The Zeuser Interface: How to Retake Control From Tech
We need new interfaces that enable us to control tech — not be controlled by it
The relationship between technology products and customers today can feel like one of predator and prey. Hooked on proto-monopolist hypergrowth dreams, tech businesses see user dependency as the ultimate success. This is why companies want to “capture” markets and build “moats” to achieve “user lock-in.” It’s how prison wardens define success, too.
This prison mindset has resulted in products that are intentionally addictive, obscure what a person is signing up for, and where, as a rule, every conceivable advantage is tilted toward the company. Tracking pixels, forced arbitration clauses, always-on surveillance, and other invasive practices that would have shocked us two decades ago are givens today.
This feels inevitable. Even permanent. But there are other possible paradigms for how people and technology can relate. We know because they’ve existed before.
Take the Clapper. The home improvement product from the 1970s had the simplest UI imaginable: two claps and something turns on, two claps and it turns off.
The Clapper uses an interaction model that clearly puts humans over tech. It allows a person to direct technology…
