2) The muddiness of the whole debate is a demonstration of the difficulty of applying science to public policy. As such it runs along the same lines as the problems with the idea of 'evidence-based policy'. Science is a pretty humble tool when it comes to saying how things are - compared to both its power of discovery, and to how science is used as a badge to exercise power. This is so not least because understanding what science says is a very unequally distributed privilege.
There's an emotional connection that many geeks have to Yahoo: I know I'd still like to like it. If they made something that made us all go "Aaaaw....", we'd recommend the hell out of it, and soon enough it could replace Google News for some people, for example. And from that the next step would not be too long.
Imagine if they had a great news reading and exploring service integrated in a smart way with a reading list/book marking service - like del.icio.us? (ouch...) They have had great technology.
I suspect that a) the vast majority of womenfolk simply don't exist - that some are outliers doesn't mean that the majority are alike, because give it what you like, b) social conditions are changing, for both men and women there are very contradictory expectations - so it may very well be that there is no way to be (culturally) satisfied, and thus c) the vast majority isn't happy. Add to that d), even if we are all up to making choices where we are truly existentially alone, many will for a big part of their life choose as their environment does, because choosing what you want is scary, and doing as others do gives - cold - comfort.
I think there are big changes coming up everywhere.
There are so many games one can play, which at least give a thrill, but that doesn't mean it's satisfying for life. It's like junk food. I suppose that's what much marketing does.
Society is not an intentional result - it's the unintentional result of sometimes (mostly not) intentional actions. Most of the time our bodies are on auto-pilot.
I suspect that a) the vast majority of womenfolk simply don't exist - that some are outliers doesn't mean that the majority are alike, because give it what you like, b) social conditions are changing, for both men and women there are very contradictory expectations - so it may very well be that there is no way to be (culturally) satisfied, and thus c) the vast majority isn't happy. Add to that d), even if we are all up to making choices where we are truly existentially alone, many will for a big part of their life choose as their environment does, because choosing what you want is scary, and doing as others do gives - cold - comfort.
I think there are big changes coming up everywhere.
There are so many games one can play, which at least give a thrill, but that doesn't mean it's satisfying for life. It's like junk food. I suppose that's what much marketing does.
Society is not an intentional result - it's the unintentional result of sometimes (mostly not) intentional actions.
Thanks, that was interesting. Not least the comments, including one from "Too Smart", which said:
"Being dumb is much better than having to play dumb. It does no good for a girl to be too smart," and suggested complimenting the girl for her sweet looks.
Sort of trollish? Maybe, but it also is true that 'good looks' show, and have immediate 'consequences', whereas the intelligence that's innate to us doesn't show, and the real challenge of intelligence maybe is to find a way to do something with it. Something that makes life meaningful. Which takes constant work, self-confidence, and daring.
I've done a little bit of fasting (I'm actually breaking a fast right now), it really is as simple as that: you simply start seeing whatever it is as not important. Sliverstorm, beagle3 and gwern are exactly right I think.
What you wanted - food - was just a result of you thinking you wanted it. And that was mostly just a result of associating it with the thought of 'need'. But our bodies are apparently made to not bother us needlessly - it's not the body that's bothering us.
When you fast, rather, you go through the whole range of conditioned responses YOU have created to food. But you don't fight them, instead you get to just kind of say 'yeah, that's an interesting thing I've created' and go on with what you're doing. But once you know they are just that, nothing is stopping you. It's a little bit like meditation, where when you notice a thought, you'll simply label it a thought, and its power goes away.
And since you 'know' you will take great care of your body, now and whenever you break the fast (and please do that, follow the instructions, and break it gently, like a part of fasting, rather than straight back to old habits - your pancreas & co will thank you...), there's no crisis thinking or anxiety to it. Rather you get to be alone with your body and your thoughts.
I like it, because it is actually sort of easier to focus when there's just my body doing its things, vs the body with a lot of food it's having to digest, and blood sugar levels going up and down all over the place.
You get to really want something else instead, rather than associating/replacing all sorts of wants with food, if that's what you've done before. It's like realizing those wants are yours and owning them as that, rather than being owned by them when you think it is 'needs'.
Eating regularly is just a routine - probably a good one if it is done right - but there's so much extra luggage, so much extra use, that we put on top.
We really have a lot more power than that. It's not us against the body, it's us thanks to the body. Not thanks to the food - we eat much more than we 'need'.
I suspect he's kind of like Steve Jobs, if Steve Jobs had not been practising Zen-Buddhism. Instead he's learning how to follow through more directly by helping others do it. He's probably not alone about it either. A guy with a skill. It's just that now the circumstances force more of us to use it, which is to say, to start to develop it. Just a thought.
This too -- I can identify precisely with this second paragraph. I can't be content with filling some kind of mould. But that's because I can see the mould, and it certainly isn't me.
Seeing possibilities is not something one necessarily chose to do - it was maybe the result of a great need at a time, but now that you're out of the mould, and you see you're a pot maker - not just the clay - the bets are off, because your dreams are different.
I think that's when meaning becomes important, in order to not be consumed by ambition. That's probably also when it becomes really important to make sure that you have both supportive and different people around you.
Sounds to me like you are in contact with your 'being'. That's rather good actually. The way I've come to think of it, when people get too anxious they start to make violence on themselves - and think they should be something they are not. But changing oneself based on rejecting what one is doesn't work.
Yep, and differently from tv, consumption on the iPad is much more likely to be 'relatively' peer-to-peer. If we pay for content, there will surely soon be more producers around, given an easy-enough distribution chain/a flat-enough distribution channel. Very different from the TV business and it's intricate hierarchies and institutions!
I sure think this IS a Golden Age. The bizarre and 'negative' traits, and our moments of distress, easily hide it for us - but it's here and now. We just need to learn how to create a society out of the jumble (ie, planet) that's out there...
I wonder if production is not more inherent to the human being than you give it credit for being. How, otherwise, did we get from TV-land to the internet? Was it not a case of frustrated need for self-expression and response to new stimuli?
What is missing here is actually a perspective on how consumption is a form of production itself– of perspective. Better access, and new forms and content for consumption, will create (that word!) new forms of consciousness, which are fed back in production.
Consumption today seem to me more of a form of networking of sources and producers, production of perspective. There's so little that we yet know about our still new internet reality. Polishing consumption may very well be necessary in order for us to make sense of our current social/technological stage, to produce new forms of social networking/organization and ultimately new every-other-form of content/artifacts.
To dive in at the deep end: consuming stuff on a tablet, with the accompanying delights and frustrations - is part of the networking of the device itself into the cycle of human content consumption-production. There's no reason to believe that the tablet as an object is finished, and that it won't evolve to fit the 'expressive needs' of people – your own frustration/pessimism are a part of this cycle, both leading people to not use tablets, to look for different desktop paradigms, new forms of interaction with tablets, improving tablet ergonomics and on and on. You're surely not alone.
The cycle won't stop. We must not get down when there's so much great work to be done! Yet, again, also our negative feeling in this regard is ultimately productive, if we let it.
Great point! Illustrates just how we're still living with the implications of just how the first extremely undemocratic reality of 'code as content' – first encapsulated in program devlopment, then going through a slight democratization route regarding computer usage through the Macintosh, and moving on through the html web – still is playing out.
One can at least see that the path-to-market of content has been democratized with the web over time… and the App stores/'App paradigm' are also helpful in making it possible for more to program.
I think a big part of our dilemmas have had to do with how isolated and abstract programming and development have been compared to mainstream society. A relative 'mainstreaming' of programming is still an incredible thought – yet it is happening right now!
Whatever happens to our present jobs, I can't help but think that the infusion of new programming talent is about to create a new reality – a wave that could lift a great number of us – given appropriate channels for us all to contribute so much more than regular business logic programming - and us people practicing and getting ready to catch it!
Interesting perspective. I wonder how likely those for whom iPads are the only computing device today are to ever think of using the 'production tools' specific to the PC though.
Or is it simply that the iPad makes so much consumption so easy – on a PC NOTHING is very easy to do in comparison. It's a little bit like the idea that TV only is for kicking back, even though you can make very difficult content for it too – all creators exlore the nature of their medium/device, whether it be developers or content producers!
iMovie - plenty of amazing music-making apps in addition to Garageband – and an increasing number of outlining apps, OmniOutliner, productivity apps like OmniFocus – seem to suggest that appmakers are still only starting to explore what can be done with this new UI and what the usage scenarios are for this device. They're different!
TODAY, most of the apps existing presume that you have a PC, and indeed, until iOS 5 – soon coming out – you need a PC for backups and various device management tasks. That PC dependence will end, and with it maybe most of the need for tablets to be defined as complementary 'consumption' devices. How file management will work with apps in the iCloud is only about to start to get worked out. Indeed, looking at how the iCloud works suggests their vision of how people will use their various devices together – it's still quite untried!
So, I'd not say tablets are doomed to be for consumption – it's more of a market dynamics question, like you note, together with technology just getting created. It's really about what gets explored. And one can hardly say that the app store model can't be successful for those who want to create something new.
I'm hopeful – and also did some of my best work at that time on a Psion Series 5, back in 1998. For editing, the touch interface, with a stylus and a keyboard, turned out superior to desktop word processing - at least to me.
What we're getting away from is maybe the idea that work is done at a desktop – something that still lived on with laptops. It will partly be a sort of 'self-conscious' loop of what is possible to be done – what we make possible to be done – and how convenient and productive these tools then turn out. 'A bicycle for the mind' indeed...
What's easily missed too is that the 'free creativity and production for all' ethos on the web – all the good stuff that got us here! - so far largely missed out on financing for most of the traditional cultural sectors. Much of what is most highly valued in our cultures has been woefully underfinanced for our entire lives.
The iPad/app model – positioned between all these previously-existing devices and media/content like books/mags/+ – at least makes a start for a venue, a potentially enormously widely available venue, for content producers where they can be discovered – consumed/networked and get paid for their work by a simply enormous audience.
This is not necessarily at all a boon for central distribution in the sense of the old massmedia institutions!
I'd say that Apple having a lock on it – to the extent that Apple IS the central distribution channel, even if Amazon's tablet is just around the corner! – is not as important as that they provide a relatively 'flat' market for distribution – as I perceive them to do right now. To my understanding, they're basically running their stores at break-even.
With Amazon coming into the picture, it's about to become SO interesting – there will be so many different business models: sellers of Gadgets, Content and Ads!
Awesome take – it seems to suggest that what we're seeing is the creation of a new mobile nexus for people's work, slowly replacing the desktop as the center of our 'tool lives'.
EDIT: Replacing the desktop – AND drawing plenty of other old technologies into this new one.
There's also always Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance by Robert Pirsig, which at least i still find quite amazing.
I also totally agree on the thing with working with your hands – it turns out we at least partially think with our bodies. Howard Gardner also made an interesting case for that in his book the Seven Intelligences, but okay – the source much matter who wrote about it: I've experienced it first-hand.
Doing yoga when I've been strained about something often results in what can only be described as a stream of insight and ideas. The same thing with running. We (i) have so much to learn.
What gets me, everytime I procastrinate along lines similar to those described in the article, is that the implicit assumption is always then that you're not very talented.
You can develop your talent, or you can sit around and think you're stupid.
Talent IMO is an epistemological quagmire you'll never get out of any other way than by quitting on it. As a sociologist, I like to remind that it is a relational concept - it doesn't refer to a 'thing' but to a way of defining yourself in relation to something.
Having seen your landing page and the video, this about the app:
- I liked the simplicity and the concept of the app a lot.
- Does the msging in any way interact with sending SMSs/IMs?
- It's a great idea to be able to message your sharing friends, but what's the quickest way to reach your friend after you receive a pin from them? Think through the usage scenarios - and flaunt them! "It [the whole scenario] just works" is your best friend.
- Ask your non-techie users/friends about the scenarios and make sure you listen a lot.
The landing page:
- show don't tell. More pictures less txt... (take a leaf from the big A).
- I wouldn't use the word "setup" at all, when you've basically intelligently managed to rid your users of that chore. That's something to flaunt, whereas the very word setup IMO is a turn-off. Just go with "no sign-up"/etc.
- The first paragraph to me looked like filler even if it may be good and true. It would be more appealing to me to directly explain concrete cases where the app can achieve the good things you speak of. (I hope you've watched the FaceTime commercial a lot lately)
- The video is a great beginning, but turn up the voice/eq it (I had some trouble hearing it), and turn down the music a bit?
- Make sure you ask non-techies how it resonates with them. Listen carefully.
- The same operation on your iTunes page, and make sure the screenshots are of very self-explanatory usage cases.
1) It's a battle about what 'Climategate' meant.
2) The muddiness of the whole debate is a demonstration of the difficulty of applying science to public policy. As such it runs along the same lines as the problems with the idea of 'evidence-based policy'. Science is a pretty humble tool when it comes to saying how things are - compared to both its power of discovery, and to how science is used as a badge to exercise power. This is so not least because understanding what science says is a very unequally distributed privilege.