American modernism, Silicon Valley style

Jobs went further, however, he managed to create products that were designed like Porsches and made them available to everyone, via High Tech that transcended stylistic elements. An Apple product really was high technology and its form followed function, it went beyond the Porsche analogy by being truly fit for purpose in a way that a Porsche couldn’t, being a car designed for a speed that you weren’t allowed to drive. Silicon Valley capitalism had arguably delivered what the Soviets had dreamed of and failed, modernism for the masses. An iPhone really is the best phone you can buy at any price. To paraphrase Andy Warhol: Lady Gaga uses an iPhone, and just think, you can have an iPhone too. An iPhone is an iPhone and no amount of money can get you a better phone. This was what American modernism was about.

David Galbraith sees Steve Jobs and Donald Norman as kindred design spirirts. Norman has been commisioned to design Apple's new headquarters.

In a broader sense, Silicon Valley has minimized the value of scarcity, and in such a world, elevated the value of curation the retention of such curation. The web and services like YouTube, Spotify, and Google Books have unlocked previously rare and inaccessible content for everyone with an internet connection. It's an overwhelming mountain of content, and that's why microblogs like Twitter or Tumblr do such great business as ways to point a telescope at things we should pay attention to.

The Tudors...err, Tutors?

In many ways, it shouldn't be surrpising that in Hong Kong, where scoring well on public exams is so critical, tutors have become celebrities. The so called "Tutor Kings" can rake in a healthy living each year; when's the last time you saw your local Princeton Review math tutor tooling around in a Lamborghini?

This sounds like the basis for an Asian reality show or sitcom.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

This trailer for the upcoming adaptation of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy does the trick, doesn't it?

I have a soft spot for spy novels. While the current flavor is Nordic crime novels (the Millennium trilogy, Henning Mankell, et al), I still remember the first time I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The terse prose, the elevation of human deception to the level of a high stakes game, it's all good fun.

The original Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy starring Alec Guinness is brilliant, too. Like a thick grey, somber wool blanket to wrap oneself in on a cold, autumn night.

Imagine the past

Why is human memory less reliable than we expect? Perhaps because our mental model for how human memory works is wrong. We picture ourselves retrieving a memory from a data bank like a computer retrieving a file.

But MRI studies conducted by Daniel Schacter indicate that the way we remember something may be the same process we use to imagine the future. That is, our brain takes disjointed components and tries to assemble it on the fly into a coherent picture. A process like that is inherently susceptible to influence. We may imagine a rosy future for ourselves for a variety of reasons, but it may be just as likely that we wear rose-tinted glasses when it comes to our past as well.

Our brains process time in one direction, but if we were to reverse the direction, perhaps it would feel the same to us. That is, we'd be remembering the future and imagining the past.