Are we finally ready to go phone free?
The unbundling of the phone and the case for the watch
We spend most of our time looking at a screen; desktop, laptop, phone, the list goes on. Moreover, we’re addicted to social media feeds and are flooded with their notifications. Less than 1% of the content we receive through them is of any real use. The smartphone may be making our eyesight worse and reiterates our need for simplicity and minimalism. On the other hand, every dominant device becomes more specialised and is replaced by something smaller and more lightweight over time. Web 3.0 brings about the need for a new generalised device — we can expect the first to be the watch, then glasses, and finally, contact lenses.
The Grand Vision
In a post hypothesising blockchain’s ‘killer app’, I explored the notion of the ‘unbundling of the smartphone’. Specifically, I suggested that it may be found at the intersection of distributed ledgers (DLTs), augmented reality (AR), and smart contact lenses (IoT) — powered by gaming and non-fungible tokens (NFTs):
Most teams are optimising their AR services toward mobile, while in the meantime, their sales are plateauing. Now we are at the point of peak consumerism, we believe that the best way to sell new products is to deliver ‘smart’ versions of the products that we know and love as part of a wireless ecosystem of devices.
I then went on to describe the criteria that the dominant device in this ecosystem would have to adhere to:
We already see this with the tablet, the watch, as well as speakers when at home, and earphones when on the move. In the future, we can expect a product that a significant portion of the population already knows how to use, are comfortable wearing in public, and are ultimately unobtrusive, will be the ‘smart device’ to move us toward a screenless world.
At least three devices fit these criteria and there will have to be specific social and technological shifts to move from one dominant device to the next. Watches, glasses, and contact lenses — in that order.
Device Unbundling
Device unbundling has very closely followed the three dominant phases of the Web. Web 1.0 was characterised by digitisation and content consumption through browsers used on desktop computers. We eventually became chained to our desks and needed an alternative. Web 2.0 was characterised by social where photo and video content was created and shared through mobile hardware. Our phones eventually became chained to our person, and we need an alternative. Web 3.0 will be characterised by curation — creation and consumption will be through a new dominant device.
We’ve now realised that we’re addicted to smartphones, but processing power for IoT devices like watches should be strong enough to handle our basic needs. After some time, we can expect that the AR-enabled gaming experience will not be immersive enough. Glasses could help here, especially to those who who are not be particularly comfortable putting on contact lenses. Frustrated by the obtrusiveness of this technology, we can expect that the need of a seamless interface to directly interact in the augmented reality experience will rise. Contact lenses could be well placed for this.
Optimising Behaviour
Transitions can be difficult, but I’ve often found that optimising behaviour for the new system before you move onto it is best — case in point: moving from Email to Slack. Apple’s new ‘Screen Time’ feature tells me that, on average, I pick up my phone every 6 minutes. Obviously this is very unhealthy for a phone, but for a watch this isn’t necessarily so bad. The other major point here is that watches, glasses, and contact lenses solutions are not conducive to social media feeds, so these curated, likely tokenised content platforms will require major reconfiguration.
Although we are close to taking the plunge with our watches, we still require our phones to make and receive phone calls through them. IoT eSIMs could be the answer, but this technology is still nascent and needs corporate traction from telcos and hardware manufacturers for scale. Also, it seems likely that processing power and storage on wearables will be suitable, but we will need a contingency — distributed compute and storage solutions could be a neat solution, and tokens earned could go toward paying your bill. Reservoir computing may be a solution to keep compute ‘on-device’ in the future.
We now have the opportunity to build a healthier relationship with the technology we use, with ‘smart’ versions of watches, glasses, and eventually contact lenses. However, this is still just theory — there are tangible steps to be made for this to come to fruition. We will likely need IoT eSIMs, distributed compute and storage protocols, tokenised social media platforms that incentivise high quality content creation without distribution through feeds, whilst only notifying us of the most relevant new information. Consolidation of the long-tail of messaging apps should also help, and we will have to put more thought in to the go-to market strategy for the frames, especially given that most of LATAM, CEE, SSA, and APAC will have a large enough emerging and aging middle class which will be reticient to them, but compelling people that don’t wear glasses to do so will be a tough sell. All of this should amount to us viewing screens less often, which may even slow down the ‘accelerating degradation of our eyes’.
With thanks for Pramath Murthy and Richard Skaife for useful insights and review. This article has been written in a purely personal capacity and does not represent the views of Outlier Ventures — it does not constitute investment advice.
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