The man who helped design the iPhone—arguably the most ubiquitous tech tool of the 21st century—says constantly using it actually qualifies as misusing it, according to The Next Web.
In a conversation with longtime New Yorker editor David Remnick at New Yorker TechFest last week, Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, spoke about the iconic gadget he helped create, Bryan Clark writes for The Next Web. (Ive also helped design a few other little-known products you may have heard of like the iMac, iPod and iPad.)
“Like any tool, you can see there’s wonderful use and then there’s misuse,” Ive told Remnick. Asked to explain what misuse means, Ive responded “perhaps, constant use.”
As Clark points out, most people already know that screen obsession is an issue plaguing society and ruining our dinner parties. In fact, writing about the science behind our smartphone addiction and how it’s affecting us, is—to use an internet word—trending. In the past few days, both The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal have published pieces on the cost of device addiction, and at Thrive we’ve explored this extensively in our Time Well Spent section.
What’s noteworthy now is that the man who helped design this product is speaking out about how we’re misusing it. He’s now part of the growing list of tech innovators like Bill Gates and Tristan Harris who are advocating for thoughtful use of the products they’ve helped bring to life.
And if the people creating the products we use daily are aware of and concerned about about how harmful constant use of their creations is, maybe the next generation of gadgets will be created in a way that helps us use them more responsibly.
Read more on The Next Web.