Man, this knocked the wind out of me in a way I did not anticipate. The world has lost a visionary. And I can’t help but think back to that story about how Jobs helped to bring hope to a secular world.
Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. You changed the world in ways that will last for generations.
After today’s eagerly anticipated announcements, I’m particularly impressed by the Siri integration. At this point, Siri is still in “beta” and you can tell the way Phil Schiller says it that the tech is not quite to the state of perfection that they’d like it to be at. But it’s what Siri represents that’s so thrilling: a future where we can interact with our computers using natural language.
We’re not there yet, but we will be one day. And as Apple is fond of doing, today it gave us a glimpse into the future.
I enjoyed Sam Harris’s musings on the future of the publishing industry. But I do wish contemporary authors sounding the death knell of the printed word would pay more homage to the fact that it was traditional publishing that propelled them to digital stardom. Traditional publishing’s death may be painful, but it will also be relatively slow (at least, in internet years).
David DiSalvo, on how Kodak failed to react to market forces in time:
The fall of the company that George Eastman built is perhaps the most salient commentary on the new economy in recent memory, and tells an unfortunate story about much of America’s industrial base. Monolithic, inflexible and unable to keep up with the shifts and turns of disruptive technology, once great companies like Kodak can’t survive without exhaustive restructuring. Hopefully, other U.S. companies have been watching and learning.
As I mentioned when I wrote about Todd VanDerWerff’s interview of Community-creator Dan Harmon, I believe that the extensive, long-form interviews that the AV Club does with showrunners are so valuable that they actually contribute to our culture in a way that nearly rises to the level of the original works themselves.
This time around, it’s Nathan Rabin who gets the honor to interview Louie CK and run down every episode of Louie’s brilliant second season:
Well-worth the huge length of time it will take you to get through it (and with much less self-loathing than the Harmon interview!).
A 29-year old woman who has been deaf for her entire life activates a cochlear implant and hears herself clearly for the very first time:
It is moving to see someone receive a gift that we all take for granted every day. Videos like this show us all how blessed we really are.
Horace Dediu lays out the case against the Kindle Fire as a low-end tablet disruption. In the long-term, I’m convinced that Dediu is correct, but I think there’s a significant possibility that the Fire is going to steal away some market share from the iPad in the short-term.
I posit that most people don’t need something that’s technologically cutting-edge to scratch that tablet itch. And if you give them a choice between a $200 tablet that can do most things they need, or a $500 that can do slightly more things, the choice will be pretty obvious.