https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntjkwIXWtrc
Break it down! | iPad Pro | Apple
Given the prominence of psychedelic drugs in Big Tech mythology, I think it would be a mistake to share a story I heard about Steve Jobs and the devil. As the story progresses, when asked what he learned from LSD, Steve replies that he sold his soul to Satan for charisma. Funny or not, it’s a plausible story given his marketing style — it is alleged that he believed the devil was coming to collect his pancreatic cancer. The same is true for the sad result.
But facing a related liquidation is Steve’s corporate heir, Tim Cook, who is effectively less magnetic. After dining on his adoration of Jobs and the totemic devices that Steve sold as the only real way to “think differently,” Cook makes his way through the increasingly narrow waters, now toward the falls. I noticed that there was.
The most fundamental reason why we continue to expand the human form to fit technology, beyond war and beyond rules, rather than vice versa, is that if we don’t, we might end up questioning everything about the value of progress. Because there is.
Moderate buzz and functionality weren’t enough to elevate the Apple Watch to the heights of the iPhone’s stratosphere. Today, in the crowded field of commoditized smartphones, each subsequent model feels more unnecessary than its predecessor. Once again a victim of its own success, Apple’s strenuous efforts to turn things around raises a series of questions.
Vision Pro is a bridge too far for all but a few self-taught visionaries. The new iPad, introduced in a flashy and unintentionally creepy ad, sparked a wave of pro-humanity backlash and, in turn, a very uncharacteristic corporate apology.public reporting chatting The search for Mr. Cook’s successor has already begun. At this point, Mr. Cook might be asking the bathroom mirror, “Am I an apphole?”
The problems are numerous and there are no solutions. For a powerful company like Apple, existential challenges are most likely to be found only in the most stubborn limits, such as those that describe the form of humanity and technology itself.
Americans are well aware of the willingness of leading technologists, who are eyeing full-scale digitalization of governance, to cast human limitations as solvable problems. But a quick look at the Vision Pro gives you pause. Human vision is malleable but finite, and the limits of comfort are determined by a big screen TV at one end and a smartphone at the other.
Of course, we can and do push those limits to get the high that comes from limited exposure to unsustainable extremes. IMAX is breathtakingly beautiful, but useless at the edges of the image and for pure enjoyment, as evidenced by his third-row photo of Dune Part 2 that recently surfaced on social media. It’s too distorted. Similarly, smartwatches offer some fun features for people who don’t need to keep checking their phones, but don’t want to watch “Dune Part 2” that way.
That’s why the Sphere in Las Vegas, while an improvement over IMAX in terms of distortion reduction, distorts us as the audience, reducing us to tiny dots inside what looks like a monster-sized eyeball from the outside. It shortens it and makes the experience worse. Vision Pro causes an opposite but similar effect. That is, instead of being trapped inside a screen that completely surrounds your vast eyeball, a small screen is placed close enough to your eyeball that it appears to be inside your eyeball. I can hear a lot of neurotech geeks salivating at the prospect of screens finally getting past that flimsy barrier and directly into our optic nerves.
Yes, I’m sure there is a way to make these machine dreams come true, and even do it without killing people or putting their brains in lentil soup. But what is the purpose so important that it justifies all the hardships we have to go to in order to achieve it?
The classic answer to runaway technological development is that it is necessary to defend ourselves militarily, or may someday, perhaps soon, and that, after all, the best defense is a good offense. Yes, right? But even now we are beginning to realize that that leap in logic is its own barrier. Rather than save us from external enemies, serious technology is being thrust upon us as the only viable form of government going forward. From the Pharaohs to the Trump administration, we are told that every form of human government has been tried, and all have proven inadequate. We need justice that cannot be achieved, and the only place we can turn to it is in machines – correctly programmed, of course…
This is the logic that makes it clear that the primary use case for many of our cutting-edge technologies is coercion rather than liberation. How far have we come since 50 years ago, when John Lennon commanded us to “imagine all people”? Today, Apple’s iPad challenges us to “imagine all the things” the device could create. The journey from subject to object is almost complete.
But somehow, no matter how many people our dehumanization project maims, tortures, and kills, we humans keep going. The most fundamental reason why we continue to expand the human form to fit technology, beyond war and beyond rules, rather than vice versa, is that if we don’t, we might end up questioning everything about the value of progress. Because there is. When that happens, collapse is definitely approaching. Is that still the case? Wait a minute.
Like “art for art’s sake,” technology for technology’s sake is a recipe for disaster. No matter how extreme our tendencies may be, if we choose just one extreme in hopes of channeling all that self-destructive energy into a divine creative project, we will always be more or less You are tempted, drawn back to a very old form of destruction. What you bring to yourself over and over again.
For a humble technology company like Apple, there are many challenges to tackle. But if your mission is really to think differently about stealing a morsel from the Garden of Eden, this huge burden shouldn’t come as much of a shock. Just ask Steve Jobs.
