Science & Tech Quote by David Rose

“Ambient Devices” lands like a neat little act of branding, the kind that tries to make a technical shift feel inevitable, even tasteful. By naming a category and slotting it into a “Third Wave,” David Rose isn’t just describing gadgets; he’s staging a timeline where the internet stops being something you sit down to use and starts becoming something that hangs in the air around you. The intent is directional: stop thinking about screens, start thinking about atmosphere.

Calling them “ambient” is the sleight of hand. It suggests calm, background presence, maybe even a humane alternative to the frantic attention economy. But the subtext is more complicated: if the device is everywhere and “just there,” it’s also harder to notice, harder to resist, and easier to normalize. “Ambient” softens the edge of constant sensing, constant updating. It recasts surveillance-adjacent features as convenience, even comfort.

The “Third Wave” framing does what wave-talk always does in tech culture: it launders a pitch into history. Waves imply progress, not choice; if you’re not riding, you’re irrelevant. Coming from a musician, the phrasing carries a producer’s instinct for arrangement. He’s imagining the internet like a score: less a solo instrument (the personal computer), more a surround-sound mix of cues, signals, and responsive objects. The context here is a cultural pivot from “go online” to “live online,” where connectivity becomes infrastructure and the real product isn’t information, but attention shaped by the environment.