I tend to be a little preachy on the subject of people becoming addicted to their “devices.” I’m keeping this photo (and this one) to remind me to stop that shit. There I sit, with a really good book in front of me, zombied out in my phone.
Barb used to get some nice photos with her SLR camera. With her new iPhone 11, she almost always gets great photos.
Apple introduced the iPad in 2010. Does the following excerpt from Neal Stephenson’s novel, Cryptonomicon (punished in 1999) sound familiar?
“Here’s how it works. You are an Overseas Contract Worker. Before you leave home for Saudi or Singapore or Seattle or wherever, you buy or rent a little gizmo from us. It’s about the size of a paperback book and encases a thimble-sized video camera, a tiny screen, and a lot of memory chips. The components come from all over the place—they are shipped to the free port at Subic and assembled in a Nipponese plant there. So they cost next to nothing. Anyway, you take this gizmo overseas with you. Whenever you feel like communicating with the folks at home, you turn it on, aim the camera at yourself, and record a little video greeting card. It all goes onto the memory chips. It’s highly compressed. Then you plug the gizmo into a phone line and let it work its magic.”
Barb recently upgraded to the iPhone 11 and has been playing with the low light features. Only light in these came from the fireplace.
Ross Barkan writing in The Guardian:
“(The 2010s were) dominated, from start to finish, by a single piece of technology that has obliterated the promise of the internet and corrupted human interaction. The smartphone is to the 2010s what cigarettes were to much of the twentieth century, a ubiquitous and ruinous marker of the zeitgeist.”
“In the late 2000s, we allowed a few corporations to persuade us that this advanced, alien technology – assembled via de facto slave labor in Asia – was essential to human existence. We readily bought in, condensing our lives behind the sleek glass. The scroll hooked us like a drug, triggering the exact right loci in our brains; suddenly, we could never be bored again, doped by endless Facebook and Instagram feeds, retreating from unnecessary conversation or thought into an infinity of trivia. The internet never left us.”
When Apple introduced AirPods (September 2016) they got the usual ration of shit. Look funny; over-priced; uncomfortable; etc. This year Apple will sell 50 million of these. About $8 billion in revenue. In the last couple of years I’ve seen more and more of these sprouting from ears. People who never tried Bluetooth “headphones” are taking to AirPods. I spotted this gentleman in the supermarket. He said he leaves one in all the time. Forgets it’s there.
From the August Smart Locks website: “Ever forget or lose your keys? Wonder if you locked the door on your way out? Or go all the way home just to let someone in? August Smart Locks take any worry out of getting into your home. Use an app on your phone to control your door to unlock/lock, grant guest access, see who came and left, and let anyone in from anywhere. Simply attaches to your existing deadbolt on the inside of your door – your outside lock stays the same and you keep your existing keys.”
Uses a couple of AA (?) butteries that are easy to access and change. You can still use your key and lock the door manually if you need to.
PS: Sorry about the annoying sniffs. Runny nose.
“designed to be used as little as possible” This line from their website best sums up the Light Phone for me. I ordered one in February and it finally arrived.
My Apple AirPods continue to open up new worlds of sound. I watched (and liked) the first season of the HBO series True Detective (Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson) on a TV. Last night I started watching the series again but this time on my iPhone with AirPods. As with Deadwood, it was a completely different experience. The music was far more powerful and evocative. The texture of the actors voices was richer. (You could almost hear the smoke when McConaughey exhaled) Not sure I can go back to listening to sound coming from across the room.
Everyone’s familiar with stories of someone regaining their sight after years of blindness… or getting their hearing back after a lifetime of silence. That’s what came to mind as I started watching movies and series on my iPhone with AirPods (ver 2).
It’s like I’ve been listening with cotton stuffed in my ears. Hard to overstate how getting all of the sound changes the viewing experience.
Halfway through season one of Deadwood and I’m right there in the muddy street, engulfed in the sounds of the camp. Horses breathing, a distant hammering, the full range of Ian McShane’s mellifluous voice.
I’m ruined. I can’t go back to listening to what passes for sound coming from the TV across the room.
