpiece.
We all look the same in front of a screen
In his manifesto to Calm Technology Mark Weiser fortells in 1996 that “If computers become everywhere they better stay out of the way, and that means designing them so that the people being shared by the computers remain serene and in control. Calmness is a new challenge.”
“The best computer is a quiet, invisible servant.” — Mark Weiser, 1996
At Qleek we believe the Future of Calm Technology lies in the dillution of the computer within better designed and more dedicated tools that distill a less erratic relationship between the Man & his Digital Lifestyle.
“Qleek makes digital music feel human” — Wired
This was the raison d’être of Qleek. Using simple and tangible interactions, the digital media experience recedes into the background of people’s life. They can then get in and get back to what matters to them without taking more of their attention than needed.
Qleek is designed to be quiet, honest & bellysweet to look at.
The case of Digital Media is particularly interesting. Because Digital Arts have become unlimited and (almost) free, the computer has slowly and irresistibly supplanted the bookshelf by becoming the new home of our songs, videos & photographs. Though, the way we browse music for instance has never been so chaotic.
Today, we have in one computer more songs than we could ever play, and still, we miss the entire social music experience
By designing a bridge between the physical & the digital world, we wanted to give a sense of value to Artistic content without compromising the pros of a purely digital experience. We wanted to reconcile the immediacy and the abundance of the digital age with the intimacy and the tactile pleasure of a vinyl colleciton. We also wanted to bypass the computer!
The beauty and sociability behind a vinyl collection has not been replaced by anything that digital media offers.
Regardless of old examples of physical media, we believe there is a real value in creating rituals and embodying the digital library as a whole. Fiddling with a song, a video or a photo album in a living room is different from launching an app, scrolling lists or searching artists.
To follow Mark Weiser’s words, we have to think of new polite and dedicated tools that enrich not only our daily lives, but also our opportunities for being with other people.
Technology should empower us, not impoverish our human nature.
