Maybe on a smartphone, but usually not on a computer. Keyboards are pretty good.
The other thing is that if you're around others, voice input means you have no privacy. Even if you're not doing anything particularly private, it's a bit awkward and potentially embarrassing. If you use touch input in conjunction with a screen reader, you can be more like a "normal" user in that what you're doing is just between you and your phone.
Audio input is far more commonly used by people with mobility difficulties. Imagine that your hands shake a lot or that you don't have limbs. That makes using a keyboard and mouse difficult or impossible and voice input can help. Blind users generally use keyboards for input, the typical ones you find on a PC but also sometimes the keys on their Braille display.
Yes, Sam is probably just having a bit of fun here, but I think it's worth presenting brutalism correctly as it's often so misunderstood.
Concrete is simply the mass production medium of the time, many of the patterns and moulds used in Barbican for example feature pretty timber imprints, scalloping patterns, painstakingly pick-hammered textured panels, or pleasing swooping shapes.
Further there is always space for glass, brass, Terrazzo and lighting.
Sam's design does feel cold, unnatural and broken, definitely not what brutalist living is about.
> Sam's design does feel cold, unnatural and broken, definitely not what brutalist living is about.
AFAICT Sam is in the UK, and that is most British people's lived experience of Brutalist architecture in the UK.
Outside of a few notable examples like the Barbican, many towns and cities in the UK were saddled with ugly concrete behemoths that were poorly designed and poorly maintained.
Many of us actually find it very frustrating when people lionize brutalist principles and talk about 'real' brutalism. If a movement is what it does, rather than what it says it aims to do, then brutalism is a movement that left Britain looking dull(er), grey(er), water-stained and with plenty of dark corners and weird spaces that smelled of piss and were havens for petty crime.
Sam's brutalist laptop stand is entirely representative of brutalism as it really played out in many places across the country.
> cold, unnatural and broken, definitely not what brutalist living is about.
This can often be the actual experience of it, though. Part of why it's so divisive. Personally I'm on the "looks great, wouldn't want to actually live there" side.
The Barbican is an example of how good it can be when properly maintained by a community. There are plenty of less prestigious examples where the community cheered their demolition.
My subjective appreciation of building materials depends essentially on how gracefully they age. I find that concrete does not age well... and dislike brutalism for this specific reason.
Nearly all the population in the UK lives below 500m.
In the US, there are major cities that are at 1500m elevation (like Denver CO). Water in Denver boils at ~94C. For most of the UK it's more like 98->100C
Yup, for my altitude (825m) the 12 minute cook times are about spot on. And I do prefer my noodles to be more al dente. I don't even mind if they have a little crunch.
