> The best method for keeping my tech/writing/life simple has been to establish multiple workstations ("desks") that each have their own machine & purpose

A few years ago I had an important realization. Up to that time, half of my time with computers was pre-Internet (or at least pre-broadband). And virtually all my memorable experiences with computers was from the pre-broadband era.

I spoke to a similarly aged tech friend, and he said it was the same with him.

I sat and thought of why that may be. There are several reasons, but I'll highlight one here: Browsers as an interface really degrade the computing experience. The fact that everything we do online is via the browser means everything is competing with each other. Reading the news? That other tab with Youtube open beckons. Or the one with some social network feed.

In the old days, we had separate programs. The equivalent would be a separate SW for Facebook. A separate one for HN. A separate one for BBC.

And if you go far back enough, you did not have multitasking, so you could do only one thing at a time, and it had your full focus.

When people read a physical newspaper, they would do not suddenly get the urge to drop it and watch TV, or check some feed, or whatever. Everything was in its place, and you could dedicate yourself to it.

Today, you could argue that phones/tablets create a similar experience - everything is its own app. For me, though, the form factor just sucks compared to a proper desktop machine.

My hope is WOOB (https://woob.tech/). Have not yet given it a try.

Edit: Oh, and the fact that it could take well over a minute to load a piece of SW made one less likely to whimsically switch between apps. If you're doing one thing, and you know it will take, say, 2 minutes to Alt-Tab to another application, you are usually going to do it only if it's fairly important.

> Oh, and the fact that it could take well over a minute to load a piece of SW made one less likely to whimsically switch between apps.

The key point here I think is that there's a cost and some kind of friction to making the change.

It's easy to think that reducing friction is always a good thing, and for people in positions in companies trying to maximise user clicks on the Call to Action that does make sense, but for one's own personal attention and focus some kind of friction can actually be a good thing as it can imply and even reinforce deliberate action, which I believe is what's sorely missing from environments that promote multitasking.

Some of my favorite early-tech, non-browser memories was the 90s WaReZ Hotline scene — you manually pointed your desktop application to a host and then participated in each community's trust/forum/reputation system.

I stopped streaming services years ago, and mostly just rip DVDs from the public library.

I've only spent about a third of my life "pre-internet," but it was my favorite years (even as an early internet adopter / user [e.g. eBay PowerSeller in early 2000s])... and not just because of childhood recollections — it was literally Simpler Times™.