The potential for e-ink phones

Welcome to the Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of clicking agree on pop-ups on the internet without ever reading a word of them. I'm your friend David Pierce and I got a new phone. Um I know I told you I was done with this wild phone experiment that I've been on. And that's true, but that doesn't mean that I don't get needlessly excited about some wacky new idea about how phones are supposed to work, especially if they're supposed to save me from using my phone too much. The new one I have is is called the side phone, and the idea is basically it's like a a minimalist Android phone, but it has attachments for the bottom half. So essentially imagine a blackberry, but you can lift off the keyboard, and it just has sort of individually replacement parts. So you can have one that looks like an actual kind of full keyboard, but then you can also put on just number keys if all you want to use it for is to make calls. But the one I think is most fun is it has an iPod style click wheel that you can just stick into place and suddenly you have a thing that looks like an iPod. I find this so charming. And I love the idea of a phone that can be lots of things, but tries very hard to only be one of them at a time. And you have to be like, I am using my phone as a camera now. So I'm gonna attach the thing and use it as a camera, and it's less useful as everything else. And then you're like, well, I'm gonna use it as a music player now. And it's not everything to everyone at all times, even though it can do lots of things. I think it's very cool. I need to test this phone a bunch more. I have a bunch of questions about how this hardware is gonna hold up over time, frankly, but also whether this idea of interchangeable keyboards can make a phone feel minimalist and useful all at the same time. But I'm pretty excited about it. But today's show is not about smartphones. Mostly. Today's show is about two things. First, Kate Klonick, a professor and author, is gonna come on the show and talk about cookies. Specifically those cookie banners that appear at the bottom of just about every web page you go on, which she thinks need to go away and write now. Then Alison Johnson from The Verge is gonna come on and tell us about her experience with a feature called Ask Maps, which lets Gemini and Google Maps use AI to plan your life for you out in the real world. I think it's really interesting and exciting. Alison's had some fun exper iments. I'm excited to talk about it. We also have a really fun question on the verge cast hotline. It's six six verge one one is the hotline. Vergecast at the verge.com is the email about the smartphones. We're gonna talk a little bit about smartphones. It's it's gonna be great. All that is coming up in just a sec, but first, um, I need to take this thing on a music player spin because if you give me a thing that looks like a click wheel, I need to play with the clickwheel. This is the verge cast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Mongo DB. If you're a developer stuck fixing bottlenecks, instead of building the next big thing, then you need MongoDB. MongoDB is the flexible, unified platform that gets out of your way. It's asset compliant, enterprise ready, and built to ship AI apps fast. It's trusted by so many of the Fortune 500 for a reason. Ask any developer. It's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoD b. com slash build . Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for every moment. With long-lasting battery life and built-in intelligence, you can stay focused on what matters most. Dell Technologies. Built for you. Dell.com slash Dell PCs. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments you plan and for the ones you don't. For those early morning news sessions, or when you're on the go and leave your charger at home, or even the times you need the best processing speed to just get the job done. Dell built tech that adapts to you. Built with a long-lasting battery so you're not scrambling for an outlet. And with built-in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work at del dot co dot uk forward slash del PCs built for you back let's talk cookies. So cookie banners are one of those sort of low grade annoyances of being online that I think everybody has just learned to deal with, right? You go to a website, it pops up, you can click agree, or you can click more info, or you can click, I don't know, don't track or whatever. Sometimes if you don't accept the cookies, it just kicks you out of whatever you were trying to do. So everybody just clicks agree. You accept the cookies, you get the cookies, you move on with your life. This is not great product , but it's also fine, right? I think if you polled most people about what sucks about being online, I'm not sure cookie banners would be the number one thing on the list. Which is why I thought it was so surprising that Kate Klonick, who is a professor at St. John's and a writer and an author and someone who has been tracking legal and political technology for a very long time wrote a very strong and powerfully worded piece recently about why we need to kill cookie banners, not rethink them, not make them smaller, not make them more useful, get rid of them entirely. I asked Kate to come on the show both to explain how she arrived at this thesis and also how cookie banners arrived at this place. It it seems like a reasonable idea, right? Tell people about the data that's being collected and how it's being used. But i we've gotten away from that. The thing is not doing what it is supposed to, and I wanted to know why. So I asked Kate to come on and explain the whole history of cookie banners. And that is what she did. We had a lot of fun. I think you're going to enjoy it too. Let's get into it. Kate Klonick, welcome to the VergeCast. Thanks for having me. I brought you here to talk about cookies. Um, the the scourge of the internet . Um and I I I'm curious why for you this became an issue worth doing sort of real research and writing on. Why it rose past the level of like annoying thing I click on on the internet to let me study why this thing is such a problem? So I was living in Europe. I was on a Fulbright uh at in Paris to research the Digital Services Act. Um and I was there and I thought the cookie banners were bad when I lived in the United States and they were just even worse when I was in in Europe. And it was especi fic because I was a stranger in a strange land. I was constantly on my phone trying to call things up, like locations of things, translations of things, and they just were just this like oppressive level of of clicking through and this this block to me getting to this very simple thing that I wanted like a currency conversion or or like a translation of a phrase or the location of a restaurant or anything. And it just became, I just was like, you know, or I'd look up like a sweater and it was like you'd say yes to the cookie banners when you entered the site and then you'd click on the sweater and you say yes to the cookie banners again when you got taken through to the next page. And it just was like ridiculous. And this just seemed to me to be this really acute piece, like this tangible piece of tech policy everyone could relate to. And as I was kind of writing it, this screed, um the European Commission decided to reevaluate the um the law, the underlying regulations that had kind of been part of the genesis of of why why we have cookie banners. And so I kind of was like, oh, maybe someone will actually read this and listen to it. And it won't just be like me shouting at the s old man shouting at the sky. Yeah, I actually do want to talk about the the how we got to this in Europe piece of it because my experience of cookie banners really starts with GDPR. I had not realized the extent to which this is like a two decade old idea in Europe . So can you just kind of quickly walk through the history of the cookie banner, maybe before it hit people like me in the US? Yeah. So depending on kind of when you count the beginning of the cookie bann er. Um, it's either 15 or kind of 25 years old. Um, and to explain that, you kind of have to look at like the origins of the EU's e-privacy directive. And there was a lot of agitation um when there was a certain merger. Um that now it's kind of, you know, passe , but there was all of a sudden people realized that the money of the internet was going to be ads. And so there were a bunch of mergers in like the early 2000s with DoubleClick and like Google and like a bunch of acquisitions. And so those actually kind of lit the world on fire for the first time. And one of the things was that people were concerned about was all of this was running and kind of this interesting artifact of the internet, which is a cookie. Um, and I as I say in the article, um the cookie is a neutral technology, it's actually pretty necessary for how the internet works. It creates kind of a like it means that you're not in like this stateless space and that you're kind of moving forward or backwards from different pages and how you do a search. Um it it basically I kind of compare it to breadcrumbs is kind of like the best way to put it. It kind of like leaves this trail that you can follow either way and makes it much more usable. Uh makes it usable at all for the user. Um so there's like this necessary part of cook ies, but the second that you could realize that you could kind of track what a user was doing online , that is incredibly immensely powerful and valuable to ad tracking technology. And then we developed all of these ways that they were track ing us across the internet and people were worried. I think like with good reason. I people at at the time did not understand fully kind of what this was revealing about their personally identifiable information. They didn't realize what or if it was revealing anything at all. They didn't want to be commoditized. And this is something that Europe they we tried to pass stuff in the US. It didn't spoiler alert. It did not happen. And we went to the the and EU decided to take it up and the EU has a very different fundamental framework for how they how they regulate around privacy um than the US, which made it more plausible that they could pass something like this and that it could take um effect in all of Europe. And so that's what they did um in the e-privacy uh directive. And so the interesting thing was that it didn't there's nothing in that piece of regulation that says anything about a banner, anything about a pop-up, anything about um notice. Um it says that you have to have the right to refuse such processing. And so this slowly kind of gets and this is kind of a story a little bit about regulatory capture and how industry, how like when you regulate something and you don't know what it means, what ends up happening is like industry and lobbyists and like lawyers end up like basically deciding what it means and all kind of coming around some type of level of compliance that they are assured will make it so they don't get fined. Right. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. And then that becomes the interpretation of the law. So there's like this kind of black and white concept people have of a law lot of , um, that like it is what it is. But it this is like a perfect example of like it says that it was that the directive was about the purpose of the processing and it is offered the user has to have be offered the right to refuse such processing by the data controller. And I won't bore everyone with all of the kind of back and forth, but essentially over time, um even though the the there are some letters and some opinions that are advisory that say that this isn't about a pop-up banner, that ends up being what proliferates uh through industry. So that's why I also want to say there's two things. There's a misunderstanding that is just the GDPR that kind of put like cookie banners on steroids. Cookie banners, it put it a little bit on steroids, but like they were pretty prolific before that. And then the second thing is that it is all Europe's fault, which it is not. Like, I like I really like, you know, it's not that it's not their fault, that there's plenty of blame to go around for this. And so, like, but like very specifically, this regulation did not necessarily have to turn out this way. And it is a part, I think that like it's I think that industry deserves as much blame in this being their solution to it as, you know, potentially if you want to put blame on people, which I don't really think is worth doing, the, you know, the the European laws are. Fair. That's a secondary level of the solution to this, which is people like, I get that you hate these, but like, why not just leave them in place? Like they're not doing any harm. And that's actually what I argue in this paper is that they actually are doing harm. We would be better off without them than this world with them. And so like that, like they're it's not even they were just like completely neutral and they did nothing, then fine, but that they're not. And so that's actually kind of the the big takeaway. Yeah, I wanna I wanna interrogate the we'd be better off without them argument a little bit. Because I think and and correct me if I'm mischaracterizing this, but I think one of the things you say is that we've spent so long with cookie banners as an answer. Everybody identified this as a way to satisfy the the the letter of law, sort of literally and figuratively, and and get away with it and we can we have done our privacy work, ever everything is fine. No one's gonna sue us. We're not gonna get fined by the EU . And and it has sort of calcified into this crappy experience that accomplishes nothing, but it works. And that the the thing we should do is tear it down in such a way that what we actually do is have new conversations about new ways to do this, right? We need different kinds of regulations. We need different product answers to how we talk about privacy and manage this people. We need whole new approaches to privacy. And I think I agree with all of that in principle, but it does seem to me that what what you you have to argue for in there is for some period of time, what we're going to have is nothing. And that and that actually this like latent awareness of there is something going on with my privacy on this website is so not helpful that we would literally be better off for some period of time, maybe a long period of time, given the way that privacy regulation is going right now, with nothing. Do you feel that way? Yeah, I absolutely do. I think that the, as we you kind of, as you just spelled out for me, the compliance regime that tech companies and regulators have reached this détente over , which is cookie banners, right? They've all agreed. This does two things. It takes the pressure off the regulator from their constituents because every time someone comes to them and says, we have a privacy problem . Cookie banners, you know, we have a privacy problem with ad tracking. They say we did all of this with we've been doing this for 25 years. We've answered, we've solved this problem. And importantly, you clicked the button. Right. And you clicked the button. Don't you you feel like have agency? Right. Um, and you know, you have not only agency, you have transparency. And so there is this panacea that gets created from the regulatory side. And then that's also supported by the compliance regime that the tech companies have reached. They've invested the money, they've invested the research in their all of their lawyers for the like last 15 to 25 years of deciding what it means to comply with these European laws. They've done the, they've done the thing. And it doesn't cost them that much to do this anymore. It's comp they just do it now. And they know that that will block keep them mostly from being from being fined or um or whatever else. And so they have no desire to reinvent the wheel either. That's a whole new lift for them, right? That's a whole new lift. It's like right now they've solved a problem that doesn't actually block them from tracking that much. First of all, that's really important. Um, because as I talk about in the paper, this technology of cookies being used as tracking is still used around the margins. I don't want to make it sound like it's completely outdated. There are still ad trackers that use this, but it is like, it's there, there, it's been it's been lapped many times over by other types of technology . And so at this point, there is just kind of not um there's really no, there's absolutely no incentive on the part of industry to push for anything new. So you have this very kind of having cookie banners in place actually prevents room for discussion of a new solution. Now if you get rid of cookie banners, then the vacuum will create a discussion necessarily. And like and I truly believe that like that would be advantageous. I don't even care if we come around to like a different kind of like consent. I wouldn't, I wouldn't love it if we come around again to something like cookie banners. But man, I just think that the discussion now that we are so much more technical technologically sophisticated, such that and now that we have so many different types of actual technology that do this tracking, now that we know what a world looks like where you just have these click-through banners and this idea of manufactured consent. Like, I mean, I think that we can do better. And I think it would open up a like a pathway for innovation and I think that it would it would um get us some new regulation that actually did the hard work of protecting users' privacy. Okay. Yeah, I love the phrase manufactured consent because it it feels like uh all of this sits right next to the terms of service and the privacy policies and all of the other things that we click the checkboxes on when we sign up for things and no one ever reads them and uh you you say this great uh experiment that somebody did where they they put a bunch of like nonsensical what was it like you you agree to give up your firstborn child in the terms of service and everybody just clicked it anyway because nobody reads the terms of service. Um it does feel like this whole system is broken . But the thing that I wonder is like if you made people, if you forced people to read carefully the terms of service before they signed up for something . A no one would do it. They would just bail on whatever the thing is they were about to sign up for. And B, I'm not actually sure it would accomplish all that much if everybody read the terms of service, right? Like I'm sure you you follow these as much as I do. These times when everybody like every four years, everybody freaks out about the Instagram terms of service, even though it never changes. And most of what it's asking you for is actually perfectly plausible. Like we need to be able to store one image on multiple servers and so we need permission to copy your image and everybody freaks out about what that means because nobody understands these things because they don't have to, because that's not they're not lawyers, that's not their job. But what I wonder is like, is there any version of this where you can give people an the actual responsibility to consent with full knowledge and actually give them that full knowledge? Like part of me just wonders, I can't even imagine what the better version of this looks like. And I wonder what you think it might look like. Yeah. So first of all, I have to like credit the fact that this is a response to um to a really great article in the same um in the same journal uh by uh Robin Bradley Carr and uh Jiu Wei, uh which is the contractual death and rebirth of privacy. And there is, I mean, it's their their thesis that this is a response to is really talking about what you're describing and what I I describe with the terms of service stuff, which is it's not just a cookie banner problem. The idea that we have, we are constantly confronted with all of this legalese and these unknowable terms of service and these unreadable privacy notices is not new. And not something and something that like people have bemoaned for a long time, the so-called click wrap um kind of contracts that have pro proliferated. And I end kind of the piece in part with like this idea that um uh my friend and colleague uh Dave Hoffman has written about it, Penn, uh who who kind of calls for fewer forms. Like just get rid of l like make make it make there be less so that we can concentrate on what is there. So that's part of why I kind of call for this. But the the idea is essentially that the world that we're living in has this kind of constant ability to barrage you with min information and to use these kinds of nice ideas of consent and transparency. And it's very hard to actually be empowered even with transparency and even with kind of moments of agency uh because of how power works um in these systems. And I mean that's a a high level theoretical kind of framing of this. But to answer your question, like what could possibly be better? There are like a few kind of things that I float um at like at the at the at the bottom of it. You could do some of this with there's some middleware solutions, there's some browser level solutions that I think could be better to inform people about these types of problems. I think it would be good to have a much more serious, much more technologically sophisticated conversation about the harms that non-PII data sharing actually creates. I think that there is a lot of ick and creep creepiness that people just generally don't like about behavioral advertising, but I don't think that there's actually cognizable, especially not tort-based kind of harms that you could, you know , like actually concretely show that uh that are not based on a leak of p personally identifiable information. Like that's like being, you know, that um you know the in Europe there are dignity harms and other types of things. But in the US, like there's not, it's m would be much harder to kind of show that there are actually harms in this in this capacity. And so I think that we just need to have some really hard conversations about that. And have like a little bit of creativity about how we how we do this. Maybe we start kind of creating some type of like I don't know, some type of uh payment back to users in some type of way for the data that they provide. Maybe we make, you know, so maybe we'd do it economically instead of like giving them cookie banners. Like I don't know. But I mean, but it ended up being like five cent a five cent check to you. Like, you know, that like it costs more to print and mail than it probably that than your data is worth. But like but my point is is like we could have some conversations about this. Um and I think the conversation has just gotten so much more sophisticated in 25 years and 15 years in the last five years since the tech lash kind of started um and kind and um and shifted during covet um when we all kind of went online. There has just been a huge um change in how we're doing this. And so I don't have perfect solutions. Um I just think that uh I just think that there's there are a few out there that I think would be slightly better than this. And um even those are worth discussing, I think, um, in in light of how terribly this is going. Yeah. Yeah. I mean one thing I was thinking about is the Apple um tracking pop-up that when an app wants to collect that data about you, it it puts up this very simple thing and you can either say allow or you can say ask app not to track. And that, at least as far as I can tell, has had a very different outcome than the cookie banners, which is that a lot, maybe most people click ask app not to track because it is uh it it it it just makes very clear the thing that's happening. And part of me wonders if there's a version of cookie banners that should just look more like that. You you sort of trace the evolution of cookie banners in a way that I find really interesting from rel atively straightforward, simple things telling you what's going on and giving you opt-out to now it's like the you know, there's a bunch of buttons and a ton of legalese, and the only thing that makes any plausible sense to do is just hit agree. So the thing will close. And part of me wonders like if if we were to just wind it all the way back to like this thing is collecting a bunch of data about you, cool or not cool, and you can actually just click the button and we've like mandated the way that this thing lo oks. Again, there are weird regulatory questions about like, do do we want the EU to regulate web design? I don't know. But but is i is there something there that could have worked if we had not let these banners become the bizarre things that they've turned into? Yeah. So one thing that I think is fascinating is just like, and I talk about this term and I'll just kind of refresh it for your listeners. Um I talk about the Brussels effect, which is the so-called kind of the the effect of uh what gets legislated or regulated by Brussels, which is the capital of the Europe an Union, becomes de facto policy for these transnational companies because it is easier to comply even if it so it has extraterritorial effect. Even so like me sitting in New York City is impacted by European law, even though I'm technically not um it's not you know, it's not enforceable against me simply because um for Google or Apple or Facebook to have different types of policy between Dublin and um and the US is too expensive. And so it's easier to just make a one size fits all solution. We had a similar thing with like, I don't know, you've maybe heard of the Texas California school book effect, where like those two giant markets determine the like the you know the available textbooks for school children for most of the country, right? Um, or the European or the or the California car emissions effect, which is kind of like when c car when California passed emissions laws, that just changed how all cars were manufactured in the United States. 'Cause just doesn't make any sense. Makes no sense. Right. Exactly. So this is like this extraterritorial effect that's well kind of established, this play between markets and regulation. Um, what's kind of interesting and I think is kind of funny is that in Europe, they have their own thing called the California effect. And so you said something just now that I think is kind of interesting. You're like, well, should Brussels, should Europe get to like dictate what um what our privacy design looks like? And what's really funny is that they have something called the California effect, which is they basically think that the US and the California, and in particular Silicon Valley, has basically colonized all of Europe with this, like this idea with by exporting and making Europe completely reliant on their unilateral decisions around design and technology. Like what's available in in the rules, what's in the terms of service, what you see, what you don't, how you use it, it's all set just like unilaterally by US tech companies. There's no say that Europe has in that. It's like completely they're they're totally right. I wouldn't know if I would go so far, and it's kind of rich actually coming from Europe to like call it colonization. But um there is uh but it's definitely like it is definitely like a a product it's a product outsourcing effect. It's a market effect. It is, you know, and to this extent, I actually think that there is some legitimacy in Europe deciding that it's going to use its democratic, its democratic power, its own sovereignty, its own mark, like comparatively small, but still like next largest, richest market, um, market share to push back on kind of this this dominance from tech companies. Um so I just kind of wanted to co complicate that narrative a little of like, well, why should we be listening to the EU? And I'm like, well, they'd say the same about us. Like, why are they why should we be listening? Why should we why do we have to listen to like everything that you know Apple just decides that it's whim? And to get just really quickly um to that question of Apple dec iding that they were not going to play ball with other, um, they were going to make this change in their in their ad trackers. Um there's also another part of that that is uh the if you talk to other technology companies devastated other people's advertising revenues and the ability to kind of I mean and is a story of of monopoly power and a story of uh of that we have too many large players in the and the and the ad space uh and just not enough um diversity in who kind of controls um the ad sale market. And so the fact that Apple could unilaterally decide to just completely disrupt this by just like a whim of policy change. Um more so than, or in the same way, to the same effect, maybe to greater effect than cookie banners did, is uh I think a great uh I would if I have a part two, maybe like if I make this like if this is like the Empire Strikes Back uh version of this of this article. Maybe I'll write it about Apple's uh Apple's uh decision to kind of uh change its ad tracking system because yeah it's a great point. I think that all of this is just kind of let's play all of these powers and forces against each other, but let's not forget who they should be operating for ideally, which is the end user and the citizen. And I think that that just gets forgotten all the time. And so we're at the the that's that is like the biggest part of this piece, which is like it's just such a terrible experience for us. And it doesn't do anything to protect us. And so this is like the worst of all worlds. Um, you know, this doesn't serve us at all. Um, us being like the citizens and the people who are using this technology. Yeah, I agree. So you mentioned uh the the EU has has sort of reopened the case here a bit on on cookie banners is rethinking and what was the word simplifying? Is that what they were they they said they aimed? Simplifying their their policy around data protection. Do you think there's a real chance of actual honest to God change here? Yeah, I do. The main thing is that uh is that I have heard that this is um that this is something that is on the table, that they are really really thinking about this because it is unclear, especially with um agentic AI, with kind of the like how AI is going to work through browsers and how it's going to be kind of like using data that the idea of cookie banners becomes particularly um non-viable and um is you know there's already a compressed need for for like server space and everything I talk a little bit about how there's a waste of energy.' Thsere not a ton of great data on that, but it seems frankly like a little bit commonsensical to me that even if it's just like on the margins, that constantly going having to ping back and forth like has to make some type of difference and kind of in type of energy costs and things like that. It certainly makes a difference in time costs for users. But in any event, like there's so there seems like there is some appetite for this. Um and and so like I'm just kind of fingers crossed that this becomes something that that people take seriously. But yeah, I guess I kind of I wanted to I just I don't know, it would be fun to have a win in some capacity um at this current juncture when it just feels like there isn't a lot to and this just seemed like a small area that I could focus on or do something or kind of put an advocacy, some advocacy and wisdom into . Um yeah. And so I kind of I'm an optimistic person. I also never, by the way, ever am like a person who says we should burn it all down. Um so this is like a I'm not a crit. Like I'm a kind of like a person who very much is always trying to build something. But yeah, no, no. I think that basically that actually makes the call what I'm calling for even easier. Like we don't have to come up with a new solution. Like I think I make the case pretty well that we just be better with nothing. And so that's all you are. And that in fact maybe we can't come up with a new solution until we burn this one down. Exactly. Exactly. My favorite thing about this is I think it is like it's so it's so such a sort of complicated, fascinating regulatory moment, but also that idea has got to have damn near 100% support among actual users of the internet. Like if if there are people out there who are like, God, I love cookie banners, I want to hear from you. I have so many questions for you. I've got to I don't think you exist. I've never met a person who has come to me and said they're fine. I think I think the most that I've ever in presenting this idea, which I've presented for, you know, I've gone on rants about this for the last two years before I wrote this paper. Um, because I'm, you know, I'm me. Um, but there's it's like, and it takes a long time to write academic papers. But the the main thing is that people mostly say that those are just not that bad. That's the main, that is the main takeaway that I get. Like they just seem like a small cost. And my point is, is like they're just not. They're actually not. It's, you know, it's I don't know. It's kind of like when you have some type of something broken in your home. I don't know. Like you can't turn on the light switch and you're in your you're you know the the bulb burned out in your overhead light. And so you have to walk all the way across the room in the dark and you always bump your shins on the coffee table on your way there if you come home after dark, like to turn on the light on the other side of the room. And you know at some point you should just kind of get up on a ladder and change that stupid light bulb in the ceiling. Um but it's a little more effort and then by the time you remember to do it, like you're on to other things. And so you just keep walking across the living room. It's like, well, you just don't have to have bruise shins, my dude. You just don't have to do it. Like you your life could, you know, your life could be as simple as a light switch. And so um I don't know's. kind That of what I feel well how I feel about about this kind of this problem. And um yeah. You don't have to have bruised shins is such a good rallying cry for the future of the internet. I like it very much. Alright, Kate, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much. Alright, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about ask maps and AI for the real world. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. 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Seriously, you could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours, especially when you sign up with Business Plus. Their AI-powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also cuts down operational housing So you can spend more time running your business. You can visit Upwork.com right now to post your job for free. That's Upwork. com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U PWORK .com. Upwork.com Support for the show comes from Framer . Your website is the tone setter for your brand, reaching every single customer you have. But if you still struggle to make small changes and simple updates, you le'reaving opportunities on the table. Luckily, there's Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Miro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated A B testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot com from day one. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/slash verge for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's Framer.com slash Verge for 30% off. Framer.com slash Verge. Rules and restrictions may apply . Alright, we're back. The verge's senior reviewer Allison Johnson is here. Hi, Alison. Hello. Uh, we are back with another edition of Ruining Allison 's Life with Phones. Yeah. Very excited about this. We've we've started something. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's real. No, you said this, you coined this phrase like a while ago and it's gotten stuck in my head. I'm like, that's that's my whole job. I just ruined my life with phones. It's I mean it's great. But every once in a while, it goes super well for you. Yeah. And that is what we're here to talk about. Um I'm particularly curious about Ask Maps and Gemini and Google Maps and this whole thing because um a theory I have long held is that Google Maps is actually the perfect example of the trade we make with technology all the time. And I want to talk about it, but I think it is like particularly true in a in an AI world that if you want to talk about what we give up and what we get back, maybe the fairest trade in all of technology is mapping apps. But first, I just I want you to just describe what Ask Maps is. For anybody who doesn't know, this is a thing that if you haven't used Google Maps in a minute, open up the app. There is probably a little shimmery thing telling you to use Ask Maps. Uh what is this feature? So it's essentially just Gemini kind of chat bot inside of Google Maps. Um yeah, you tap the little thing that says ask maps, you get the text box screen, and it's like, where do you want to go? You know, do you want to plan a date night or whatever? And you just kind of freestyle and you ask um about the things around you. And it um it will go into like importantly like Google user reviews and it can pull from a lot of those to answer your questions. It can also answer questions when I'm I was like planning a little excursion, like should I bring an umbrella and it'll go check the weather? So it it has some of those like all around Gemini capabilities, but it's more grounded and like more focused in the information in Google Maps. So how does this track with how you normally use Google Maps? Because I think there there are lots of different kinds of maps users. Um did this sort of track with the way you already use the app? Yeah, I think about this a lot. I'm like a recreational Google Maps user, which I recognize is unusual. There's a lot of, you know, Google Maps is designed to get you from point A to point B. And there's a lot of people who use it that way and and probably are less interested in like having just a little chat with Google Maps. Google Maps tell me how to do that. That is like that is one very specific use of Google Maps. Yep. Good ask maps. You know, don't go there with this. Just continue using Google Maps as you would. I use it as kind of like I want to check out, you know, the neighborhood where we're gonna have dinner and see like well, maybe there's like a cool playground we can stop at. Um, or I'll I'll see a recommendation somewhere else for a restaurant or a coffee shop. I'll go in and and add it to one of my many lists that I have in Google Maps. Um so so I just poke around in maps sometimes. Sometimes I have no agenda. I'm just like, I don't know what's going to pop up in Google Maps today. Something weird inevitably comes up, and I'm I'm fascinated. I could spend hours in Google Maps. I so I the reason I ask is because I use it exactly the same way, and immediately the first time I read about Ask Maps, I was like, oh, this is for me. Because like what I find myself doing all the time, I think I've actually until now been using Google Maps sort of wrong, where like I will search for my honestly, hand to god, my most common Google Maps search is probably the phrase breakfast sandwich. Uh because wherever I am, whatever I am doing, I am permanently on the lookout for like a pretty good bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. It is all I want every day in the whole world. And Google Maps has always been uh almost right for that, but never quite right for that. And it's it'll always be like, you know, reviews mention X XYZ, reviews mention breakfast sandwich, which is sort of helpful, but only if people are reviewing the words breakfast sandwich. Um and this is the sort of thing that actually, if you take AI and its ability to do this like summarization and sort of fuzzy search and actually pull a bunch of sources together, it can start to do things like actually help you understand what is good on the menu at the place that you're going to and whether this thing and this thing are both good. Like I want I want a place that has both a good breakfast sandwich and a pretty good cup of coffee. And that is a thing Google Maps is just structurally not set up to do. So the idea of like you said, we had this huge corpus of place data, reviews, it's actually an incredibly useful amount of information. This seems sort of perfectly suited to everything that Gemini is actually good at. Like and it sounds like you use you use Google Maps the same way, whereas like this immediately becomes a kind of thing you're like, oh, I actually know a thousand questions . I would like to ask this AI tool. Yeah. And it it is really good for those kind of like I'm not just looking for coffee near me. There's one million coffee shops around me. I'm like, I have or you get the same twelve from everything you do, right? This is the problem that I constantly have. Is you search like I live in Alexandria, Virginia, and it's like top ten coffee places in Alexandria, Virginia, and it's the same ten every single place you look, and eventually all of these lists are useless. And I'm like, I've been to all ten of these. Where else should I go? Yeah. Nothing is able to do that so far. Yes. Yeah. For us recreational maps users, it it can it can put together concepts or like extrapolate from something where I'm like, I'm looking for a coffee shop where I can bring my laptop to work for the afternoon. And it understands, you know, some of the criteria around that. And it'll it doesn't just look for people mentioned in user reviews, you know, laptop and it'll be like there's a lot of space. It's uh it's very um cozy. It's open till four PM, you know? It's not gonna it's doesn't close it too. Um so yeah, kind of coming across those use cases is sort of blown my mind. And I'm yeah, I'm like, well, now I have a thousand more questions I need to ask. I love it. So you set up an exper iment where you basically decided to let Gemini plan a lovely city day for you. Tell me about the planning process before we get into the day. What was the setup like? So I just kind of gave it the assignment and I I gave it a few criteria. I was like, I wanna, you know, spend a day in the city. I want um somewhere to get lunch. Uh I'm gonna be taking public transit. Um, I wanna take like a nice little walk somewhere uh and find uh a coffee shop where I can sit with my laptop and work for a few hours. And I need to be home by 4 30 p.m. I'm g haveonna a lovely city day and I'm also on a very tight schedule. Yes. And I have extremely specific criteria for it. Um it would be the most intense thing to like tell your friend. Yeah, Google Maps though. Um, yeah, just kind of put it all together. Um, the first suggestions it gave me were I guess maybe too good because I was like, oh I've been there, you know, like I know about that coffee shop. I was there a a week ago. So I will say, by the way, this is one thing I've noticed about Gemini and the Ass Maps feature in my own use so far. I wish it was paying more attention to where I've been before. Yeah. Because I've had I've had the same experience a couple of times now where I'm like, well where where should we go? Like what's a good I want tacos. Like surprise me. Where should we go get tacos? And pretty consistently it has offered me places I've already been for tacos. Which on the one hand is fine, but I I've had to really push it to be like show me things you know for sure I don't know anything about. And then there are a couple on the flip side where it's like I was like, what one thing I put in just this morning to see is like find me a favorite place I haven't been in a while that I should go back to. Which is again information Google Maps has. Like anyone who is wondering what Google Maps knows about you, go find your location history on Google Maps. The answer is everything. It's frightening. Yeah. And again, and this is this is the the trade we make, right? Is like by having this, you can now give all of this back to me in a way that is actually useful to me. And I I wish there was one more turn of Google's ability to know because then it was like it offered me a place I've never actually been, but I have searched for in the past and I was like, You've searched for this twice and you were there one time and I was like, Actually I wasn't. I was somewhere else across the street and you should know that, Google. Uh but so that's the one little tick of personalization that I don't I don't feel like is quite there. And it's it sounds like you had the same thing where it's like, I want to go on a fun, exciting, new exploratory day. And it's like, have you heard of the coffee shop down the street from your house? It's like you have actually. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I did have to push it a little bit. And I I maybe I sort of thought like fun, adventure, day out of the house just sort of implied like, let's not go to my usual spots, but I did have to specify. I was like, no, you know, these are good. I didn't I didn't want to, you know, be mean to Google Maps. I was like, good job. Um you're doing your best. And I love that. I I recognize you're your you're doing best here. Let's like think a little differently about this. And it came up with a couple spots I'd never been to, you know, I'd sort of heard of. They weren't like hidden gems or anyt They were sort of like places people know about that I just hadn't gotten around to going. That seems fine. I'm actually okay with that being kind of the criteria. Right. Yeah. Um, so it it charted me a little route, you know, and it gives you little um shortcuts to access the the transit directions along the way. It gives you a map so you can see generally like where what your route is going to look like. So it'll spit out like a full itinerary for you. I'm just realizing I have not done this ambitious a search with it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. I had trouble finding a way to like export that to something. It was like, oh no, I can't do that for you. So I had to keep going into my like history with the search and pull it up, which is sort of a pain. What a basic product miss from Google on that. It's like gosh, if only you had a system that could show me several stops and navigate between them. Yeah, the number of times I've asked Gemini, like, put this in a Google Doc and it's like, oh no, no, I can't do that for you. Yeah, it's like what are what are those? Yeah, I've never heard of that. Yeah, even when it can, I'm like, you have access to my whole life. Come on. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. Um, so it's it sent me to a taco shop um up the streets, well, a little ways up in you know, the neighborhood to uh a And and it had all of the like, you know, you'll have an hour and a half here. Um, then you'll need to head for the the bus stop. It's a wow couple blocks away and that the um, you know, the three fifty bus should get you home by four thirty. So it was it was pretty complete. Um that it it was considering all of my very specific weird criteria. So how much time do you feel like this process saved you? Like I think the the question of, you know, find me a coffee shop I would not have found on my or I haven't been to before, but people are kind of out there. You can do that, right? Like that's a that's a piece of information that is not completely inaccessible to you. But I think it it seems like there is something to the combination of it'll put a bunch of those things in there for you. And I think in particularly in your situation, it seems like you were open to new things and you weren't like find me the greatest experience I've ever had. It's just like, build me a day. Let's go have fun. And then there's that actual sort of stitching together of all of it for you that seems like it might have genuinely turned a process that would take you a while into a process that happened pretty automatically. But do you feel like it actually saved you some time to do it this way? Aaron Ross Powell I think it it did. I mean, I got home on time. And I that's not I'm usually rushing, you know. I kind of am I'm usually a little too opportun They say that's like a predictive personality trait if you are optimistic about being able to do everything then is reasonably possible to do it. Yeah. You and I share that personality trait. Are we sociopaths? Is that I think so. It means you're a terrible person who is not considered of other people I've always suspected this myself. fundamentally to just have those numbers in front of me of like, okay, you really got you really should leave at 350. Um and I was like, okay, that's the time I need to leave. Sort of having that in front of me, I think was more the benefit. I think it it really did, you know, help a lot with connecting all the dots, like especially when I made it kind of a complicated day. But there there was a value to um, you know, you look at I look at Google Maps, I'm like, I could go anywhere. Where where how on earth do you pick a place to go? I could go to a beautiful park on the lake. I could go have a totally different kind of experience over here. And then I tend to end up in like my safe zone where I'm like, Well, I know this neighborhood pretty well. I'm just gonna go there. Um having having a computer be like, Hey, you're going to Taco's Chucky's uh I'm like, sure. I wasn't really thinking about tacos, but yeah, the computer said. Um sorta helped me just to like fill in the the blank canvas that that can feel overwhelming, I think. Yeah. And again, I think that's one of the things Google Maps has never been very good at. And I think I suspect a thing you as a parent of a young child do that I also do all the time is try desperately to find things going on around me at any given time. Uh and that is something Google Maps is not great at, but neither is anybody else, right? You're like, what fun things are happening around this weekend? And there's just not a good answer for that anywhere on the internet. Google Maps is probably better at it, but that like the explore tab is not much. But I've had reasonable luck just being like what's what's cool and new and interesting happening and and Ask Maps seems to just be able to find that more than some of the other things, which I think is very cool. But I do wonder, and this comes back to the like how it feels to turn all of this over to the computer thing. There that question of I am just allowing this thing to decide for me based on what it knows. Like Google Maps, you know, Google take the wheel. Uh how did that feel? Like it's obviously it's one thing to do as an experiment, but like in in your in your day to day life, is that a thing you'll feel comfortable doing? I think to different degrees. Like when I'm on my own, you know, left to my own devices, this is definitely a realm where I'm like, yeah, I can use a little help filling in the dots here. I need to do, I want to do X, Y, and Z. Um where I I see myself using it as more of like um like finding these particular places or like experien ces if I'm looking for something to do with my family. In Seattle, we have a new extension for our light rail system that like connects the east side of the city with Seattle proper for the first time. So, and it's awesome. It actually takes you over Lake Washington. It's the first light rail system to go over a floating bridge. Who knew? Cool. That was like, this is rad. Where can we go along this this new part of the line? And um it put together some suggestions like, you know, there's a there's a playground in this neighborhood and there's actually like a a viewing platform so you can see the trains go by . Um, so that's kind of what I did with my kid on Saturday. I was like, look, bud, we're getting on the light rail and we're just gonna like he loves vehicles. Like this was a very easy sell. Sure. I didn't do the whole like we're gonna leave here by this time, you know. I was just kinda like, okay, here's a couple of places. God willing, we'll see how everybody's mood is. Um yeah, but it was very successful and I don't I I don't think I would have found exactly the same places just kind of like scrolling around on Google Maps the way I am want to. Yeah I find with a lot of this stuff and and there's some of this going on on Yelp and other platforms too that there's just a certain amount of filtering and button pressing you get used to doing on all of these platforms that's like, okay, I search for restaurant and then I have to go and I click filters and I click outdoor seating and I click open now and I click and I and it's there's just a bunch of stuff you have to do to sort of take this giant database of stuff and winnow it down to what you want. And the actual better thing is just like I'm I'm with my kid and we need a snack right now. Yep. Where do I go? And and the what you actually need in so many of these cases is just an answer. A successful answer is so much more important than like I'm going to spend thirty minutes finding the perfect place for us to go. And I think for the most part, that is certainly my life experience is like I I would like something pretty good as quickly as possible, which ironically is the whole pitch of AI. I know . Right. Reasonably good as quickly as possible is like the best case scenario story of AI. And I think in Google Maps case, it it's actually perfectly suited to a lot of use cases. Mm-hmm. Um but I do wonder, and this is this is s theort of bigger picture thing I've been thinking about is there are obviously lots of questions about all of the data that these tools are collecting about you as you move around. There's all these questions about what's it doing with the content that people are creating? Like what what does it mean that everybody's everything from like reviews to internet content is being sort of subsumed into this tool that really does not spend a lot of time sourcing its information. Like in my test so far, it is not interested in pointing you back to anything. It's just here's a bunch of information. Go back your day. Um even the place information from a lot of these places is just being dumped into these AI systems. And this stuff is not unique to Google Maps. This is happening in Gemini and everything else elsewhere. But what do you make of the the kind of AI in, AI out piece of ask maps here? Yeah. I I thought about this a lot because it it sort of mirrors what I do, like reviewing phones in a way. You know, if you think about someone who reviews restaurants or um, you know, is sort of a curator for maybe a website like Eater, um, which I read all the time. Um not a plug for our Vox Media friends. Shout out to Eater. Shout out to Eater. I genuinely just am always on Seattle Eater. Um, there's sort of that aspect where it's like uh you know, in me in my job, I have the perspective of like I get to use every phone. Like every phone that comes out in this country is for sale. I get to use it and I have that perspective and I can like share based on that. I don't live with one single phone every day. And there are there are better sources of information um if you're looking for like one particular thing about a phone , which is kind of the beautiful thing about, you know, there's maybe a uh Reddit community or um a blog that is like focused on that specific thing. Um so I kind of got to a place with uh with ask maps where I'm like, maybe this is helping me fill in these gaps. You know, I'm still gonna read eater . Um I'm still interested in the a Seattle Times like restaurant review and that sort of informs my like overall understanding of you know, the the the scene in Seattle. Then I have my my weird little specific requests and questions and that's usually answered by other people, you know, not professional restaurant reviewers. And I think there's all kinds of thorny things there with like does does one thing become too powerful and it puts other restaurant reviewers out of business? I I don't I hope not. You know, I I kind of landed and maybe I'm rationalizing, but I'm I'm sort of at peace with it as far as my own use goes, that I'm it it really helps me fill in the gaps and fill in the like hyper specific stuff where I'm like um that that you know an eater is not going to be able to answer they don't have uh a list of the top twenty restaurants in Seattle for kids who are like super into vehicles. They don't have to be vehicle themed. They can be near , you know, like big parking lot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Parking lot with some weird cars. We love it. But and then on the flip side, nor is Google Maps going to be the place to be like, okay, who is doing really interesting, innovative stuff that I should go and like make a point of going to. Yes. That is Google Maps has never been good at that. And I think has actually tried a bunch of times to be good at that and mostly failed. And so I think the I think you're exactly right. Falling back to this, we we are just going to solve this very simple day-to-day problem for you without trying to sort of be discovery-based and help and help kind of curate the best of anything. Like Google doesn't even really try that anymore. And I think it's probably the right decision. There are others who are better at that. But I think about this also in terms of uh maybe this is just my own moral quandary with Google Maps, but I am perpetually both using Google Maps for everything and sort of petrified how much Google Maps knows about me. And it feels like Ask Maps just extends that on both counts, right? Because now, if I essentially just allow Google Maps to follow me around everywhere, it's gonna know more about me, give me better recommendations, have more history with me. It's the same thing we talk about with all of these like always-on recording devices where there's real upside to having it track all of my conversations and what I'm doing and who I'm with and all this stuff. It's also just creepy as all hell when it works. And and and I think I I struggle with this all the time with Google Maps just in general. Like I will I will navigate all the way home, but then when I get to like ten minutes from my house, I close the app because something in me is just like I I know that Google Maps knows where I live, but the idea of it knowing that I've arrived home freaks me out.. Oh And that's that's nonsense. Like to be clear, that doesn't make any sense. But it is how I feel. Yeah. And then yet on the other side, um, whenever I'm using Google Maps and I'm on the highway and it pops up the thing that's like, you know, ten people reported police here. Police still there, and you can either press still there or not there. I make such a point of hitting that every time. Yeah because I'm like, this is and this this goes back to what I'm saying about about the trade earlier. It's like this is a a staggeringly useful piece of technology, right? To give me the real-time traffic information and to tell me where the cops are and to tell me the accident that's coming up and navigate me around it, like we give it a vast amount of data about us and about everyone, but in return we get this incredibly useful tool. And I think I'm very comfortable with that trade of what I get for giving you this information about me. But it does again, it feels like AI just in general , but especially with location stuff, just makes that so much more acute. I don't know. Is this a is this a quandary for you in the same way that it is for me, or am I just way uh too deep in my own head about this? No, I I definitely feel it, especially when you bring AI into the equation. It's like I I have decades of history on Google Maps. It probably knows every address I've lived at in the past twenty years or whatever. Again, go to your location information. It will terrify you. So horrifying. Did didn't for a while? Maybe it still does this and I just unsubscribe, but it would give you like a an email digest every month like here's where you went last month. Oh absolutely not. I'm good. Take a little trip down memory lane. Um don't love that. Yeah, there is a weird thing with AI, especially when it comes to like um my family where I'm it it it knows my child's name. I've put my kids, I've tagged my kid in Google Photos and you do that you can even do that little game where it's like is this your kid is this a picture of your kid and you you ask you say yes or no. AI knows his name. It is a totally different thing when I hear it repeated or like spoken out loud to me. If I'm like talking to Gemini and it's like, well, Lennox really loves cars. So you should it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up. Yeah. There there is just something about like having it spoken back to you where it's like, hey, I know a ton about you. And um maybe it is just uh we like that veil of like, you know, that the data's there, but you're not like um presenting it, like putting it in my face quite so acutely. Yeah, it is it is a strange user interface problem as much as anything. It's like how how much can you present to me that you know me before it starts to seem really creepy? Yeah. I was thinking like I was thinking about this this morning. I went and got uh a breakfast sandwich and a coffee at a place that has good versions of both that is right down the street from me. And part of me is like, well, wouldn't it be great if Google, when I dropped the kid off at daycare, was just like, hey, you're you're you're probably going there again, right? You want to navigate? Let's do this. Uh or like, hey, there's traffic. Or hey, try this place. There are all these ways it could be useful and interesting and proactive. And I think almost every single one of them would feel really creepy. Yeah. And I think seeing you can tell even in the interface of Ask Maps, they're trying to figure out how much can we present about your history and about your preferences and about what we know before it starts feeling less like a search engine and more like Big Brother. Yeah. I I have those moments too where I'm like, I find myself getting annoyed with technology. I'm like, why didn't you suggest that? Like, you know what I'm doing. Why can't you just open up this app when I get to the bus stop. And I yeah, have that moment of like, do I want that? Actually, that might be a little much. Um yeah . It's creepy. Yeah, agreed. But I feel like on balance, you've had a good experience with ask maps. Like you would you would tell people to b push the glowy button and give it a whirl, right? I feel like I would too. Oh yeah. Yeah. I had it I think really did help me in my in my mental state of being like, oh, I go to my same places, you know, get me outside of this. And I had like honestly the best day. And it's maybe not hard when you're using most of your workday to go eat tacos and like wander around um yeah. I I went it was pouring rain. It was not a great day to be um wandering around Seattle, but I did it anyway. I went into um the conservatory at Volunteer Park um where it kinda had me it it presented the option. It was like, you know, it's gonna be raining. If you want to get out of the rain you could go into this conservatory. And it was beautiful and I had like s such a lovely experience and I was like I I'm surrounded by plants and I'm happy. I love them. Yeah. So for that kind of thing, it it definitely helped in in kind of multiple ways of like just getting the suggestion where it's like I'm I'm aware of Volunteer Park and I'm aware of the conservatory. It it just wouldn't crossed my mind to be like, you know what, it's a super rainy day. I think I will trek across town in with a 20-minute walk between locations . Um, but it ended up being really great. Um so I'm I'm definitely gonna use it for that. I'm definitely using it for my weird um show me all the the places in Seattle that have a view of train tracks, you know, I can bring my kid . Um and I yeah, I I have a lot of plans for it, I guess. I love that. Um all right, we should take a break. Um, but will you stick around? We have a another extremely Alice encoded hotline questi on. Yes. I love it. It's it's it's it's even better than the last one. 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Find technology built for the way you work at Dell.co.uk forward slash DellPCs. Built for you Hey Sainsbury's! We get through so many snacks. Have you got anything to help me save? Well, we're always matching and lowering prices, so hundreds of Sainsbury's fresh fruit, veg, and everyday products are price-matched to Aldi. And every week with nectar, you can save money on thousands of the products your family loves. So you can snack away knowing you're saving money. Sainsbury's. Good food for all of us. Selected products, Aldi price match, not in NI. Nectar prices require nectar account. Terms at saintswees.co.uk slash ldprice match and nectar.com slash prices terms . Alright, we're back. Let's do a question from the verge cast hotline. As always the number is 866 Verge11. The email is vergcast at the verge.com. Allison, we have another silly question about phones. Yes. We talked recently on the show about the idea of replacing your phone with a watch and and uh something else. You made a very strong case that it was watch and foldable phone. Actually a very compelling combination. Um we have a different idea in our inbox this time. Let me play this one for you. Hi, Stephen calling from Montreal, Quebec . I was just wondering uh I was listening to your conversation about using the Apple Watch as a way to get rid of your phone. What if there was just a good e ink phone? Could a good e-ink phone be the thing that would just slow things down enough that I'm not gonna watch uh reels or TikTok videos and get lost for hours because it's gonna make me actually read things and I'll you know if I'm actually done reading something I'll actually put it down. Anyway, I just thought that maybe that would be a good solution. Is there ever gonna be a good e ink phone? Thanks. Okay, Alison, I lied. This is actually a me coded question. I see the crossover. Yeah, yeah. I brought you here to give you my TED talk about eating smartphones. Oh no . But I I do wonder this is y you and I have talked about this in the past. There are people doing the like e ink on the back, normal screen on the front phone. Th there's y you've seen I think you saw at M W C the latest version of the ones with like the e ink mode. Uh this is this is an idea that will not die and yet never seems to actually work. And and I wonder if you can just try and decode what this thing what what an e ink smartphone might do that would be great for people and why so far it can't pull it off. I I sort of tried to do this myself. When I um did my little Apple Watches, my phone adventure, um, I had a TCL phone. It's one of those that has the the e ink-ish mode. They call it like next paper or something. Yeah, next paper. There's a little slider on the side where you like go into next paper mode and it just makes the screen like monochr ome. Um I had that uh just on Wi-Fi, no cell plan attached to it. Um so that's how I rationalized. I was like, okay, I don't really have a phone with me. I have my Apple Watch and I have this weird kind of e ink phone. Um it was kind of a nice combination because in that um that e ink mode you get like crazy battery life. So I which you know is is true of an an e ink, an actual e-ink phone. Um the the weirdness about it um is that you do still if you're doing an Apple Watch, you do still kind of need an iPhone. Um and I found that, you know, the iPhone that was attached to the Apple Watch had to be at home on um on the network and then it relays all of your like Slack notifications and whatever you want to the Apple Watch. Um so there's a little bit of chess of like you have an iPhone, but you don't bring it, but in it's you set it somewhere safe, and then you bring your weird little e ink device with the Apple Watch. Um, it did kind of work. Like I got to the coffee shop and I was like, I'm gonna read an article or something that I bookmarked and it it was lovely. I put the thing away. When it's a mode on the phone, I think it gets a little like, yeah, you could just turn it off and scroll TikTok if you want. Um so I think that's where maybe people would be interested in like give me the full pure e ink device. But yeah, does this appeal to you as as the foremost uh books, Palma. I'm sitting here with my my books palma too in front of me. This is not a bit, this is just here in front of me. Uh to me, the thing is uh a a uh experiment I encourage anyone who wants a phone like this to do is just note every time you scroll on your phone. Because scrolling sucks on e ither. And uh even if you don't want to do social media and I think the thing where I can get the the new the Books Palma 2 Pro uh has uh full on cellular capabilities. You can use it as your phone if you want to, it's it's let down by the screens, like you shouldn't buy that one. But like the theory is is getting close. And the idea that it will prevent you from using TikTok because TikTok is bad and it will prevent you from doing other things is all true. But like to our earlier conversations, the number of times you're gonna need to do things like look at a restaurant website on your phone, or pan through Google Maps, or just any number of like little things that you do all day, every day, like scroll through Spotify, those things are annoying. And it's one thing when you have it as a secondary device that is very deliberately like this is mostly for reading. And occasionally when I need to do something else, I can. Like that's very powerful, right? There's a reason I like this better than a Kindle because it is mostly for reading, but it also has these other backup capabilities just in case you need them. I find that to be very powerful. But for me, it's like nine out of ten apps that I use on my phone suck on the Books Palma. Four of those apps I would love to not use, and I'm happy they suck. But the other five I need all day, every day. Yeah. And it just it's death by a thousand cuts for me. It's like e-ink is just not it's not fast enough, it's not sharp enough. I just don't want to do phone things. And there are a lot of phone things that are good and useful and valuable, and you just have to do them on your phone. Like pictures , camera, yeah, experience on e-ink , garbage. Yeah, never gonna get any better. So I don't know. To me, it's just like this. There is to me, there's just this fundamental mismatch of technology. But like you bring up the next paper thing, and there is something in that it's a switch you can throw idea that feels like maybe if there is a correct answer, it's that. I don't think it's one screen on the front and one screen on the back, but it's like there's something to the maybe my phone can have two different modes and there is something to the friction of switching them that is powerful. I don't know. Is anyone else other than TCL working on that? I feel like I see a next paper concept like once every 12 months and no one else seems interested in this idea. I know. Yeah. I I love them for it. I the only and it's not yank, but it reminded me of the the monochrome e ink type thing. Um, fair phone has that little mode you switch into which is more like yeah, more like a focus mode where you're like, I don't want access to everything, I'm doing this right now. Maybe it's my out and about and I have access to Google Maps and Spotify and what have you. And then um but yeah having the the little slider the little switch where it's not it's not just in software where I can just tap and be like, you know what? I am actually give me access to everything. I spent so long trying to do screen time limits for apps and was like, oh, it's actually really easy to just hit the button and enter my passcode. Like this this accomplishes nothing. Right. Yeah. But yeah, that one added bit of friction might be might be something. Especially if it is like a switch you have to throw. Like have you have you used the brick at all, the the little device people use to try and disconnect? No. Life as a phone reviewer is funny. I'm like, sure, yeah, I'd love to use my phone less. Um kind of need to keep using the phone, but yeah, I'm I am aware of these solutions. Um do that's another one though that is like it's one tick extra friction and winds up being released with like I keep hearing from people all over the place where like the brick is the thing that worked for me. Because now if I want to use TikTok, I have to walk upstairs and unbrick my phone. And it's it's there and I can do it, but just the fact that I have to stand up and go unbrick my phone makes me not use TikTok. And it is it's it's even I think maybe a switch on your phone is not quite that much friction, but even that might be enough. Yeah. I have to I have to reach over and flip a thing that says I wanna waste time now. Yes. And and maybe maybe if we can figure out how to do that, that's more useful than trying to like totally ruin the user experience in the name of using your phone less. Yeah. There's a combination there. Someone's someone's just gotta figure it out. Yeah. That said, if you make an e-ing