Can “Distraction-Free” Devices Change the Way We Write?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
It uses an eink screen, which has significant latency in comparison with lcd and other screens that render pixels. Won’t be an issue if latency doesn’t bother you too much, but if you are used to super fast response times in text editors, it will prove annoying. It also has no backlight. Its easy on the eyes during the day but forget about using it in dim conditions.
Their source is closed and not easily extensible. They version your documents using their own propriety cloud backup, which you can then export to various services.
The file manager is clunky and the UI in general, either because of eink limitations or stuff on the software side, is pretty clunky.
The firmware update process is mysterious and does not really give any information to the user.
The outer casing feels cheap.
Try as I might, I cannot find any information on the internal storage limits of the freewrite.
Overall I personally feel the unit is way overpriced at 500 dollars.
Even though I dislike the traveller, I still loved the concept, and through further research discovered that KingJim, a Japanese company, makes a similar device, the Pomera DM200, only it has pretty much none of the downsides I mentioned (it uses lcd, not eink so its super responsive, to get files off the device you can use a qr code, email, or sd card) plus other features that are handy (split view, calendar that doubles as a journal, outline mode, and others). Like the freewrite, the outer casing is a bit cheap feeling but it feels sturdier and looks sleeker too.
The only major downside to the pomera is that its ui is only available in Japanese (there are older models that support english but that are no longer in no production and are more expensive to acquire second hand), but even this is easy to get used to. The overall experience and software is imo leagues ahead of freewrite and it only costs around 300 instead of 500.
The Pomera DM200 looks really interesting — pretty sure I recognize this from a guy on my that had one (or something very close to it).
A solution I've been playing around with a lot is the a foldable keyboard (I got this one [1]) plus an iPhone. An iPhone with an external keyboard doesn't give you Cmd + Tab, which makes multi-tasking difficult by default. In addition, it has the additional advantages of:
* Leveraging a device I always have on me and which I charge every night.
* If you get the right keyboard, it's full size, keeping typing non-painful.
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kingjim, the maker, never said they were portable e-ink typewriters. they say they are digital memos. like palm back in the days. people point to them as cheaper alternatives to the freewriter traveler. but that's honestly a mistake.
my biggest complaint was the keyboard.
imagine writing your essays or your book on that mini-keyboard! i had so much trouble pressing on individual keys on that keyboard. i also had issues with reading the e-ink screen at night. but the keyboard alone was enough reason for giving up and selling mine.
I like the Pomera's look (and love the broad Japanese market of weird/unusual electronics), but ... I doubt I'd ever buy a device without a full-sized keyboard again. These netbook-style machines were pretty interesting back in the 90s and 00s, but they're practically impossible to type on, and we've got enough good alternatives nowadays that they don't feel worth it anymore.
The backspace key is smaller and there's an additional key to the left of it that doesn't exist on the US keyboard. The punctuation is at different locations for things like apostrophes and colons. The spacebar is smaller due to the IME keys.
Since they're digital memos, you can't really write really long texts on them, so no long novels or anything like that (IIRC it's something like 10k characters max).
But besides those drawbacks, they're nice no distraction devices. I have the DM30, it's a chonky little bugger that runs on AA batteries. There are instructions on how to switch the menus to English as well.
Although the new iOS version's text-reader is pretty amazing. I wonder if I can just use a real typewriter and digitize the notes from there.
The Psion had a better[1] screen, excellent battery life from two AA batteries, very good physical keyboard, excellent size, basically the only thing it lacks in comparison to these modern "solutions" is wifi. Although some even advertise lack of wifi as a benefit as it means even less distraction! I mean come on you're taking the piss there imho.
Things like the Freewrite Traveler are shockingly over priced and while they may be distraction free they are certainly not frustration free.
[1] better in that it was a monochrome LCD not eink. Yes it wasn’t amazing but it was still more responsive than eink
This can be seen in paper tablets with styli: reMarkable 1 has about 43ms of latency from stylus to screen with a fairly slow processor (no idea what Freewrite uses, it could be slower but is probably similar), which includes, and I can attest that even when you’re looking for it the gap is small, and when you’re not looking for it you’re unlikely to notice it; and reMarkable 2 cuts that down to around 24ms with a faster processor and I think newer generation of e-ink panel. (Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/r3ev13/fy....) As regards CPU usage, implemented sensibly, rendering text at a known size and font with primed glyph caches is vastly lighter than rendering textured strokes, so I’d imagine you could get your typing latency down even further than reMarkable’s stylus latency with a sensible pipeline.
In terms of long-form writing, word processors make spelling and grammar easier to fix. They also make editing easier, and the internet can be used to reference facts while writing. This comes with a few trade offs, like easily being distracted. Does this impact really seem equivalent to the impact of a car to you?
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Yes and no.
As a musician, I can tell you that interfaces definitely matter. Everything, from color to tactile feel and weight affect the way you use any tool. You can get a perfect software emulator of, say, a Yamaha DX-7, and yet you will be surprised to see how different you sound when you play the actual thing.
Same with typing. I don't write with a pen, period. I can; I take notes, I doodle, I do math with pen and paper. But I can't write large amounts of text with a pen. It comes out differently because the interface of moving a stylus is different from typing.
There's a reason writers used to be obsessed with their typewriters (and still are). There's a reason why George R. R. Martin writes his books on a DOS machine[1]. Those reasons have to do with why the OP has a point.
I think differently when I type; the brain-finger interface works differently than speech. Sometimes I look away from the screen, and see that my fingers typed things that I didn't intend to type. Apparently, I am typing at the level of words, not keystrokes, and when I look away from the screen, sometimes my brain cheats and misspells words. Not typos; the letters would be far apart. I couldn't possibly do the same thing with a pen, because I can't write legibly without looking at what I'm writing; and generally, it's not a thing that people are trained to do.
But with typing, you can do it.
The computer keyboard and the typewriter are not that much different in that respect; but the ability to undo and delete most certainly has an effect on the writing process. That's because you don't have to pause anymore before writing a sentence; you can type it as it forms in your brain, and you can backtrack easily. Yes, paper is cheap, and you can cross things out; but it adds friction, and it doesn't really feel nice (if I were writing this, half a page would be crossed out already - as even with the pauses, my mind jumps around enough).
You can also add text into previous passages without rewriting it. You can even restructure text on the fly. Of course you can do it with paper, too; and you can even plan in advance and leave enough spacing to be able to make corrections if needed, but it's not the default thing people do with paper, and defaults matter.
Film photography vs. digital photography vs. cellphone photography vs. instant photography would be a better comparison, I feel. All devices that can produce photographs have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's not about that. It's about what the device is optimal for when you pick it up and use without tweaking and putting much thoughts into it. Self-portraits existed since cameras were around, but selfies needed a cell phone to take off.
The car analogy has merit. Look back 100 years ago; literacy was a struggle. People didn't generally didn't have a need to write, and writing used to cost you, in terms of tools, paper, time, and effort required to do it.
Do you really believe writing like this very comment that you are reading was commonplace back then? Disputes, discussions, discourses all existed; but having a public discourse in written correspondence required a space on the newspaper page at the very least. Craigslist's "Missed Connections" and rants about absurd listings ("RE: Antique sofa, needs TLC, $1750" - "The HELL is wrong with someone who's listing this? You've been doing it for three months now, pal, nobody wants this crap") are reminiscent of what it used to be before mail/comment threads came around.
Speaking of written communication, look how SMS texting affected writing culture ("ok thx by cya l8r"), and how it all but disappeared after swipe-typing and autocomplete became the norm.
So you have to take it in context. A car analogy isn't perfect, but it's not that far off. The tools that we use for communicating affect the communication that flows through them.
Personally, I've been using "distraction-free" devices for a while now, but I just called it "taking a laptop to the park" (where there's no WiFi), or, God forbid, turning off WiFi or communication apps when I don't need them.
Coming back to music, even with a good DAW, field recorders, 4-tracks, and even straight up recording on a cell phone all have their use. The potato quality of a cell phone video vs. running line-in through the mixer + FX + DSP chain + DAW is a feature, not a bug. I just know that if I record through a DAW, I'll end up doing dozens (...hundreds) of takes to get it just right. A tool that is imperfect by default liberates one from that.
So while I am not someone to get too excited about the devices in the paper, I can understand the appeal.
As for me, I end up having the opposite problem: once I started typing, I end up hitting the character limit more often than I'd like to admit (it's 8000 characters on Facebook, in case you were wondering; I've hit it on all platforms). Even the cellphone's distractions aren't strong enough to pull me away from writing out a long thought, and the whole world can wait. The devices from the article enable what is already easy for me to do (and when I want to write, I still take to trusty notepad.exe, the best text editor I've ever had for that purpose).
For myself, I found that TikTok had a transformative effect with the way it limits comments. I've been forced to be brief for the first time in my life. And as they say, limitation breeds creativity. This limitation forces me to step back.
A Kickstarter idea for people like me: a digital typewriter that punishes verbosity. Sorry, you can only type 300 words a day, and it locks you out after that. Use your characters wisely.
Anyone down to make one?
[1]https://time.com/99432/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-comp...
What I'm trying to say is that the parent comment has merits comparing it to a car.
>You could write the above easily with a typewriter
No I couldn't. I know, since I own two typewriters.
They are hella fun, and I absolutely love typing letters on them (the snail mail kind). But it's an entirely different flow. Kinda like you can get on a bike pretty much anywhere you could drive, but you wiuldn't (or maybe you would, but I'm surely cycling far less often after starting a job 20 miles from where I live vs. 4 miles of the previous job).
Same with the cell phone: if I had to either get off my bed to fetch a laptop, or had I not had swype-like typing, you wouldn't be reading this.
What I'm saying is that it's not about advantages vs. drawbacks, it's about the kind of writing that you get in the end.
Which is why I still use my to typewriters. I can just use a typewriter font and send it to the printer from the word processor, but it would still read like an email, because it would be.
If anything, I think they were better for it. A slow writing medium means a lot more thought went into each page. Nobody in their right mind would spend hours arduously writing a buzzfeed listicle with a goose feather, such low-effort writing is only possible when writing is effortless. The fact that effort went into the actual writing usually means that effort also went into considering what was to be written.
And my remark was specifically that I wouldn't find it enjoyable to write that long comment with a pen. Maybe it'd be better for it, maybe worse, maybe I'd go and play piano instead; the point is, it'd be very different.
In a previous century: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/07/26/nietzsche... Nietzsche’s Transformative Typewriter and http://stunlaw.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-author-signal-nietzs... The Author Signal: Nietzsche’s Typewriter and Medium Theory.
But then:
> The case of Henry James’s move from handwriting (typewriting) to dictation in the middle of What Maisie Knew has been studied by Hoover (2009). Yet, according to the NYU professor, the author of The Ambassadors took this sudden change in his stride and, despite the fact that we know exactly where the switch occurred, stylometry has been helpless in this case; or, rather, can show no sudden shift in James’s stylistic evolution that continues throughout his career (Hoover 2009).
I'm not saying writing tools don't matter to writing at all, but it seems to me that they don't solve the problem of distraction. It's not that hard to turn off the WIFI, or leave your phone in a different room. The Microsoft Office toolbars, however ugly, isn't stopping you from churning out words. Books don't write themselves simply because an e-ink screen replaces a LED monitor.
The most productive writer I personally know, writes on his work laptop running MS word. The machine has as much bloats and distractions as you can imagine, but he writes two chapters of light novels a day on average, before and after going to work. There is no special equipment, no internet-proof basement, no mental gymnastics. For him, writing is work, so he allocates some dedicated time to do it.
Writing (well) is such a difficult task, that simply, not everybody is going to be a productive writer. Just like not everyone is going to be a good mathematician, regardless of how little distraction surrounds them.
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If one has a real addiction to social media or video games, that's all together a different problem. Using a distraction-free typewriter to combat digital addiction is like quitting smoking with a tobacco-free basketball.
I did it on a fancy laptop (brand new Framework) with plenty of distractions (web browser, games, etc.) The solution to get it done really was to schedule time to write and a goal of a certain number of words (or chapters or plot points) to get done EVERY DAY. You'd really be surprised how much you can get done in 10-20 minutes of set aside focus time every day!
Someone who is easily distracted when writing on their computer by browsing the internet, looking at social media, etc. will likely have the same problem when using a dedicated hardware device. Instead, they'll just grab their phone, stare out the window, or daydream instead of focusing on their work. As long as you turn off your email and chat apps so you aren't bombarded with messages while you write, there's nothing on a computer that will distract you unless you willingly choose to open it.
I actually do a lot of my writing on a eink device, but that's more for eyestrain as opposed to reducing distractions.
I love this question because it gets closer to the real issue, and my answer is "absolutely". We live in a completely different world distraction-wise than when typewriters were a popular choice for writing.
Given that his has been possible forever I see no reason for single-function writing devices to change how people write. If you want one, get one but realise that the multi-function device(s) you already own can be made to function similarly and you're adding yet another device to your "environmental footprint".
Just don't buy any cigarettes. Easy. Cravings? Pfft.
Discipline is hard, and sometimes solutions can be built that help make things easier. Vaping as an off-ramp for smokers. Screen Time on iOS as a way for the social media addicted to reduce their addiction to the 'gram.
While studying, my solution to procrastination was a moderately nice notebook and avoiding my laptop as much as possible. Pen and paper was really good technology to help me think and study better.
So, just install a nix and either add a single-function login which goes straight into a page-filling no-frills editor or use a tiling window manager without any window decorations or program launcher to get the same visuals. Add a restricted account if you need a bit more hand-holding to keep from checking your likes or twit-regurgitations or fill in the blanks. If you're hobbled by using Windows or MacOS you can achieve the same by creating a bootable USB-thing with a minimal nix configured to your liking. No need for new hardware (you're sure to have a suitable USB-fob around after all), no need for more consumption just to achieve less distraction.
One of the reasons I basically never write stuff on a plane is that I find, absent Internet (and yes you can often get crappy Internet on a plane but it's also a good time to read books), I find I often need to pepper whatever I write with comments about checking this fact or that fact.
Of course, there was a time in my life when I managed to deal with not having access to the Internet. I also made more factual mistakes and just included less supporting information than I would today.
Even if I do a pile of research in advance, I just find there's a lot of overhead to not being able to verify facts, spellings, etc. on the spot.
Fearful of interruptions? Toggle Do Not Disturb or Airplane Mode. Don’t want to risk opening other apps? Use Guided Access to keep yourself inside one app (or just use willpower).
I do like the idea of dedicated writing devices, but if you’ve got nothing on hand I would really suggest grabbing a cheap tablet and not install anything on it other than a plaintext editor (and on Android you can use termux with vimwiki, etc.)
Speaking of which, I am currently working towards building a modern PDA device so that I can mostly do away with my phone. The idea is that it too will be purposely limited in capability and will only be capable of specialised tasks.
Right now GPT3 mostly seems good at padding text with nothing of any informational or creative value (and indeed it can't do anything else, with the problem statement it's usually given).
I'd love to have a slightly modernized version but it seems like they're dirt cheap ($60) on Amazon.