I’m not going to harp on Yo, except to point out that Yo is ambiguous enough that content and context will need to be bundled back in by its users. Otherwise, the future of Yo-style messaging looks pretty bleak. Though a joke, the previous link illustrates a big problem with The Great Unbundling, that of cognitive overload. Simplicity only works to a point. To stay with messaging, decoupling a message from its content introduces a lot of ambiguity. The closest example is the infamous Facebook “Poke.” Ostensibly designed to signal a friend that hasn’t updated their status in a while, its actual purpose was ambiguous enough that users created one: to solicit sex. If Yo is the first in a wave of content and context-free “messaging,” others will follow suit. Imagine a world where if you send a “Sup” instead of a “Yo” to an acquaintance or co-worker, it ends up misconstrued as a come-on, or something illicit. You’ll be begging to bundle content again.
There’s also the problem of proliferation. My iPhone home screen only holds 20 apps, while each page in Android’s app drawer holds about the same, depending on implementation. A user has to search, scroll, and remember which new app does the one thing that they used to do in the other app that doesn’t. Ordinary users learn how to use technology with a task-based mindset. Change one thing: add a step, move an icon, and they have to relearn the task all over again. One advantage of smart phone and tablet UIs is that they lend themselves well to fast task-based learning. It will still mess someone up to drop a change like splitting app functionality. Aaron Walter of MailChimp makes a point in a great essay on app unbundling:
People will, of course, muddle through as they always do. But, if unbundling doesn’t benefit the end-user, who does it benefit? App makers benefit from new downloads, and new avenues to collect data and serve ads. It’s good for juicing stagnant numbers, too. No wonder Mark Andreessen is a fan. Unbundling works best for people when it offers a net benefit to the user. Andreessen talks about how Google unbundled search, but in doing so it provided a better search. Facebook unbundled finding people from Google, but still provided a compelling place for people to go to. The new unbundled apps can offer an easier way to do the same old thing, but not all do. This is why the emphasis on unbundling makes me skeptical. I figure one day the novelty will wear off, the numbers will be juiced as much as possible, and the Swarms and Yos of The Great Unbundling will looked on as a failed experiment. If I’m proven wrong, I’ll be chagrinned, but the world will keep spinning.
The new, discounted iMac has the RAM soldered to the logic board.The Surface 3 is nigh-unrepairable.. We’re increasingly being locked out of the inside of our computer hardware, and there’s precious little we can do about it. These are symptoms of the appliance-ificiation of technology, which is itself a symptom of mass-adoption of technology by ordinary people instead of hobbyists. A personal computer is more akin to a refrigerator, or a washing machine to many users. They want something that works, something that’s in their price range, and they don’t want to have to open it up to fix it when it breaks.
Considering that so many technology people like myself came up in an era where owning a computer was both a mark of the sort of person we were and required learning the ins-and-outs of computer maintenance, this shift has unmoored more than a few. Witness the gnashing of teeth from the iFixIt team with each, increasingly unfixable revision of Apple hardware, or Andy Ihnatko’s frustration about the retina MacBook Pro’s omitting the Ethernet port. [1] I’ve been bitten by the unfixable nature of Apple hardware twice in recent months. My iPhone 5S was completely replaced twice. One due to a broken screen, which on the 5S can no longer be swapped out. Second, due to a fault with the vibrator motor in my replacement.
The truth is, annoying as it may be, people like us are increasingly the minority. Most people want their tech to be small, light, and cheap like kitchen appliances. Most people don’t care about upgradability and repairability. How many people fix their own cars—or even change their own oil? Even in the enterprise world, it’s easier and faster for IT departments to swap out broken hardware than fix it. And if “BYOD” becomes common, the onus will be on the end user who will just replace it. Laziness will win, at least as long as typical consumer priorities remain the same.
It’s something that Phonebloks and Google’s Project Ara miss, even beyond the technical issues of speed and power consumption. If the priorities of users are cost and size, it can become more expensive to work in expandability and repairability over a closed system. At the very least, it’s more parts that could break. The priorities of hackers, tech hobbyists, and others who bemoan the appliance-ificiation of technology are different than the priorities of the growing mass market. Either their priorities will have to change, or we will. My money isn’t on the former.
In fairness to Andy, he considered Ethernet to be a “Professional” feature, and the rMBP has “Pro” in the name. He doesn’t make the same complaint about the Air, which is the mass-market Apple laptop. ↩
Today, dollar vans and other unofficial shuttles make up a thriving shadow transportation system that operates where subways and buses don’t—mostly in peripheral, low-income neighborhoods that contain large immigrant communities and lack robust public transit. The informal transportation networks fill that void with frequent departures and dependable schedules, but they lack service maps, posted timetables, and official stations or stops. There is no Web site or kiosk to help you navigate them. Instead, riders come to know these networks through conversations with friends and neighbors, or from happening upon the vans in the street. — The New Yorker – “New York’s Shadow Transit”
Reading about the underground transportation in this city—happing right under my nose, walking distance from my apartment—had me thinking. People may harp on about how revolutionary the “sharing economy” is, or how Uber and Lyft are going to disrupt the taxi industry. As long as they’re priced for Silicon Valley incomes, contemporary ridesharing services aren’t going to help working class, ordinary people get to work any time soon. Part of what makes the shadow shuttles of New York so effective and essential is that they’re often tied to a community: immigrant, non-English speaking, or just plain poor. They go not only where the subway doesn’t, but also where no well-paid Uber or Lyft driver will go. It’s also proof that you don’t need smartphones, cloud hosting, VC funding, or other high tech crap to create something that actually improves people’s lives.
I own two watches: one is a Swiss Army analog quartz watch, which I wear for dressier occasions. The other is a Casio F–91W, the choice of discriminating terrorists. I wear them, yes, as fashion, but also for utility. It’s still easier to look at this thing on my wrist to check the time than it is to pull my phone out of my pocket and tapping the sleep button. No matter how complicated the innards might be, the surface purpose of a watch, as technology, is simple: show me the time. That level of simplicity and focus will help define what becomes a mainstream device, should wearable devices catch on. Craig Hockenberry’s theoretical iRing hits on this just a bit. Combining Apple’s existing flair for minimal designs with an equally minimalist set of functions would allow them to make a simple device. If it has to be a watch, why not just put it under the surface of a decent quality, simple, quartz analog watch? It’s not crazy—we know Jony Ive already likes analog watches.
One of Apple’s tricks is that, while they do sometimes drop something as mindblowing as an original iPhone on us, most of their new products are just a push into the adjacent possible. They combine a lot of pre-existing technologies with a knack for aesthetics and UI that other companies miss, and they often do so in ways that seem painfully obvious in hindsight. Truth is, if it really were that obvious, we’d all be wearing analog watches that are also smart pedometers and wrist mounted notifications for our phones. Or something else we hadn’t thought of. When, or even if there’s an “iWatch,” it’s going to be something that executes on an existing set of ideas in a new way that won’t be obvious at first. We’ll feel the impact later. Especially when the price comes down.
Until then, if anyone wants to let me borrow $400, I’ll totally pay you back.
At some point in the last year or so, I stopped moving. Inertia carried me for a while, but I came to rest, and that was a dangerous thing to do. When I moved to New York, the idea was to hit the ground running, and keep moving until I had achieved what I wanted. What I wanted was a good job doing exciting work, enough money to afford to pay my bills and rent a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood of Brooklyn or Queens with my partner, to be able to afford to go to a concert or two per month, and sock a little away for later.
Inside of two months, I thought I'd achieved at least part of that. I found a good job doing interesting work, and the potential to make decent money. It was a trap, and as co-workers flitted away by will or by force, and the work became duller, I realized I'd made a mistake. The mistake wasn't taking the job. The mistake was thinking that taking the job would mean I could stop moving for a while. When I came to my senses, I had the good fortune to be pushed back into motion, and now I'm getting up to speed.
There's one good thing that came from not moving. I was able to discover a direction for my professional life that I enjoyed. Though the work environment, and that particular job were not what I wanted, a lot of what I did in my job excited me, from email newsletter design to content curation, to website QA testing. It was a lucky break to get some experience in a new field that I really enjoyed and build some skills that can help wherever I go. 1 During that year, and into my unemployment and new job, I've also found some direction to my writing.
Direction helps. Being in motion is a good plan, but it carries risks. Moving without any plan is just as dangerous as standing still. When you're moving on uncharted territory, you don't know what lurks ahead. A few years ago, I spent a whole year out of work because I had no concrete direction. The whole point of my job search was to Not Look Back, and not take another shitty telemarketing job ever again. So, I ran, panicked across the dangerous Serengeti for years, exposed and at risk. Had I not been convinced to take a Civil Service examination, I might never had the chance to catch my breath and get employed before the unemployment ran out.
I read a great piece in Fast Company about how to deal with anxiety.
When you tell yourself to “calm down” you have to make two hidden steps, moving both arousal and valence. But moving from anxiety to excitement is easier: your body can stay in an amped-up physiological state, but you re-appraise your anxiety as excitement.
Anxiety is akin to moving without a direction, while excitement is knowing the direction to go. When you're anxious, the only thing you want is to stop being anxious. To get some place, any place, that's safe. When you're excited, you have a goal and you want to achieve it. You have direction. Goals and direction, however, should be flexible. If you're focused on one specific thing above all else, you miss out on other great opportunities that can make your life more interesting. It also gives you an option for when plans change and you've been cut off from the direction you wanted to go.
During my job hunt, multiple people have told me that my experience and skill set are “unique.” I've taken it as the compliment I assume it was intended to be. ↩