July 6, 2010

Killing the Past Doesn't Help the Future (or Why I'm Tired)

Why does every article I read lately feature the death of something or the end of another thing? We keep hearing that the past is dead. Murdered by progress. Good riddance because we'll never need it again. The hipster hordes want to stamp out the imagery and completely remake the world in their image and ideal. Is this the insecurity of my generation coming to the forefront? Or is it a younger generation living entirely in the now and wanting to stamp out nostalgia?

If it's the end of everything like newspapers, what will happen to those scenes in movies when the spy is sitting on a bench, passing time reading a newspaper. You know the one, the spy is waiting for his next meet up (maybe he never lowers the paper) or is using the newspaper to conceal his identity. If we kill the past, a newspaper might make the spy stand out as suspicious. It's interesting that in fiction, various technologies always look forced or dated. The iPad in someone's hands in a movie today might be this generation's version of the 70's porno mustache. Does our culture really need to move that fast and constantly be up to date?

Can we all agree to stop with the hipster aesthetic? I don't need everything to be the apex of design and functionality. It all makes me tired. Is the need to murder the past borne from the same hell that gave us jumpsuits, disco, and the pet rock? Is it the cousin of the Swatch watch and acid wash jeans?

It's accelerating. Maybe not in the way Douglas Coupland imagined, but things are getting faster and faster. On the one hand we're awash in information. It's delivered to us in both raw and curated forms: Information Democracy. On the other hand, the zombies haven't vanished. They're still here cycling through meaningless trends and the need to be first (at a much quicker pace). Instead of raising the discourse, the fad-hogs are just hungrier. The rest of us? We're just more tired. While we never worked to keep up, it's become more of an arduous task to fight it off.

So as I hear more often that I'm weird for not liking soccer or NASCAR, for continuing to read paper (instead of digital or nothing at all), for desiring open solutions to technology and information gathering (instead of choosing design or a fear of technology witchery), I'll just wish it would all slow down again. Just a little.

What do I want/believe in?

Not being available 24 hours a day
Apple is just another big tech company and is sometimes not the best option
Physical books and newspapers
Big companies should be regulated but individuals should be left alone to make (sometimes poor) decisions for themselves
Children should be kept out of bars but smoking should not
Baseball doesn't need replay but football does
The 1980s were the worst decade known to man and should never be celebrated
There is nothing wrong with a healthy does of cynicism
Everyone is too worried about being productive all the time

October 26, 2009

Another Reason Android Rocks

via androinica.com

A lot of iPhone users laugh at me when I tell them I got the T-Mobile Android phone. First they mention the commercials and ask what Whoppi Goldberg has to do with selling phones, then they ask me why I didn't get an iPhone. They feel the iPhone is superior in every way.

Personally, I felt the iPhone was lacking. While it has a gazillion applications, it seems that Apple is creating a device with a lot of design but limits on functionality. Google, on the other hand, seems to be pouring a lot into the Android system. The latest cool example? The Quick Search Box.

At first I thought, what good is the quick search box? It's just another portal to the web. Boy was I wrong. The thing searches the web, the phone, my contacts, everything! I was in New York recently trying to find a client's address. I used the quick search box in hopes of pulling up a map and the results took me to the contact of the client I was going to meet. It was exactly what I needed on the fly.

This operating system is on the verge of blowing away the iPhone and its functionality.

July 15, 2009

Microsoft

Leave it to Microsoft to require 18 pieces of software be installed to do something simple like export my contacts from Outlook. Between that and the "shortage" of iPhones, I'm really starting to think that the dominant computing paradigms are not the way to go. Unless it's a disaster I believe that a Google phone is in my future.