The New New
Someone Finally Invented Screen-Blocking Glasses
Ivan Cash cleverly critiques large corporations — and they love him for it
There’s a running gag in The Circle, Dave Eggers’s 2013 Silicon Valley satire, in which more monitors are added to a person’s desk as they rise in the ranks at a very FacebookGoogleAppleTwitter-esque tech giant. At one point, the protagonist’s desk balances nine screens, each beckoning, summoning, and passive-aggressively demanding her acknowledgment.
Eggers was onto something. In 2018, screens are everywhere. Screens are on our desks at work, of course, but they’re also flashing information on the subway, at bus stops, cycling ads on restroom walls, in elevators, displaying cooking segments in doctors’ waiting rooms, broadcasting the NBA at restaurants, and news in the backs of taxis. They’re streaming at us from the gas pump, the elliptical machine, and the airplane seat back. They’re in our pockets and on our wrists.
It’s gotten so bad, the New York Times recently reported, that parents in Silicon Valley won’t even let their kids near a screen, charging their nannies with enforcing rules around the very technology they themselves create.
Ivan Cash, a 32-year-old creative director, filmmaker, and artist living in…
