can software be better at helping us live without dictating how we do it?

George

Future

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Gnocchi, a cooking app, is designed to be a simple tool rather than a lifestyle platform. It avoids common traps of engagement-driven development, such as notifications and endless content, focusing instead on aiding cooking tasks efficiently. The app exemplifies calm technology, respecting user intent and avoiding attention-capturing tactics. This approach ensures the tool serves its purpose without becoming another source of digital distraction.

Calm tools

I love this philosophy. Couldn’t agree more. “Noisy” tools have their place in the world, but with all attention on them, I’m so happy to know there are people who want calm.

There should be an encyclopedia of digital applications and technologies as a ready reference somewhere.

This is very nice. We need more function focussed tools instead of engagement focussed tools.
This kind of reminds me a bit, very differently, but same mental sentiment, of this: <a href="https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-low-tech-website/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/09/how-to-build-a-low-tech-website/</a> The low-tech website. Solar powered, asking how much energy we actually need to run a website.

I don’t even understand why you would want to seek engagement from a tool. Tools are used to server a purpose, not to make you use them more often. The whole philosophy behind tools is that, they need to serve their purpose and be useful when you need them. You as their user only need to use them when you actually need to use them. They are not the ones that make us find something to use them on, and instead, we are the ones who use them when we find something that requires us to use them. Engagement and tools are not things that work well with each other, there are things that do well with a few coatings of engagement, but surely not tools. Social apps do well if they also involve you engaging in using them, but tools don’t.

I loved the blog. Oftentimes, tools kinda get intrusive nowadays. They really, really want you to get hooked and I guess that’s the effect of everything “should be” monetized on the internet. Seeing this blog is like a breath of fresh air and it made so much sense.