“One of the things I love about the iPad, for instance, is when you’re using the iPad, the iPad disappears, it goes away. You’re reading a book. You’re viewing a website, you’re touching a web site. That’s amazing and that’s what SMS is for me. The technology goes away and with Twitter the technology goes away. It’s so easy to follow anything you’re interested in. It’s so easy to tweet from wherever you are.”
— Twitter founder Jack Dorsey on Charlie Rose
“Then I turn on one of my favorite machines. It’s about the size of a book. It has a glowing window inside it. A single page. But I only need one page because its contents change at my command. Sometimes there are words, sometimes photographs, sometimes both. The photographs can move and talk. The stuff in the book can be written by anyone in the world, even as I’m reading it. There’s more in that book than I could ever read. It provides me with unbelievable advantages. Anything I don’t know, I can find out in a few seconds. I can get instructions on how to do pretty much anything that has ever been done. I can summon complete histories of almost any person or culture you could name, expert opinions on anything at all, unlimited advice, unlimited entertainment, unlimited information. I can buy pretty much anything from where I’m sitting, and have it brought to my door. I can even write anything I want and publish it myself. I don’t need permission or credentials. The whole world could read it.”
— David Cain shares A Day in the Future
I like the notion of the next, more evolved version of the human species. And I hope –and expect– a good dose of machine intelligence will be part of Man 2.0.
Today I’ve been reading a book with the Kindle app on my iPad. When I come across a word or a name I’m unfamiliar with, I double-click and jump over to the dictionary app or Safari/Wikipedia. Or I’d hear the ping of a new email or text message (which I usually check, but not always)
If a big story breaks (like the shooting in Arizona) I can watch news updates for any number of sources.
I’ve started taking this connectedness for granted. Yeah, we’ve been doing this for a while on our laptops, but something about getting all of this from a little slab of aluminum and glass propped on my chest amazes me.
Even the book I was reading when all of this occurred to me. I came across it in a blog post… downloaded from Amazon… and started reading on the same device where I first learned of the book. All within 5 minutes. Damn!
A bunch of Mac Heads meet most Saturday mornings at the local coffee shop. Bigger than usual group this morning and as I looked around, we all had iPads. As far as I could tell, nobody brought their laptops.
Someday soon I’ll stop noticing the wonderful things the iPad (and similar devices) brings to me. But maybe there will something new and even more amazing.
George points us to a list of technologies that are in various stages of dying. If you’re skeptical, you can get a little of the reasoning in this slideshow at Businessweek. Or is it Bloomberg? Whatever.
I’ve already said goodbye to some of these and can easily live without most of the rest.
Spoke with Business Communication class (20 students?) last night. I was channeling Jack Black (School of Rock) with a splash of Robin Williams (the English/Vietnamese class in Good Morning Vietnam). Which is to say I knew I’d never be invited back. I almost always learn more from these little talks than the people I’m speaking to. And I’m usually surprised.
I’m pretty sure this was their first encounter with the idea that social media might be an important part of business communication. When the subject of the iPad came up, the first question was “Can I run Word on the iPad?” followed by “How do we print?”
I was reminded how ingrained MS Word has become in our business culture. Most folks don’t know there are other word processors.
I responded to the print question with, “What do you want to print?”
“Uh, a report for this class?”
“Why not save it as a PDF and email it to the instructor?”
It was clear from the look on the instructor’s face this might not be an option.I suspect college business communication courses still involve a lot of paper. Maybe even mail merge (shudder).
My final transgression was telling them to watch Office Space, any season of The Office, and to read Scott Adam’s The Dilbert Principal. And forget everything else.
I’ve had a computer on my desk at home since 1984. A lot of them. Zenith, Gateway, IBM, Dell and, most recently, a Mac Mini. No longer. I’m selling the Mini.
Oh, there are still lots of computers around the house. The MacBook Pro long ago became my main box (slab?). And there’s the iPad and the iPhone. But it felt like the end of an era.
This weekend I’ll replace my printer and scanner with a wireless all-in-one from HP and as I started making room, I was struck by how many usb hubs and power-strips were being relegated to a box in the closet.
Yesterday I had a chat with one of our IT guys about where things are headed from a business perspective. Are we getting closer to the day when a company tells a new employee they can use their own computer (any flavor they choose) and hook into the company content via the cloud.
I took a little further and suggested the device of chose would be some sort of tablet, not a laptop. Whatever shakes out, things are going to be much different for the users and the IT folks who support them.
I finished Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants (PDF) this weekend. I rank this book up there with Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near in terms of importance. I won’t attempt to review the book, since I’m still try to absorb some of the mind-bending ideas. Like the evolution of technology:
Here are a few ideas that got some highlighter:
Technology and life must share some fundamental essence. … However you define life, its essence does not reside in material forms like DNA, tissue, or flesh, but in the intangible organization of the energy and information contained in those material forms. Both life and technology seem to be based on immaterial flows of information.” – pg 10
Technium – The greater, global, massively interconnected system of technology vibrating around us. – pg 11
How many neurons do you need to have a mind? – pg 13
We can think of technology as our extended body. – pg 44
Ideas fly in flocks. To hold one idea in mind means to hold a cloud of them. – pg 45
Even the tiniest disposable item with a bar code shares a thin sliver of our collective mind. – pg 48
For most humans, for most of time, real change was rarely experienced. – pg 73
“What was impossible billions of years ago becomes increasingly inevitable.” — Simon Conway pg 126
There is only one life. All life today is descended along an unbroken line of duplication from one ancient molecule that worked inside one primeval cell that worked. – pg 127
I found this convention badge on a closet shelf this morning and it brought back memories. First, a little background from Wikipedia:
“COMDEX (an abbreviation of Computer Dealers’ Exhibition) was a computer expo held in Las Vegas, Nevada, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, and by many accounts one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector. The first COMDEX was held in 1979 at the MGM Grand, with 167 exhibitors and 3904 attendees.”
I don’t remember what year I first attended COMDEX. Sometime in the lates 80’s or early 90’s if I had to guess. It was my first exposure to geek culture and I loved it. Not sure how I persuaded Clyde to attend (or how I ended up with his badge) but he’s sort of a geek wannabe like me.
The move from the NAB Radio Show to COMDEX marked the beginning of my shift in interest and career path.