How It All Works

December 2, 2009

Alan Kay:

Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal – a sort of ‘voting’ situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.

From telegraph to telephone to cellphone.

From a smoking society to one that is primarily now non-smoking.

From three national TV networks to the fragmentation of TV via cable to the fragmentation of video viewing itself by the Internet.

And coming up next:

From primarily printed books to a flirtation with ePub eBooks to the mass adoption of digital books.

Supplemental reading:

Bellwether by Connie Willis


Who Ate Print Publishing’s Porridge?

December 2, 2009

Gholdilox and the three blog posts

… the publishing industry has nothing new to say, contribute, talk about, bitch about, kvetch about, etc. We haven’t had a new idea since Gutenberg, and yet we continue to pass around three blog posts over and over again, acting shocked and appalled every time we read the same thing for the 10,000,000th time.

This is hugely GTFOH funny.


One Step Closer To Apple Digital Books

December 2, 2009

Back in October, Gizmodo published this post: Apple to Indie Labels: iTunes LP Is Out of Your League

LPs aren’t being offered to indies and that there are only about 12 LPs being offered right now. They also said that iTunes charges a $10,000 production fee for them as well. So that pretty much edges out the indie market completely.

I was shocked by that because it all sounded so un-Apple-like. I didn’t do a post about it because I simply couldn’t believe it.

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The 7 Principles Of Apple

December 2, 2009

I’m not sure that Apple has anything as stupid as one of those Mission Statements cobbled together by marketing and PR Suits who believe hollow, pretty words = reality.

What I do think is that if we were able to overhear conversations at Apple, we’d be able to tease out the things that make that company do what it does. But we don’t need such eavesdropping power, however, because we can also derive Apple’s principles from its actions.

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The Original Kindle — From 1968!

December 2, 2009

This is captioned Alan Kay’s Dynabook mockup, first shown in 1968 over at Tablet PC Technology: The Next Generation.


Source: Wikimedia Commons

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Alan Kay

Not much new under the sun, eh?

Additional:

Wikipedpia: Dynabook entry
Wikipedpia: Alan Kay entry
Remembering the Dynabook