That new Apple announcement… January 27, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
A little more advanced one would presume than this, from Arthur C. Clarke’s Imperial Earth, 1976:
The ‘Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what can fit comfortably in the human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use at the end of the twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine what life would be like without it.
Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than that of its ancestor of three hundred years earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had an unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation – for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode.
Although, in fairness, that sounds like a Blackberry. Minus a large screen (the Minisec links to larger fixed computer consoles… no laptops in this future…).
Ah well.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
It is astonishing to see staple widgets of twentieth-century sci-fi come about (and appropriate to see a founder of both Apple and NeXT continue to do so much still).
LikeLike
It is, isn’t it? What’s also amazing is how normalised these are becoming…I really like it, but… I can’t help thinking that a camera would be useful and I’d like a bit more data on the presentation software (it says it’s Keynote, but what flavour etc) and capability before purchasing one. That said, the idea of it simply as an ebook reader makes it very attractive. Although the price.. the price.
I quite admire Jobs, albeit he’s clearly a tarjar.
LikeLike
ebook reader…bah humbug, they’ll never catch on!
when will you be publishing the (printed) collected works of CLR 🙂
LikeLike
Who’d want it?
I know, I know, ebook readers are bad… but… so handy when the boxes in the attic are overflowing with printed books… and for cut and paste in articles and whatever… well useful.
LikeLike
“who’d want it?”
i’m sure brian hanley and scott millar asked themselves that question a few times as they were researching and writing “the lost revolution”…and look at the reception that got 🙂
books in the attic, man you have to be joking, you need more bookshelves! next you’ll be talking about burning them, and we all know where zat kind of thing leads to…
LikeLike
Ah there’s books all over the place, and not just my house. Relatives attics are now filled with them. Relatives whose understanding of the dialectic is hazy. Work. There’s a pile of them there. In my bag that I carry my sandwiches in to work. The cat sleeps on a pile.
Some of them I’ve read…
Anyhow, it’s a small house. Seriously. And I’m getting grief.
And I’ve seen (and read) Farenheit 415 which is a different sort of burning. Always liked the grim joke about the ‘firemen’ in that.
LikeLike
And I’ve seen (and read) Farenheit 415 which is a different sort of burning. Always liked the grim joke about the ‘firemen’ in that.
Speaking of Fahrenheit 415, the notion of DRM’d books which people no longer actually own, to lend or re-sell (and which can be taken away at the flick of a button, as Amazon did with Orwell’s books last year)… well, the wet dream of dictator’s and ‘free market’ economist nerds alike, but not so great for the rest of us.
LikeLike
I see the iPad uses ePub, so presumably one can keep copies stored on ones computer as well as on the iPad?
LikeLike
“Speaking of Fahrenheit 415, the notion of DRM’d books which people no longer actually own, to lend or re-sell (and which can be taken away at the flick of a button, as Amazon did with Orwell’s books last year)… well, the wet dream of dictator’s and ‘free market’ economist nerds alike, but not so great for the rest of us.”
i don’t know, you do have a point there for sure, but maybe you’re over exaggerating it. most of the printed word that’s for sale in the mainstreet bookshops wouldn’t be missed if big brother or some publishing ceo decided to obliterate it, i mean popular fiction and celebrity biog’s and glossy cookery books etc.
as for the stuff that shapes culture and society in a positive sense, the histories and memoirs and thought provoking fiction etc., i’m inclined to think that’ll always circulate and find a readership even in the most severe of censorship regimes. i’m thinking specifically of samizdat in the former socialist states…hopefully it won’t come to that of course.
LikeLike
@ WbS
Yes, they do indeed (I guess that the demand for good open-source ePub editors is about to shoot up). But Apple will also apply their own DRM to at least some of the stuff on the iBooks store (probably at the behest of the publishers).
@ LeftAtTheCross
The point is that we’re being turned into, well, serfs on the estates of Big Content as regards our own culture (and the goings on around digital TV and radio shows that they’re more determined than ever to make this the case in reality). This is also in the background to the US-pushed trade deals, and a lot of what goes on in Europe.
LikeLike
Interesting piece by John Naughton, Connemara man and Oxford academic:
“I begin to think of Huxley and Soma, the hallucinogenic, hangover-free drug in Brave New World that makes users contented with their (subjugated) lot. If the iPad takes off as the iPhone did, then it will have as disruptive an impact on the computing and media industries as the Apple phone has already had on mobile telephony.”-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/31/ipad-review-comments-naughton
Is technology just a tool or something more?
Speaking of hallucinogens, I read somewhere that Jobs felt more comfortable around those who had taken LSD.
“Steve Jobs has never been shy about his use of psychedelics, famously calling his LSD experience “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” So, toward the end of his life, LSD inventor Albert Hofmann decided to write to the iPhone creator to see if he’d be interested in putting some money where the tip of his tongue had been.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-grim/read-the-never-before-pub_b_227887.html
Strange, slightly used, not-so-brave world.
LikeLike
That’s an odd little anecdote. So Jobs spoke to him for half an hour. Interesting…
BTW, can someone test email me please? I’m not sure if the email address is working or not…
LikeLike