Given everything a phone can do, suggesting that the screen is the most important thing about it seems like a misunderstanding of what’s powerful in there. For me, the single most powerful aspect of the mobile phone is that it’s connected to other people and other things. I’m not saying the screen isn’t important. But what makes the screen of the phone powerful is that you can look at anything, anytime — not just what’s in front of you. What’s in front of you is already in front of you. Being able to gather information about what’s in front of you is what we do all the time anyway. We’re either using data on our phone to connect with somebody we know, or to connect about something that we’re thinking about, or to connect about something that presents itself to us in that moment. And none of those things are made better by overlaying an informatic layer onto video.
