Tangentially related, I've read recently (Twitter? article?) someone longing for having separate devices again: one for music, one for social networks, one for photography, one for email, etc.

Because unifying everything down to a single one dumbed us down and gave unwarranted control to fewer and fewer people on what we may listen to, what we may write, what we may photograph, what we may share. And how and where and why we do it.

(notwithstanding that this would allow to significantly enrich the affordance of each device/appliance, relative to its use, rather than just having everything only tactile on a screen made of glass and 2 buttons).

My fingers are not fully compatible with touch screens so I'm not a big phone guy, so I can't speak for them, but I've been trying to make my computer more task oriented, to make choices more explicit.

I've experimented with using PWAs instead of browser windows, or even having different user accounts for different activities.

It works pretty well in combating the sort of tab cycling zombie mode it's easy to fall into where you aren't really doing anything but checking feeds and notifications. It doesn't block me from doing anything, it just forces me to do one activity at a time, which needs to be chosen upfront.

My inspiration behind this was basically old desktop computers, which with their single CPU core and small screen basically only permitted you to single-task (even if you could technically have multiple windows open you only really worked in the one).

> someone longing for having separate devices again: one for music, one for social networks, one for photography, one for email, etc.

It’s is perfectly possible today. Sony still produces Walkmans and there are 100s digital cameras (not to mention analog ones). I don’t think there was ever a time when SM and e-mail had separate devices.