[NTLK] another RIP view

McJohn mcjohn at oplink.net
Sun Oct 9 08:29:32 EDT 2011


I've always considered it simple-mindedly specious and reflexively 
reactionary to claim that breakthrough technology "makes" users 
"insular" or "self-absorbed".  To take just one out of innumerable 
examples, the Siri ad released this week shows a sight-impaired user 
interacting with her iPhone exclusively by audio.  It seems to me as 
though her experience of Siri will be one of expanding her horizons 
rather than otherwise, and she's part of a population that, to be 
brutally honest, Apple didn't have to spend three seconds attempting to 
serve.

As has been remarked on more than one occasion, Mr. Jobs seems to have 
understood the importance of intersections: between technology and the 
liberal arts, between form and function, between engineering and 
aesthetics, between human and device.  Along the way, he polished out 
the friction common to interactions between humans and their 
environment, making the use of an Apple device easier, and thus more 
rewarding, than working with non-Apple technology.  I am of the opinion 
that having hands-on experience with It Just Works has taught many of us 
to adopt that attitude in our own interactions with others; if you can 
work with technology, you can work with other people, and if you can 
work with other people, you can, say, find the collective courage to 
stand before a line of tanks and still demand accountability out of your 
own leaders.

Doesn't surprise me that the opinionator claims the use of iTech makes 
others self-centered; if she frequently expressed such Luddite 
prejudices around me, I'd spend a lot of time with my earbuds in too.

On 10/9/11 6:39 AM, Clu wrote:
> On 10/9/11 5:52 AM, Bob Carls Dudney wrote:
>> "...the cumulative effect of all [Jobs'] ingenious electronic devices
>> is to train the attention of a huge population narcissistically
>> inward.
> I think I was the exact opposite.  I was an introvert that became an
> extrovert due to computers.   I had my own creative world, and for the
> most part I kept to myself.   I learned to talk to people over the
> computer (BBSs and all) and over time, when I met up with them (BBS
> parties) I learned to talk to people better and better in person.
>
> But on the computer initially was where I learned to converse, debate,
> and so on.
>
> So this statement might be true, but not in all cases.
>
> Greg / Doc Clu
>
>
>
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