Pebble, known for their smart watches, recently started their third tranche of kickstarter fundraising for products, however unlike the previous two the set of products they are trying to fund are not just watches. Joining the watches is a small black square with two buttons named Pebble Core. Primarily aimed at runners, the Pebble Core is an iPod Shuffle sized Android computer stuffed with GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a SIM card that will allow runners to leave the smartphone at home but still use music streaming services while out and retain the safety of a SIM card allowing the owner to use the SIM network to fire off an S.O.S. if they need to.

Slightly more quietly, Pebble also announced they would be making a ‘for Hackers’ version that anyone can buy and exploit the features of a tiny portable screen-less computer. This is exciting.

My smartphone has grown in size over the past 3 years to the point where I have a 5.5 inch screen in my pocket, and last month the fight between my pocket and my phone ended in my phone flicking itself out of the pocket and into the toilet. An acrobatic act that cost me £500. It costs that because attached to that 5.5 inch screen is a miniature computer. But what if it wasn’t, what if the screen was just a screen and it connected to a small computer tucked away somewhere safely in the bottom of my pocket? Something that worked similarly to the relationship a phone and a TV can using Apple AirPlay or Google Chromecast.

Take it a step further, I could have a 12 inch touchscreen at home connected to the same small computer, and while I like a 5.5 inch screen to take out with me maybe you’d like a 4 inch one or a 7 inch one? And those screens are just screens, a battery and whatever the minimum technology required to connect to the small computer so if it breaks it costs a fraction of a smartphone to replace.

None of the stuff above is out of the question, none of it fantastical that it can’t exist. A kickstarter by a company with very limited pedigree (getneptune.com) was launched a year or two ago with this promise, but their lack of experience delivering technology seems to have completely stunted development, also I’m unsure the Android OS was sophisticated enough at the time to meet their lofty aspirations. Pebble though have proven a few times they can build and deliver hardware.

The video below is by Microsoft and is meant to be a peek into the future, but you’ll see where I’ve set it to start from, how removing the computer from the the screen allows you to become much more creative with how a user can interact with their information.

I watched Intel’s Futurologist (yes, that’s his actual job title) take the stage at a Fujitsu event last year in Munich where he talked about what was going to happen with computing and his view was that as computers got smaller you would no longer carry them around with you but you would interact with them around you, the building you are in would be so full of sensors that it would become the computer. Whilst I think in the long term he is right, you will be interacting with the things around you via a dumb screen in time, a middle step has to happen first, and Pebble Core could be the foundations of that step.