Oh, the Humaneity

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Phones are convenient, powerful devices, but they sure do gobble up a lot of our attention. How much of your day do you spend just holding your phone, staring at the screen? Humane, a company started by a pair of ex-Apple employees, wants to squash the tyranny of the touchscreen. The company has developed a tiny device that magnetically pins to your clothing, where it can replicate a phone’s core functions like answering calls, sending messages, and translating speech. It uses voice controls, touch controls, and a camera to sense the wearer’s intentions, and it crafts answers using machine intelligence and displays them on your outstretched hand using a tiny projector. It's a weird and audacious device that Humane hopes will free its customers from having to carry their phones everywhere.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave joins us to talk about his hands-off experience with the Humane Ai pin and the future phone alternatives.

Show Notes:

Read Paresh’s story about his experience with the Humane Ai pin.

Recommendations:

Paresh recommends Kim’s Convenience on Netflix. Lauren recommends the biography of Robert Oppenheimer, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Mike recommends the new reissue of the Buddha Machine music box from FM3.

Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lauren.
0:01.2	Mike.
0:02.4	How often do you look at your phone every day?
0:05.9	Oh, too often, unless I'm sleeping and then I'm not looking.
0:11.5	Otherwise, I would say if I can go a full hour or two without looking at my phone,
0:15.9	like if I'm in a yoga class, that is pretty notable.
0:19.7	What about you?
0:23.2	I look at it from the moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep with it hitting my face. But I would say there's usually like a
0:28.4	couple of two to three hour blocks in the middle of the day when I'm working or exercising or
0:34.1	playing music where I'm not looking at my phone. But aren't you working on your phone
0:38.5	and playing music from your phone? No, I mean like playing music with a musical instrument that I'm
0:43.3	holding in my hands. Oh, oh, the old-fashioned kind. Okay, got it. Well, you also use technologies
0:49.4	that are sort of designed to get you to look at your screenless, right? Like you wear smart watches
0:53.6	and you use Siri and you wear smart watches and you
0:54.6	use Siri and you test smart glasses for your job. Define using Siri. No, I do wear a smart watch.
1:05.3	I happen to not wear an Apple watch. I wear Garmin and I get notifications, but I'm not, it doesn't feel like a little phone, you know? Right. And despite all that, I still look at my phone. Is there anything technology-wise that could get you to stop looking at your phone? I could throw it in the ocean, except that would be bad for the ocean. It would be very bad. Well, you're in luck. Today, we're going to talk about an extremely bizarre product that might somehow help you look at your phone less.
1:31.9	I am not convinced, but let's do it.
1:42.7	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Collori. I'm a senior editor at Wired. And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired. We are also joined today once again by Wired senior writer Peresh Daveh. I'm delighted to be back so soon. Yes, it's great to have you. We're thrilled to have you back. Like we said, the last time, we were just giving you a 10-month warm-up. Now that you've been on once, you're going to be on all the time. That sounds wonderful to me. All right. Well, you've got a smartphone. You've got a smart watch. You've got your smart glasses. You've got a sort of smart voice assistant living inside all of those things? What else could you possibly need
2:19.3	to get through the day? How about an interactive pin? Today, we will be talking about a new
2:25.8	piece of hardware that clips to your shirt and uses tap gestures and voice controls to do basic
2:30.9	things for you, like answer calls, translate speech, count calories, capture photos,
2:36.7	search the web. It's from a company called Humane, a startup founded in 2018 by two former
	...

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