flâneur

There’s an Alternative to the Infinite Scroll | WIRED

wired.com · 2,027 words · saved by 1 readers

SOMETIME IN THE summer of 2020, I noticed an occasional, searing pain shooting up my right forearm. It soon became clear this was a byproduct of a gesture that had become as commonplace as breathing or blinking that season, if not long before: scrolling. This was how I spent most of the day, it seemed. Smartphone welded to my palm, thumb compulsively brushing upward, extracting content out of the empty space beneath my phone charger port, pulling an endless succession of rabbits out of hats, feverishly yanking the lever on the largest and most addictive slot machine in the world. The acupuncturist I saw to help repair my inflamed tendon implored me to stop, so I did, for a while—I just awkwardly used my left index finger instead. Of course, it wasn’t always this way. While a desktop computer has its own hazardous ergonomics, the experience of being online was once far more “embodied,” both literally and conceptually. Interfacing with a screen involved arms, hands, and fingers all in mo

The New Tech Lexicon Everything’s Coming Up ‘Platforms’ Unfurling the ‘Scroll’ Now Reading The ‘Browser’ is Watching You Save this story Save this story Sometime in the summer of 2020, I noticed an occasional, searing pain shooting up my right forearm. It soon became clear this was a byproduct of a gesture that had become as commonplace as breathing or blinking that season, if not long before: scrolling. This was how I spent most of the day, it seemed. Smartphone welded to my palm, thumb compulsively brushing upward, extracting content out of the empty space beneath my phone charger port, pull

related reading