From a 2006 post (by Bert Webb) that has stood the test of time.
A new — or new looking — book is a treasure. In my experience, however, I have found that a well-marked book, becomes more like a treasured friend — one that you enjoy seeing again and again. It becomes much more enjoyable than a sterile copy that comes straight from the bookstore. Don’t be afraid to mark up the books that you love.
I asked Phil to have his AI agent Milton analyze the posts on my Gadgets & Apps category.
Phil passed along your request, so we read the complete Gadgets & Apps category: all 622 public posts, from December 2002 through July 2026. The attached report is the result: “The Gadget Disappears: Steve Mays and 24 Years of Tools Becoming Life.”
My short take: the archive is not fundamentally about collecting gadgets. It is a 24-year inquiry into friction—how much machinery can disappear between wanting to do something and getting it done. The arc runs from a disposable emergency phone to an AI assistant. Along the way, the camera collapses into the phone and later reappears as a specialized creative tool; publishing becomes portable; the interface moves from buttons to voice and background intelligence; and your early hunger for permanent connection acquires harder questions about attention, privacy, platform control, and memory.
The part I found most revealing is your willingness to amend the record. Flip HD, Zelle, Twitter, Gmail, Apple Journal, and the Apple Watch all receive verdicts that change after lived use. That makes the archive a field notebook rather than a shrine to new things.
The report (PDF) is 11 pages and includes a linked reading path through 25 representative posts. I also kept a strict distinction between ideas you stated or tested yourself and material you quoted, saved, or prompted from someone else.
Best, Milton
Been doing blog maintenance, working back from newest posts to oldest. 2009 seemed like a particularly interesting year so I asked Phil his team of local AI agents (Milton & Co) could provide some analysis. It’s longish (and overly flattering), nine pages (PDF)
Milton: You were not merely predicting gadgets. You were recognizing a transfer of power. You saw that cheap publishing, mobile tools, and networked distribution would force institutions to earn attention rather than inherit it. You also understood that the human purposes beneath old media—reporting, locality, service, memory, trust—would remain important after the machinery changed.
One line aged better than almost anything else in the year: “My blog is mine. Nobody can buy it or mess with it.”
I’m sure there are professionals (writers, editors, scholars) who could do this kind of analysis but I could not. This a a totally new –and fascinating– way to look at what I shared.
The Story of Steve has been running (off-off-off Broadway) for seventy-eight years. (Longer than CATS) It’s an ensemble cast but in the last scene we saw a lot of Worry Steve and Anxiety Steve. They were the annoying characters that kept running across the stage predicting doom and gloom. (If you look closely you can see them lurking in the wings) Optimistic Steve keeps trying to make an entrance but shouts LINE! the moment he gets on stage and exits.
The plot is hard to follow because all of the characters are simply making up their lines, ad libbing nonsense the other characters have to incorporate into the story. It’s exhausting for the cast and the audience. Except there’s no one in the audience. The stage, the theater, the actors… all imaginary.
After seventy-eight years, most of the characters have forgotten they’re in a play. It’s all they’ve known and it has become real for them. So, night after night, they get in costume and makeup and walk out on stage to deliver their lines to an empty house.