Simply Perspective

Using perspective of the future to communicate a simply, accessible present

Living in a space where there’s some freedom towards experimentation and its resulting analysis often leads to incredibly simple insights. However, getting to that point is not so much a matter of iteration, or even research, sometimes, it is a matter of just having a different perspective than others who might be able to utilize those fruits in a more applicable manner.

About a month ago, published a piece talking about the potential implications of using the Tap wireless keyboard and have been steadily living on the changed diet of this keyboard, Siri dictation, and the on-screen keyboard. I might not be until these Monday, long-form pieces that sitting at a conventional keyboard is actually noticed. Something about using a tablet doesn’t feel like a tablet when using a conventional keyboard (the Apple Smart Keyboard or any 3rd party variants). The feeling that a tablet is a different kind of computer is felt best in the perspective of using the glass as the changeable canvas that it is — letting it morph into whatever needs to be next. The behavior of typing, while a normative behavior, sees a different level of thinking when its removed completely from the hardware.

A friend asks some days back about what new tools might be on deck, and there’s the Tap keyboard which comes into the conversation. Having not realized that it was not seen by this person, there meant a demo. The resulting expression, the shift of their facial expression, showed that something beyond the normal was being shown. And yet it was not so detached from reality to be something “only seen in movies.”

Perhaps, this is what is better understood by those who design new technologies which appear in movies, but do not have an analogy to what’s happening right now. Inventing the future — or rather, inventing another reality— is not looking at things as they are, but by taking aspects of the known then stretching them towards more applicable conclusions. The rubber band of taking those far-out perspectives, and making them accessible to an audience who isn’t there, is a type of genius. There’s an art to making it clear. But, probably a better one to just stretching backwards after going forward.

A few prospective projects have Avanceé looking at the future and using that viewpoint to find simpler, clearer, and more appropriate means of addressing today’s problems. Inside of this space, it is sometimes difficult to see that the future isn’t right now. And yet, by simplifying the end point to something which can be grabbed, perhaps the future is really just a means to shifting our perspective towards using more of what we’ve always had.