Thank you, Steve Jobs

Like many people probably reading this blog (ok, I overestimate the popularity with the word "many" there) it feels like a bit of a milestone now that Steve Jobs is no longer the head honcho of Apple. I've read enough about how he will now be superceded, but is still going to work on some projects that require his attention - most notably (hopefully) taking the "hobby" of AppleTV into our living rooms. I wish him great success, and I really wish great success to Tim Cook, not just because he is about to become the most prominent gay man of public life, but because I think Apple's core philosophy is one that I largely agree with.

What struck me when I was reading through these weird eulogies for Steve Jobs who is, as far as I know, still with us in physical form, is how he, in this day and age of overstating what the internet and technology is doing to us, seems to be quite a conservative as regards the future of our symbiance with technology. From these quotes it seems pretty obvious to me that he really sees technology as a tool to boost productivity but not by making people adopt it so that they can change what they are doing, but so that it becomes part of their lifestyle. In this way, the strategy is so insidious as to actually be something that I make a part of my being in the end - I now carry my iPhone around (as I did with my iPod) and it has made me more aware of the world on a more constant basis. It first started with music, but now it spreads to politics, culture, art, business, but also other people.

I guess all this has more to do with the Internet than with Apple as such, but the Apple ethos under Steve was never to really depress any of these things - in fact, for me, they've been enabled to flourish, and I feel more atune to them because of their presentation. I could watch films, read books, articles, browse products I might want to buy, explore places I'd never been to, etc. all on my computer and devices on a computer - however, because my iPhone/iPad/Mac works so well and offers me such great apps and looks so damn good to look at, it means that I do it a lot more than I otherwise would spend on them. Why? Simple, I enjoy them. They make information fun in a way that it is not entirely in its raw state. (Ok at this point, I should probably say that there is a larger debate here that I don't particularly want to get into about the effect of the consumption of culture through these devices - but suffice to say, I am reading a hell of a lot more books on my iPad than I ever was in print form, so my personal affection comes also from this fact)

In this, I think comes Steve's genius - I value Apple's products not because they are nice to look at, and not because I particularly want to patronise his company above all others, but because i somehow feel that the service he gives me with them makes my life somehow more worthwhile. The reason is precisely because they are beautiful, intuitive to interact with, don't try and make me completely change my mode of working so that I can understand how they work... and in this way, I find that this is the way I want my technology to work. Of course, in the future, when our children are hopefully doing Ruby as a Foreign Language in schools and JavaScript has become a necessary part of the curriculum (or even better - their maths GCSE would consist of constructing their own programming code!), then the kind of closed system of Apple won't have a place in the world, but before then, I just prefer to go with the Steve Jobs route personally. I want to go about my life, or more, my extended existence of the physical world and the virtual, in a way that doesn't hinder my enjoyment of it.

For the moment, I feel that Steve Jobs gave me that, and I feel the team at Apple want to give me that. Until somebody comes along and makes something more intuitive and pleasant, I will continue to pay that premium, because I don't see it as a premium on the product - it's a premium on the life I want to lead, and a premium on the ease with which I live it.

And for that all, I thank you Steve, and wish you luck, Tim.

Last thoughts on the riots

I came across Charlie Brooker's comments (here) on the riots today amongst the great wealth of articles on the topic. It starts off brightly enough, but I find it just glib by the end. Unfortunately, that's been the media response especially on the left - "they're just a bunch of idiots - nothing to look at here" with some nuance and talk about cuts and fabrics in between. On the right, it's been a lot worse, first with the "CANNONS!" and then with the Starkeys.

I guess I could go into a whole diatribe at this point about how the fact that every talking head has to comment on these things, and how everyone in the media has to dissect (yes, Charlie Brooker, you may think you're just skirting the issue in search of a non-pontificating plateau - a plateau all the same I may add - but you're doing just that, albeit with some humour/facetiousness/glib sarcasm)... but I won't. I think it's actually a good thing to do a little bit of soul-searching.

The problem to me is that all these comments are superficially seeking the middle ground between the right and the left, but the effect is still to divide: I'm not saying there is a middle way, but the truth is, I think both sides have it right to an extent. Perhaps this is an outbreak of multiculturalism gone wrong and welfarism turned on its head; perhaps it's hopelessness through social exclusion and not enough of a grand embracing society. But again, these things can be completely applied to all walks of life, and even to Western culture if someone really is going to be broad enough.

Now, I don't want to be like the sometimes-execrable Thomas Friedman (though not completely in this column), but this all does lead me down the path of thinking that the West is in decline. Not for our economic power, though that is stagnating happily enough, but perhaps the times when we could rip off the developing world for their resources and our own populations for their labour, really are gone, and we can't afford any more to predicate societies on the supposition of growth and excess (I'll write more about this in a future blog post hopefully). I would hope that the idea of Western solidarity will win the day, though the idea of interconnected societies and communities seem so far removed from everyday thinking now that I'm not sure that we can get there. 

But then again, was it ever there? Did the European nobility not feel more at ease with their foreign counterparts than with their own farmers? Did this notion of late-19th/early 20th Century of enlightened national democracy really ever exist outside those times? I mean, even the gradual stepping stones toward ever-closer unions in the world means that we all feel closer to one another, worker by worker, banker by banker, merchant by merchant, but over still over borders - though maybe not within society. Now, you could chalk this all up to the fact that it's impossible, but in this day and age of a wealth of information, you will get less ivory-tower knowledge only accessible to the few and therefore you will get some semblance of possible equality.

The great difference between all of the different strands of society that this will throw up is that you might (in the west at least) get a situation where you there will be those that are interested in bettering themselves and those that are not. That will be the only distinction. There will be those that will feel connected to the world and all of its learning and experience and material possibilities, and there will be those that can only see past their own noses. Perhaps this is my conclusion from the riots - the real tragedy is that they could only go and grab that what was right in front of them everyday. They had almost no concept of the fact in the inoppressive state we live in, with enough violence and ambition, they could go and grab John Lobb shoes in St. James' instead of a pair of Nike's they might have to throw away in 6 months; they could go to a great restaurant and make the proprietors cook up great food for them (ok, not the Ledbury), rather than stuff their faces with Haribo from their local shops; they could rob a gallery and try and sell the art to private collectors who are themselves not interested in their provenance; they could even go to parliament and attempt to get something changed with a protest, or a violent coup rather than go up against the local beat. The fact that they stayed within their own borders and communities means that the old adage of the happy ignorant man holds true, even to destruction. Nothing from their loot will have the quality that they could enjoy, because they remain ignorant of its value and of the more valuable they could go after in its stead.

I will probably retract and modify the conclusions in some way, because I fear that I'm being too disparaging to the wonders of mass production, amongst other things. And, to anticipate, this isn't about snobbery and the wonders of the "finer things in life", but about having lasting experiences with things that require you to have knowledge of how they come into this world. If your entire experience of the world is the local representation of that process, then that is self-inflicted ignorance and no amount of violence will remove that passivity of their own thought-process.

Riot links

I thought I'd at least share a few things that I've maybe cross-posted elsewhere.

Social worker on the riots
Police officer on the riots
Interesting take by a former Croydonite
Don't particularly agree, but worth a read also
More on why this is the end of England as we know it...
Guardian weighs in with who did what and why
And the FT - I like this guy's humanist touch

...and one to say it's the same as it ever was

London riots

Haven't really been compelled to write anything in a while, but the riots in London have given me pause to think about what's going on.

I think the points have been made that the riots are really an expression of disenchantment manifested through material gain, which is of course the wrong action to take. However, all day, while wanting to castigate the perpetrators of the actions more and more for destroying my beloved London and in meaningless carnage, I've wanted to find ways to think of why they're somehow justified. It leads me to think that the problem is really societal - in the same way that a trader is rewarded for finding a dumb client to take his worthless stocks and CDS off his books; the same way that a real estate developer will develop a building by cutting corners that means he's only building a house for the next 20 and not 100 years; in the same way that an actor will get his agent to negotiate a fee on a film which means that the supporting cast will be of a lesser calibre... it's all a product of a culture of our civilisation in which individual rapaciousness is somehow justifiable by the company that person keeps: I'm sure all of the above examples could quote a bunch of friends/enemies/colleagues/shareholders/rival companies who would do the same thing flashes/blinks/flaps in unthinking/automatic logic. And it's this that justifies it. And then you get one or two who do corroborate that kind of cynicism, and it makes it ok. In a sense, this is what true competition is, and thus, meritocrats find that kind of thinking appealing, because only with true competition do you get growth.

I beg to differ.

The problem for me is that this kind of thing was never intended as good capitalism, and it's not justifiable for a democratic society. It bands together all things that were always seen as evil - avarice, envy, covetousness, etc. because those are always the momentary impulses that we all have to suppress if we really want to not just think of others, but think of for ourselves in the long run. But when you glorify the institute of short term gains and you put it under the heading of decision-making, then you really do get a society which becomes very self-interested.

I don't mean to conflate too many things together, but I really think that unless we start looking to an ethos where people are rewarded for more for long-term projects, which have to win out over periods of time, then there will be no great social effect. Short-termism destroys more potential than it unlocks, and in the case of the riots, it shows how much passing opportunism is a terrible thing to try and base a measure of success on.

Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that this is the typical mode of people that work in professions as I quoted, and that's also not to discount all of the people on the street as opportunists (some are legitimate protesters, others are just common idiots), but what I mean is that as a society, we haven't really explained it to ourselves the kind of fallacy behind that sort of thinking. It is not taught in our schools (where short-termism has won the war over longform expression in any case), it's not carried by our media (which is increasingly interested in the sounbite narrative of adversarial contests), it's not espoused by any kinds of leaders (where we hail those primarily who came from nothing to great power) and least of all it doesn't find it's expression in art (where the succinct expression of a simple idea, beat, joke, point is the pinnacle of artistic endeavour). With odds like these, and no possibility of weaving everything together to form a rational context, no wonder nihilism seems like a pretty viable way out.