A Little Technology History and a Little Apple Ode

found at http://blog.oliverphillips91.co.uk/

The Heavy Materiality of All Things Virtual

"Humans Generally Respond Well to Domination": Why Tuna Fishing, Child Obesity and Apple's Integrated Designs Are All Related

This is a quote from Tim Wu, law professor at Columbia, discussing information empires. He argues that these empires start off excited about the technology they are developing - Apple was started by hackers - till they progressively become slaves to the technology itself - now Steve Jobs claims fragmented technology (vs. integrated design) to be the enemy of progress. Wu ends by saying that the next few years in the evolution of internet (and facebook) will determine the course of human culture. Wu is currently working on policy making for web neutrality, implying that the law plays a major role in steering our collective future one way or another.

Parallel to this ongoing technology and policy making debate, this morning the New York Times posted a new video on school kids' food habits. Set in a lower school in Philadelphia, the short film's overall conclusive idea is that regulation is the only really impactful way to change the next generation's weight and heart disease problem. Food empires with their marketing geniuses and food developers as well as our brain's structure are demonstrated to be so powerful that state intervention is the main and only trustworthy solution.

While I agree that regulations play a huge role in how culture and disease develop, isn't there something less authoritative we can come up with? Possibly designing more attractive solutions that don't rely on governmental impositions? Not waiting for tuna to go on the going-extinct list for us to treat it like a leopard coat or for San Francisco to ban toys on kid menus to create kid menus with less salt? 

Or are we really too controlled by our own brain (as determined by 'science'), Kellogg's and Apple that we are unable to give consciousness to our ways and change them? On that note these are pretty amazing:

Renouvellement Technologique

En début de semaine je suis allée au Apple Store pour mettre en place mon nouvellement acquis ipad. Entre technologie trop grosse pour être sortie banalement (tel le téléphone portable) et accessoire trop gadget pour me servir sérieusement (tel l'ordi), je reste perplexe à son utilité. L'Apple Store n'a pas était une expérience particulièrement déterminante sur le sujet non plus puisque, tel mon 'génie' me l'a démontré mon ipad n'est finalement qu'une extension secondaire de Violette (mon ordinateur), un statut et une fonction inférieurs qui ne l'empêche pas d'en devenir la cause du crash redouté - tel que l'apparition de l'icône des documents avec le terrifiant '?' sur mon écran au retour du Store me l'a montrée. 

À cela la difficulté de copier/coller/importer des images (pour documents ou pour des posts de blog), le besoin de manipulations innombrables et répétées pour coordonner les contacts gmail à outlook et la batterie qui se décharge à vitesse éclair, c'est frustrant. Et pourtant depuis la venue de cet écran-planche je m'en sert tout le temps. Google Maps à gogo, visionnement de films et de videos rapide et longue durée, échange d'email facile me font oublier la pollution en Chine causé par les milliards d'ipad produit presto pour répondre à un besoin non-existant et le fait que dans 6 mois un ipad plus indépendant et sans phobie d'images remplacera le mien. 

Finalement comme cette vidéo (trouvé sur uvmann) le montre, tels la disquette et le palm pilot, dans 10 mois l'ipad sera une frivolité symbolique de notre consommation de nouveautés renouvelables à l'infini mieux:

Lineups, Feeling Different and Dumping the Disc: Apple Marketing 101

Today Apple introduced the world to its redesigned iTunes symbol. Someone in their marketing department decided it was time to get rid of the CD that's hiding behind musical note. Who's uses CDs these days? Jobs doesn't.

Because I'm still not entirely over how the marketing geniuses that managed to create lineups for their new iphone came up with this boring logo, here's the totally iconic 1984 ad by Steve Hayden. 

It came out in 1984 to introduce the first Apple Macintosh personal Computer. A 'different' computer from the PC... Now people are lining up to be different. Which makes 1984 iconic and ironic.