Why Computers Should Be Hidden
Omata
The joy I used to feel when using computers has turned largely to anguish. These machines once provided a unique and compelling way to do things  from writing to shopping to communication to entertainment. But today  devices and services strive to replace every activity with computer use itself. Now I think about escaping the computer as much as using it. To combat the machine’s draw  I’ve turned to more pastoral ambitions  like lawn care and land-use politics. And yet  to reject computers as incompatible with these and other goals seems shortsighted. Can’t these powerful  magical machines still serve modest ends? I wondered this again atop a bicycle saddle on an unseasonably hot autumn afternoon. I’d just twisted a round  white device called an  Omata  One  by a Los Angeles–based start-up  onto  its  aluminum mount on the handlebar. It looks like a complicated watch  or a dashboard gauge from a luxury sports car. I turned a ring to power it on  and a large  red hand indicated that it was acquiring a GPS signal. A moment later  I was pedaling  and  the Omata’s  hand was moving: five  then 10  then 15 miles per hour.
What was remarkable was how unremarkable the experience should have been. It’s a speedometer. On a bike. So what? And yet  somehow  the result feels uncommon. The smartphone in my pocket buzzes—a text message or a Slack notification or who knows what else—and I remember why. Today  computers wrest people from activities outside the computer to work or play back inside them. But  the Omata  is pushing me toward something else.  It ’s nudging me to to focus on the non-computational activity I’m participating in  rather than reminding me of all the other  digital ones I might choose instead. What if more computers had that same ambition? * * * “Riding a bike— it ’s a very analog experience.” Rhys Newman   Omata’s  CEO  speaks with a Welsh accent that makes the matter sound profound  almost spiritual. “ It ’s man harnessing the machine in an analogous way to the effort of his body.” Not a spiritual thing after all  but a corporeal one. Using technology to assist with a worldly goal  rather than to displace it. Newman and his cofounder and chief technology officer  Julian Bleecker  met while working at Nokia. They were part of a secretive team at the company’s “Everyday Adventure” group in Los Angeles  where the two designed outdoor products  including a camera and a sports tracker. Once the world’s biggest mobile-handset manufacturer  Nokia shed 93 percent of its value between 2000 and 2013  when Microsoft acquired its beleaguered mobile-devices division. The company was ill-prepared for the smartphone. Between 2000 and 2007  it had been focused on reducing handset size and cost while increasing battery efficiency. These were phones for the everyperson  after all  not executive tethers like the BlackBerry. When the iPhone proved that approach to be exactly wrong  Nokia raced to follow Apple’s (and then Samsung’s) lead: devices with more connectivity  bigger screens  and better cameras. Maximizing attention was now the goal  rather than facilitating communication. Everywhere  computers are screaming at you: “Here I am! I am a computer!” Newman and Bleecker’s project spun up near Nokia’s nadir. Desperate to help reverse course  the L.A. group hoped to find a novel angle on a connected camera. The two looked to their own favorite: Leica  the storied German range-finder manufacturer. Leica’s flagship line  the M  got a digital sensor in 2006  but everything else about it remains mechanical. The photographer still adjusts focus and aperture by hand. For this reason  operating a Leica requires deliberateness  making the process of image creation an end as much as a means. That deliberateness would eventually show up in the Omata  which promises a “deeper connection to the ride itself.”
Nokia’s “Everyday Adventure” products were canceled in the fall of 2014; Bleecker and Newman were released back onto the sunny beaches and hills of Los Angeles. While at Nokia  Newman  an avid cyclist  had persuaded Bleecker to take up the hobby. Like a Leica  Newman and Bleecker’s analog-faced speedometer exudes design craft and manufacturing quality. It also feels bespoke—designed for a particular purpose. Instead of a generic display for infinite data and apps  the face displays speed  distance  ascent  and elapsed time. The resulting face is riddled with detail  like a complex instrument. Thanks to Apple  attention to detail has become synonymous with minimalism. But is a big screen that can display anything really minimalist? It is harder and riskier to commit to specific information from the start. Looking at the markers on its face  something strange strikes me. At idle  the speedometer hand points left  to 9 o’clock. At 12 o’clock is a large 18 mph indicator. Newman was eager to tell me why. “It’s a universal truth of cycling ” he explained. “There’s a comfortable speed for perceiving the world in motion  and it’s about 18 miles per hour.” When you reach this benchmark   Omata ’s main hand points straight out in the direction you are moving. It’s as if the gauge itself is cheering you on  its needle quivering with tentative pride.
 Omata ’s analog appearance also disguises all the electronics that make  it  work. “It’s hard to tell that  it ’s a computer on the inside ” Bleecker says. “People think  it  needs to be tethered to the bike.” Instead  a microcontroller  GPS sensor  barometer  and a set of motors make it work. After a ride   Omata  can be wired to a computer or wirelessly connected to a smartphone to download the same sort of data that its more obviously digital competitors make available: performance  distance  mapping  and so on. “Our ambition isn’t to get rid of the computation ” Bleecker explains  “but to hide it.” * * * These days  people try to hide computers by escaping from them  like I escape to my lawn. The machines “hide” inside offices or jacket pockets so their owners can accomplish other goals. In some cases  the drive to get away from computers degenerates into wistfulness. The word “analog” has come to indicate retro nostalgia first  a way of resisting or even abandoning bits in favor of atoms. Certainly  Omata risks such accusation. But the line separating analog and digital isn’t as clean as popular usage makes it seem. Writing in The New York Times in 2015  Rob Walker observed an “analog fever” in contemporary culture. A counterrevolution to the digital revolution. Walker cites the rise of vinyl records and the decline of ebook sales in favor of print as evidence of this fever. It sounds right to modern ears. But strictly speaking  simply not being a computer doesn’t make something analog. Analog devices represent information with a continuously variable portrayal of that information. They create an analogous depiction of a source signal in physical form. A mechanical watch  for example  measures the passage of time with a set of hands  driven by a loaded spring  that traverse the watch face. In the case of a bicycle  as Newman suggests  the crankcase moves the bike analogously to the rider’s physical exertion. Today  almost everything is a hybrid. Even seemingly analog devices are also digital ones. By contrast  digital devices sample a stream of activity at regular intervals  converting those measures into discrete values for manipulation by an electronic device. Since computers are the machines that usually sense  store  and manipulate the resulting digital signals  “digital” has come to refer to anything that makes use of computer technology. In turn  analog started meaning “not involving computers” rather than continuously representing a signal with a physical quantity.
It’s a harmless shift in meaning  but the confusion does shroud the distinctions between the computational and non-computational worlds. Some of Walker’s examples are analog in the original sense. A vinyl record  for example  records a continuous stream of sound as grooves on the surface of a disk. The vibrations that produced those grooves are later traced by the turntable’s needle  which amplifies them for playback. But a print book is a fusion of different methods. Offset printing is an analog process  but today many “analog” books are printed digitally. Binding them involves folding  cutting  and gluing—neither analog nor digital processes. They are hybrids. Even ebooks are hybrids—a digital file is useless without a device on which to view it  made of circuits  glass  metal  and plastic. If people tend to divide the world into computational and non-computational stuff  then it’s no wonder that computers feel opposed to everything beyond them. * * * Today  almost everything is a hybrid. Even seemingly analog devices are also digital ones. Modern vehicles  for example  are controlled mostly by computers. In the past  depressing the accelerator opened a throttle to draw fuel and air into the engine. But now  the pedal is just a regulator for the fuel injector  which is managed by a computer. That’s a better likeness for  Omata  than a vinyl-record player or even a wristwatch. Its hands aren’t mechanically driven like a timepiece; instead  they act as a data display. The device’s GPS radio samples the bike’s change in position  translating it into speed and distance. A digital barometer calculates altitude from barometric pressure change.  The Omata’s  microcontroller turns those readings into data inputs for the positions of the hands.  Its  electronics then activate a set of stepper motors  which make the hands turn smoothly to display the right reading on the face.
This same approach is used in many seemingly analog vehicle-dashboard instruments—more evidence that supposedly analog experiences are also computational.  Omata ’s engineering feat wasn’t to make a digital speedometer—that’s old news. Rather  it was shrinking down the stepper-motor equipment to fit inside a handlebar-mounted computer instead of an automotive dash. Though challenging  this step was required to hide the computer effectively. Bleecker first considered a Swiss watchmaker’s part  but it was too weak and too coarse. He settled on the type of motor used in autofocus camera lenses—they move a lot of weight but still hold a specific focal point. What if the Apple Watch had been inspired by Leica rather than iPhone? Digital precision also creates the illusion of analog behavior. The sample rate of  Omata ’s GPS sensor calculates a resolution under one meter  which is less than the typical wheel-to-wheel distance of a bicycle. Even though the device does digital sampling  it’s got plenty of resolution to make the result appear analog. Just as an ebook is a merger of plastic  glass  silicon  and software  so a speedometer is a fusion of microcontrollers  sensors  motors  and plastic or metal faces and needles. Why the temptation to call a device like Omata “analog ” then? Bleecker insists that the urge toward nostalgia is really a misplaced desire to have specific experiences with worldly materials. “Why would someone get a Leica when they already have an iPhone?” Bleecker muses. “It’s the context of use. How you’re compelled to use that apparatus to create an experience.” Deliberately operating the aperture and range finder to frame and expose an image is different from snapping an AI-assisted portrait to share on social media. Analog has become a stand-in for purpose—especially purpose that goes beyond just using computers.
* * * When it comes to bicycles  the purpose of riding might be exercise  or competition  or leisure  or commuting. But those are just goals. The experience of cycling  Bleecker and Newman insist  is the coupling of human biology to mechanical movement. The feet  legs  heart  lungs  pedals  chains  and gears work together to push the bike forward. Omata  they hope  helps orient the rider to the changing relationship between body and bicycle. The computer persists behind the scenes  sensing and storing the data that a smartphone or a traditional bicycle computer would. But dozens of data points aren’t useful during the ride. Instead  the rider is encouraged to focus on the data that helps “maintain the pleasure of the ride ” according to Newman: speed  distance  and ascent. Bleecker insists that this deliberate focus on a specific experience justifies the obsession in  Omata ’s design. “If a device should only do the things it needs to  then it has to do them exceptionally well.” Computers have become both the path to all goals and the distraction that stands in the way of those goals. That obsession comes at a cost. At $550  some might scoff at  Omata  as just a luxury bauble for the wealthy. I took the gadget to Atlanta Pro Bikes  a bike shop in an upscale neighborhood. The shop’s service manager  John Eckert  swooned over the design and build quality before sneering at the cost. “You can get an app for free that does all this ” Eckert tells me  before also admitting that a fancy  Garmin GPS bike computer can cost as much or more. One of them hangs from the handlebars of a bike he recently serviced—the whole build probably cost more than $10 000. Lots of money is changing hands in cycling  with or without nostalgia.  Omata ’s design inspirations are no less immune to criticisms of value and access. Leica cameras and Swiss watches cost thousands of dollars. Like  Omata    their  prices could drop at higher sales volume. But that hasn’t happened. Instead  alternatives arose: SLRs  point-and-shoots  quartz movements  digital watches. Cheaper options that produce similar results.
What they don’t produce are similar experiences. Learning to judge exposure or to zone focus with a range finder. Performing the ritual of manually winding a mechanical watch. Experiences like these fell out of favor  but not because they were undesirable. Instead  cheaper options displaced them. In so doing  experience became subordinated to purpose. The smartphone is the ultimate example of a single context for action. It’s a watch  a telephone  a camera  a bike computer—anything at all  really. But in exchange for that convenience  the specific material experiences of the activities smartphones automate have been abandoned. Specialized devices just can’t compete with computers’ power and ubiquity. And so  computers have become both the path to all goals and the distraction that stands in the way of those goals. * * * I’m no cyclist  and to be honest getting the needle to point straight up to 18 terrified more than it inspired me. But even so  when I pumped hard up a hill  I could see my effort represented in the movement of  the Omata’s  needle. Every lurch and glide was visible  tracing the arc of the case rather than updating abstract numbers on an LCD display. I really did feel more connected to my bike and my journey. As I return home from my test ride  I think of Bleecker’s aspiration to “hide the computation.” What if everything had the humility of the technological refusenik  without giving up on the power of technology in the process? What if the Apple Watch had been inspired by Leica rather than iPhone?
The joy I used to feel when using computers has turned largely to anguish. These machines once provided a unique and compelling way to do things  from writing to shopping to communication to entertainment. But today  devices and services strive to replace every activity with computer use itself. Now I think about escaping the computer as much as using it. To combat the machine’s draw  I’ve turned to more pastoral ambitions  like lawn care and land-use politics. And yet  to reject computers as incompatible with these and other goals seems shortsighted. Can’t these powerful  magical machines still serve modest ends? I wondered this again atop a bicycle saddle on an unseasonably hot autumn afternoon. I’d just twisted a round  white device called an  Omata  One  by a Los Angeles–based start-up  onto  its  aluminum mount on the handlebar. It looks like a complicated watch  or a dashboard gauge from a luxury sports car. I turned a ring to power it on  and a large  red hand indicated that it was acquiring a GPS signal. A moment later  I was pedaling  and  the Omata’s  hand was moving: five  then 10  then 15 miles per hour.
What was remarkable was how unremarkable the experience should have been. It’s a speedometer. On a bike. So what? And yet  somehow  the result feels uncommon. The smartphone in my pocket buzzes—a text message or a Slack notification or who knows what else—and I remember why. Today  computers wrest people from activities outside the computer to work or play back inside them. But  [TGT]is pushing me toward something else.  [TGT] ’s nudging me to to focus on the non-computational activity I’m participating in  rather than reminding me of all the other  digital ones I might choose instead. What if more computers had that same ambition? * * * “Riding a bike— it ’s a very analog experience.” Rhys Newman   Omata’s  CEO  speaks with a Welsh accent that makes the matter sound profound  almost spiritual. “ It ’s man harnessing the machine in an analogous way to the effort of his body.” Not a spiritual thing after all  but a corporeal one. Using technology to assist with a worldly goal  rather than to displace it. Newman and his cofounder and chief technology officer  Julian Bleecker  met while working at Nokia. They were part of a secretive team at the company’s “Everyday Adventure” group in Los Angeles  where the two designed outdoor products  including a camera and a sports tracker. Once the world’s biggest mobile-handset manufacturer  Nokia shed 93 percent of its value between 2000 and 2013  when Microsoft acquired its beleaguered mobile-devices division. The company was ill-prepared for the smartphone. Between 2000 and 2007  it had been focused on reducing handset size and cost while increasing battery efficiency. These were phones for the everyperson  after all  not executive tethers like the BlackBerry. When the iPhone proved that approach to be exactly wrong  Nokia raced to follow Apple’s (and then Samsung’s) lead: devices with more connectivity  bigger screens  and better cameras. Maximizing attention was now the goal  rather than facilitating communication. Everywhere  computers are screaming at you: “Here I am! I am a computer!” Newman and Bleecker’s project spun up near Nokia’s nadir. Desperate to help reverse course  the L.A. group hoped to find a novel angle on a connected camera. The two looked to their own favorite: Leica  the storied German range-finder manufacturer. Leica’s flagship line  the M  got a digital sensor in 2006  but everything else about it remains mechanical. The photographer still adjusts focus and aperture by hand. For this reason  operating a Leica requires deliberateness  making the process of image creation an end as much as a means. That deliberateness would eventually show up in the Omata  which promises a “deeper connection to the ride itself.”
Nokia’s “Everyday Adventure” products were canceled in the fall of 2014; Bleecker and Newman were released back onto the sunny beaches and hills of Los Angeles. While at Nokia  Newman  an avid cyclist  had persuaded Bleecker to take up the hobby. Like a Leica  Newman and Bleecker’s analog-faced speedometer exudes design craft and manufacturing quality. It also feels bespoke—designed for a particular purpose. Instead of a generic display for infinite data and apps  the face displays speed  distance  ascent  and elapsed time. The resulting face is riddled with detail  like a complex instrument. Thanks to Apple  attention to detail has become synonymous with minimalism. But is a big screen that can display anything really minimalist? It is harder and riskier to commit to specific information from the start. Looking at the markers on its face  something strange strikes me. At idle  the speedometer hand points left  to 9 o’clock. At 12 o’clock is a large 18 mph indicator. Newman was eager to tell me why. “It’s a universal truth of cycling ” he explained. “There’s a comfortable speed for perceiving the world in motion  and it’s about 18 miles per hour.” When you reach this benchmark   Omata ’s main hand points straight out in the direction you are moving. It’s as if the gauge itself is cheering you on  its needle quivering with tentative pride.
 Omata ’s analog appearance also disguises all the electronics that make  it  work. “It’s hard to tell that  it ’s a computer on the inside ” Bleecker says. “People think  it  needs to be tethered to the bike.” Instead  a microcontroller  GPS sensor  barometer  and a set of motors make it work. After a ride   [TGT]can be wired to a computer or wirelessly connected to a smartphone to download the same sort of data that its more obviously digital competitors make available: performance  distance  mapping  and so on. “Our ambition isn’t to get rid of the computation ” Bleecker explains  “but to hide it.” * * * These days  people try to hide computers by escaping from them  like I escape to my lawn. The machines “hide” inside offices or jacket pockets so their owners can accomplish other goals. In some cases  the drive to get away from computers degenerates into wistfulness. The word “analog” has come to indicate retro nostalgia first  a way of resisting or even abandoning bits in favor of atoms. Certainly  [TGT] risks such accusation. But the line separating analog and digital isn’t as clean as popular usage makes it seem. Writing in The New York Times in 2015  Rob Walker observed an “analog fever” in contemporary culture. A counterrevolution to the digital revolution. Walker cites the rise of vinyl records and the decline of ebook sales in favor of print as evidence of this fever. It sounds right to modern ears. But strictly speaking  simply not being a computer doesn’t make something analog. Analog devices represent information with a continuously variable portrayal of that information. They create an analogous depiction of a source signal in physical form. A mechanical watch  for example  measures the passage of time with a set of hands  driven by a loaded spring  that traverse the watch face. In the case of a bicycle  as Newman suggests  the crankcase moves the bike analogously to the rider’s physical exertion. Today  almost everything is a hybrid. Even seemingly analog devices are also digital ones. By contrast  digital devices sample a stream of activity at regular intervals  converting those measures into discrete values for manipulation by an electronic device. Since computers are the machines that usually sense  store  and manipulate the resulting digital signals  “digital” has come to refer to anything that makes use of computer technology. In turn  analog started meaning “not involving computers” rather than continuously representing a signal with a physical quantity.
It’s a harmless shift in meaning  but the confusion does shroud the distinctions between the computational and non-computational worlds. Some of Walker’s examples are analog in the original sense. A vinyl record  for example  records a continuous stream of sound as grooves on the surface of a disk. The vibrations that produced those grooves are later traced by the turntable’s needle  which amplifies them for playback. But a print book is a fusion of different methods. Offset printing is an analog process  but today many “analog” books are printed digitally. Binding them involves folding  cutting  and gluing—neither analog nor digital processes. They are hybrids. Even ebooks are hybrids—a digital file is useless without a device on which to view it  made of circuits  glass  metal  and plastic. If people tend to divide the world into computational and non-computational stuff  then it’s no wonder that computers feel opposed to everything beyond them. * * * Today  almost everything is a hybrid. Even seemingly analog devices are also digital ones. Modern vehicles  for example  are controlled mostly by computers. In the past  depressing the accelerator opened a throttle to draw fuel and air into the engine. But now  the pedal is just a regulator for the fuel injector  which is managed by a computer. That’s a better likeness for  [TGT]than a vinyl-record player or even a wristwatch. [TGT] hands aren’t mechanically driven like a timepiece; instead  they act as a data display. The device’s GPS radio samples the bike’s change in position  translating it into speed and distance. A digital barometer calculates altitude from barometric pressure change.  The Omata’s  microcontroller turns those readings into data inputs for the positions of the hands.  Its  electronics then activate a set of stepper motors  which make the hands turn smoothly to display the right reading on the face.
This same approach is used in many seemingly analog vehicle-dashboard instruments—more evidence that supposedly analog experiences are also computational.  [TGT]. Rather  [TGT] was shrinking down the stepper-motor equipment to fit inside a handlebar-mounted computer instead of an automotive dash. Though challenging  this step was required to hide the computer effectively. Bleecker first considered a Swiss watchmaker’s part  but it was too weak and too coarse. He settled on the type of motor used in autofocus camera lenses—they move a lot of weight but still hold a specific focal point. What if the Apple Watch had been inspired by Leica rather than iPhone? Digital precision also creates the illusion of analog behavior. The sample rate of  Omata ’s GPS sensor calculates a resolution under one meter  which is less than the typical wheel-to-wheel distance of a bicycle. Even though the device does digital sampling  it’s got plenty of resolution to make the result appear analog. Just as an ebook is a merger of plastic  glass  silicon  and software  so a speedometer is a fusion of microcontrollers  sensors  motors  and plastic or metal faces and needles. Why the temptation to call a device like Omata “analog ” then? Bleecker insists that the urge toward nostalgia is really a misplaced desire to have specific experiences with worldly materials. “Why would someone get a Leica when they already have an iPhone?” Bleecker muses. “It’s the context of use. How you’re compelled to use that apparatus to create an experience.” Deliberately operating the aperture and range finder to frame and expose an image is different from snapping an AI-assisted portrait to share on social media. Analog has become a stand-in for purpose—especially purpose that goes beyond just using computers.
* * * When it comes to bicycles  the purpose of riding might be exercise  or competition  or leisure  or commuting. But those are just goals. The experience of cycling  Bleecker and Newman insist  is the coupling of human biology to mechanical movement. The feet  legs  heart  lungs  pedals  chains  and gears work together to push the bike forward. [TGT]they hope  helps orient the rider to the changing relationship between body and bicycle. The computer persists behind the scenes  sensing and storing the data that a smartphone or a traditional bicycle computer would. But dozens of data points aren’t useful during the ride. Instead  the rider is encouraged to focus on the data that helps “maintain the pleasure of the ride ” according to Newman: speed  distance  and ascent. Bleecker insists that this deliberate focus on a specific experience justifies the obsession in  Omata ’s design. “If a device should only do the things it needs to  then it has to do them exceptionally well.” Computers have become both the path to all goals and the distraction that stands in the way of those goals. That obsession comes at a cost. At $550  some might scoff at  Omata  as just a luxury bauble for the wealthy. I took the gadget to Atlanta Pro Bikes  a bike shop in an upscale neighborhood. The shop’s service manager  John Eckert  swooned over the design and build quality before sneering at the cost. “You can get an app for free that does all this ” Eckert tells me  before also admitting that a fancy  Garmin GPS bike computer can cost as much or more. One of them hangs from the handlebars of a bike he recently serviced—the whole build probably cost more than $10 000. Lots of money is changing hands in cycling  with or without nostalgia.  Omata ’s design inspirations are no less immune to criticisms of value and access. Leica cameras and Swiss watches cost thousands of dollars. Like  Omata    their  prices could drop at higher sales volume. But that hasn’t happened. Instead  alternatives arose: SLRs  point-and-shoots  quartz movements  digital watches. Cheaper options that produce similar results.
What they don’t produce are similar experiences. Learning to judge exposure or to zone focus with a range finder. Performing the ritual of manually winding a mechanical watch. Experiences like these fell out of favor  but not because they were undesirable. Instead  cheaper options displaced them. In so doing  experience became subordinated to purpose. The smartphone is the ultimate example of a single context for action. It’s a watch  a telephone  a camera  a bike computer—anything at all  really. But in exchange for that convenience  the specific material experiences of the activities smartphones automate have been abandoned. Specialized devices just can’t compete with computers’ power and ubiquity. And so  computers have become both the path to all goals and the distraction that stands in the way of those goals. * * * I’m no cyclist  and to be honest getting the needle to point straight up to 18 terrified more than it inspired me. But even so  when I pumped hard up a hill  I could see my effort represented in the movement of  the Omata’s  needle. Every lurch and glide was visible  tracing the arc of the case rather than updating abstract numbers on an LCD display. I really did feel more connected to my bike and my journey. As I return home from my test ride  I think of Bleecker’s aspiration to “hide the computation.” What if everything had the humility of the technological refusenik  without giving up on the power of technology in the process? What if the Apple Watch had been inspired by Leica rather than iPhone?