As you're no doubt aware -- you'd have to be living on Pluto to miss it -- Apple have been making leaps and bounds in many fields these past few years, not the least in how happy they're making the bankerscum. With US$72.8 billion in cash reserves, Apple's net worth surpassed Microsoft and Intel combined last week ... yet they don't pay dividends.
What exactly is it that makes Apple so successful? What is it Apple do that makes people shell out premium prices for their iDevices? Why can't other IT companies do what Apple do? I mean, it's not like Apple actually invent anything (despite their press releases). What is it about Apple products that makes their customers go back again and again?
The simple answer: the geeks are not in charge at One Infinite Loop. And this is their single biggest advantage over everyone else, and what allows Apple's profits to climb steadily whilst every other sector of IT is in a net-worth downhill slide that's been going on for nearly two years.
What is it that makes the tech-savvy Windows and/or linux user despise Apple products and deride owners of fruit-bearing electronics as "fanboys" and "stupid" and other derogatory remarks?
Because he resents and fears Apple's approach of taking power out of the hands of the specialists and restoring it to the common man.
Geeks spend a lot of their lives amassing knowledge in how to coerce powerful but badly designed & implemented information technology that other geeks have foisted onto the general public, and along comes Steve with the same technology that does the same things which not only has been redesigned to perform without needing specialist knowledge, but is essentially self-maintaining.
Geeks recommend Windows and *nix and their dependent hardware to people because the problems inherent with them guarantee they'll keep needing to come back to work around those problems. It validates their existence. Geeks who recommend Apple are recommending themselves out of a job.
Geeks are forever coming up with different ways of doing things, adding extra features, more choice, expanded flexibility, more options, without any real understanding of what people actually want. They become puzzled when their new ideas and new methods are ignored by the market, mistakenly assume there was something fundamentally wrong with them, and come up with even more new ideas, more new options, which meet the same reception. Because geeks all share an almost-identical mindset, they become enthused and pick up the new ideas and run with them because they mesh with how they already think, and eventually one variant will catch the attention of a technologically-incompetent power broker and it will end up in something that actually sells.
What geeks seem incapable of is a funtamental aspect of human psychology -- it's not figuring out what people want that matters, it's understanding what people don't want. They don't want a universe of options, they don't want complexity, and they definitely do not want to learn new skills. They don't want choice, and they don't want change. Anything new that comes along has to fit in with what they already know, otherwise they feel uncomfortable. If they are presented with too many choices, they become confused, and frustrated.
People resent being asked to step out of their comfort zones.
For the last thirty-odd years we've had an ever-growing number of technologically masterful but socially inept people (the geek) generating hundreds and thousands of different ways we can use technology, with a fraction of a percent being good enough to gain acceptance with greater humanity. The once vibrant IT industry that grew out of the personal computer boom of the late 70's has become an autistic, wheel-chair bound cripple that moves forward in fits & starts because it is suffering from geek. Code manglers move up the corporate ecosphere to become project managers and CEOs, with new geeks flowing in to fill shoes and make new ideas, the end result is an industry that is socially inept to the very roots and has absolutely no idea of what it is people actually want. It churns out minor variant after minor variant of the same thing over & over, and people buy them because geeks keep telling them they need it. Trouble is, 95% of the variants have problems, or are too complex, or are too expensive in terms of time, efficiency and effectiveness, so it gets dumped and another one bought, and that gets dumped and another one bought.
The end result is that you end up pissing people off with problematic products for so long that they've grown jaded and have gone back to pencil & paper, leaving several hundred thousand geeks scratching their heads wondering where they went wrong.
Along comes Steve Jobs, a strange man with no innate technical know-how, but the gift of seeing the bigger picture, finding out exactly what it is that pisses people off, choosing the right technologies & tricks to eliminate them, and being stubborn enough and charismatic enough to see his visions become reality. Steve is an early adherent to concepts first put forward by PARC alumnus Alan Kay, and his philosophies are what guide Apple:
- Teach computers how humans work, never teach humans how computers work.
- Sweat the small stuff so they don't have to.
- For technology to be accepted, it must become invisible in the environment.
- Interface first.
Business wants to ensure you keep buying and buying, doesn't matter if they make videocards, mobile phones, toothpaste or toilet paper. Apple have looked at what everyone else has been doing, found out what people don't like, and turning the complex into an appliance. Make people's lives easier and they'll happily pay the up front premium, and keep coming back because they finally found something that works like they do. Apple products do not make people more stupid, it makes them complacent and raises their expectations of technology in general.
Brand loyalty arises from satisfying people's desires, and only Apple seem to have perfected the better mousetrap.
Telling people to read the manual is also something Apple don't believe in. Geeks say "If you want the user to read the manual, write a better manual." The user interface & HCI specialists' rejoinder is, "If your product needs a manual then you're doing it wrong."
2011-06-14
Atheism & Science Are Religions Too, Y'Know
I cannot help but giggle inanely when people say they are an atheist and that they "believe in science". Why? Constable Dorfl, please step forward:
Science is a religion. Really. You go to a church, some guy up the front reads from a big book and says "this is how the world works". You go to a physics tute, some guy up the front reads from a big book and says "this is how the world works." I don't really see a lot of difference, do you?
Look, science says you're meant to question everything until you get proof that doesn't change. But by their own definition, proof can only be ascertained by direct experience. What are you going to do, disbelieve the fundamental laws of physics until you've replicated every single possible experiment for yourself and from that, deduce Boyle's Law and the Theory of Relativity from just your own evidence? Nope, you take it on faith that these guys with more letters after their names than in them know what they're on about.
"We have effectively in science a one party system with a deep commitment to a particular faith. Most scientists, and indeed I myself, have been taught to look at animals, plants and people as being entirely purposeless, living organisms as having originated purely by chance. Lacking any meaning, any value, simply there as animate, automatic mechanisms that can be explained in terms of ordinary physics and chemistry. Many people within science have become very wedded to this mechanistic model, and indeed for some people it has become a kind of religion, and therefore they experience any questioning of this model as an attack on their most fundamental acts of faith. Unfortunately, more and more modern science, no matter which doctrine you care to look at, is rapidly showing that this mechanistic model, this reductionist outlook on science, is proving to be more and more untenable, it just doesn't work, and this of course makes a lot of traditional scientific thinkers very unhappy."
-- Rupert Sheldrake (double first honours Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge, Knox doctorate in philosophy & history at Harvard, Vice Chancellor of Research Fellows at Britain's Royal Society, and Senior Scholar of the Perrott-Warwick School of Parapsychology at Trinity College, Cambridge)
"Possibly the most absurb belief amongst my peers is that what we know [as the body of scientific knowledge] is immutable, and that once a theory has been proven by the scientific method the knowledge thus gained is unchangeable. Too much importance is placed on what we do know, and far too much effort spent on discrediting and denying anything which does not readily slot into place within the current body of scientific knowledge, or anything which attempts to change that knowledge with new facts. What is truly important is what we still don't know." -- Sir Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal, Baron Rees of Ludlow, Plumian Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics, Cambridge)
Accept nothing. Question everyting. All truths are subjective, all facts are relative. The only thing in the entire universe which does not change, is change. The only thing you, as a human being, can ever accept as a truth or a fact is what enters your brain by direct sensorial input. Anything that happens outside the confines of your own skull is thus, by its very nature, questionable.
Reality only exists because we agree to it. When reality shifts, the greement has been changed.
Joseph Campbell, mythologist and theologian, once examined the core teachings of all the world's major and many minor religions, and discovered that the similarities were far too frequent to be considered coincidence. Central to virtually every religion and every system of siritual belief we find the Golden Rule:
'Atheism Is Also A Religious Position,' Dorfl rumbled.(Thanks for that, Terry)
'No it's not!' said Constable Visit. 'Atheism is a denial of a god!'
'Therefore It Is A Religious Position,' said Dorfl. 'Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.'
'Did you read those pamphlets I gave you?' said Visit suspiciously.
'Yes. Many Of Them Did Not Make Sense. But I Should Like To Read Some More.'
'Really?' said Visit. His eyes gleamed. 'You really want more pamphlets?'
'Yes. There Is Much In Them That I Would Like To Discuss. If You Know Some Priests, I Would Enjoy Disputation.'
'All right, all right,' said Sergeant Colon. 'So are you going to take the sodding oath or not, Dorfl?'
Dorfl held up a hand the size of a shovel. 'I, Dorfl, Pending The Discovery Of A Deity Whose Existence Withstands Rational Debate, Swear By The Temporary Precepts of A Self-Derived Moral System—'
'You really want more pamphlets?' said Constable Visit.
Sergeant Colon rolled his eyes.
'Yes,' said Dorfl.
...
'Excuse Me,' said Dorfl.
'We're not listening to you! You're not even really alive!' said a priest.
Dorfl nodded. 'This Is Fundamentally True,' he said.
'See? He admits it!'
'I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Believe You Will Not Find A Single Atom of Life—'
'True! Let's do it!'
'However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process.'
There was silence.
'That's not fair,' said a priest, after a while. 'All anyone has to do is bake up your dust again and you'll be alive ...'
There was more silence.
Ridcully said, 'Is it only me, or are we on tricky theological ground here?'
There was more silence.
Another priest said, 'Is it true you've said you'll believe in any god whose existence can be proved by logical debate?'
'Yes.'
Vimes had a feeling about the immediate future and took a few steps away from Dorfl.
'But the gods plainly do exist,' said a priest.
'It Is Not Evident.'
A bolt of lightning lanced through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armour formed puddles around his white-hot feet.
'I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument,' said Dorfl calmly, from somewhere in the clouds of smoke.
Science is a religion. Really. You go to a church, some guy up the front reads from a big book and says "this is how the world works". You go to a physics tute, some guy up the front reads from a big book and says "this is how the world works." I don't really see a lot of difference, do you?
Look, science says you're meant to question everything until you get proof that doesn't change. But by their own definition, proof can only be ascertained by direct experience. What are you going to do, disbelieve the fundamental laws of physics until you've replicated every single possible experiment for yourself and from that, deduce Boyle's Law and the Theory of Relativity from just your own evidence? Nope, you take it on faith that these guys with more letters after their names than in them know what they're on about.
"We have effectively in science a one party system with a deep commitment to a particular faith. Most scientists, and indeed I myself, have been taught to look at animals, plants and people as being entirely purposeless, living organisms as having originated purely by chance. Lacking any meaning, any value, simply there as animate, automatic mechanisms that can be explained in terms of ordinary physics and chemistry. Many people within science have become very wedded to this mechanistic model, and indeed for some people it has become a kind of religion, and therefore they experience any questioning of this model as an attack on their most fundamental acts of faith. Unfortunately, more and more modern science, no matter which doctrine you care to look at, is rapidly showing that this mechanistic model, this reductionist outlook on science, is proving to be more and more untenable, it just doesn't work, and this of course makes a lot of traditional scientific thinkers very unhappy."
-- Rupert Sheldrake (double first honours Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cambridge, Knox doctorate in philosophy & history at Harvard, Vice Chancellor of Research Fellows at Britain's Royal Society, and Senior Scholar of the Perrott-Warwick School of Parapsychology at Trinity College, Cambridge)
"Possibly the most absurb belief amongst my peers is that what we know [as the body of scientific knowledge] is immutable, and that once a theory has been proven by the scientific method the knowledge thus gained is unchangeable. Too much importance is placed on what we do know, and far too much effort spent on discrediting and denying anything which does not readily slot into place within the current body of scientific knowledge, or anything which attempts to change that knowledge with new facts. What is truly important is what we still don't know." -- Sir Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal, Baron Rees of Ludlow, Plumian Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics, Cambridge)
Accept nothing. Question everyting. All truths are subjective, all facts are relative. The only thing in the entire universe which does not change, is change. The only thing you, as a human being, can ever accept as a truth or a fact is what enters your brain by direct sensorial input. Anything that happens outside the confines of your own skull is thus, by its very nature, questionable.
Reality only exists because we agree to it. When reality shifts, the greement has been changed.
Joseph Campbell, mythologist and theologian, once examined the core teachings of all the world's major and many minor religions, and discovered that the similarities were far too frequent to be considered coincidence. Central to virtually every religion and every system of siritual belief we find the Golden Rule:
• Baha'i: "Lay not on any soul a load that you would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things you would not desire for yourself." -- Baha'u'llah, GleaningsY'know what's sad? The two fastest-growing religious cults -- atheism and science -- don't have a golden rule.
• Hinduism: "This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you." -- Mahabharata 5:1517
• Buddhism: "Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." -- Udana-Varga 5:18
• Taoism: "Regard your neighbour's gain as your own gain, and your neighbour's loss as your loss." -- T'ai Shang Kari Ying P'ien 213-218
• Christianity: "In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law." -- Jesus, Gospel of Matthew 7:12
• Unitarianism: "We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." -- Unitarian Principle
• Judaism: "What is hateful to you, do not do to others. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary." -- Hillel, Shabbat 31a
• Islam: "Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself." -- The Prophet Muhammad, Hadith
• Wicca / Paganism: "As so long as ye harm none, do what you will be the whole of the law."
A Potted History of Jesus Christ (or, What The Church Doesn't Want You To Know)
Issua ibn Iosep Hajeduhim ba Bet'lehim was an itinerant wanderer of Arabic descent from the regions surrounding the Dead Sea of the Roman Imperial District of Judea, in what is now known as Jordan. Brought up as a strict Essene Jew, as a child he learned the simple ascetic belief-system that governed the Essene way of life. His calm yet inquisitive nature, excellent memory, and aptitude with both the spoken and written forms of his native tongue, meant it was expected he would enter the priesthood, but he ultimately left his family & community as a young man of some fifteen or sixteen years of age to find his own way in the world instead.
Some years later, Issua ended up at a Buddhist monastery in the Jagannath region of western India, an area still rich in a blend of basic Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Monastic texts described him as "a young Yida [Arab], dark of skin but light of spirit for the ways of Buddha are as air to him", who became an acolyte and then a mendicant teacher and healer for the region. After a few years, he decided to return to his homeland.
After rejoining the Essene communities of Jerusalem, he became dismayed to see how downtrodden the people had become under the rule of the Romans and the ruling theocrats, the Pharisee Jewish elite, and began to teach others the ways of living he had learned amongst the people of India, who still managed to lead a fulfilling, harmonious life despite the opression of the Brahmin rulers. Like any idea which seemed to offer escape from the opression of their elders, the young people took to Issua's ideas with enthusiasm, and despite his upbringing this notoriety prompted him to resume his mendicant ways, traveling across Judea teaching this new belief. Like Siddhartha Gautama did several hundred years before him, he roamed the country from vilage to town to city with several self-styled disciples and acolytes, using his fame as a healer to attract people, and his natural talent as a storyteller to spread his ideas wrapped up in parables.
With notoriety as both a highly skiller healer and spellbinding storyteller spreading before him, the sick, the infirm, the dissatisfied and the curious flocked to the larger towns along Issua's route to the northern border. it did not take long for news of the crowds Issua was getting to reach the ears of the Holy Roman Empire and the Pharisees; Issua's basic message was one of respect, harmony and self-trust, and as all he was doing was teaching people how to have a better life and was not actively advocating rebellion against the Romans or the Pharisees, they were content to just keep a watchful eye.
During a stop-over to heal and preach in the large town of Migdal, on the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Issua healed a young woman named Miryam, and she became a daily visitor to Issua's camp to hear him speak. Sharp of mind herself, her frequent and insightful questions caught Issua's attention, and being both young adults, mutual attraction took its course and they fell in love. As they were both practicing Jews, they did it 'by the book', petitioned Miryam's family for permission to marry, and on return to Migdal several months later, were married in the large synagogue that served the region around Galilee. Miryam's insights and deep understanding of Issua's teachings ensured her place among the inner circle of Issua's growing ministry, and disciples would often turn to her for interpretations and understanding, as well as being the public female face of Issua's movement. Miryam eventually bore two children by Issua, a son and a daughter.
When any public movement grows large enough, you will get hot-heads, and Issua's ministry had its fair share of militant idealists. Issua and the inner circle tried to distance themselves from the hot-heads, but this was all the Romans & Pharisees needed to deal with what they were now seeing as a political threat to their hold on power. In Jerusalem, he was taken at spear-point by Roman legionaries, made to sit through a sham trial of heresy by the Pharisees using a paid stooge to testify against Issua, and then sentenced by the Pilate to be executed by crucifiction, ironically only a few miles north of where he had been born just over thirty years earlier.
Some three hundred years later, with the rapid rise to popularity of Issua's version of Judaism threatening to replace the religous pantheon of gods that formed the backbone of the failing Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine set plans into motion to adopt this new religion as the official Roman religion. Realising that the Roman empire could no longer maintain its absolute rule as a power through military might, the only chance the Empire had of surviving was to become a theocratic power instead. To this end, the First Council of Nicaea was formed to gather, codify and edit a mixture of the available gospels with the brutal aspects of Rome's vengeful pantheon of gods so they were acceptable to the Roman people. As the Roman people (and their subjugated cultures) were used to the concepts of gods (or a god), the Council decided to make Issua a demigod, removed all reference to his marriage to Miryam and portrayed her as a repentant prostitute, and because Rome and the theocrats were male, deliberately excluded the three gospels written by women, and created the myth of the virgin birth.
To ensure that this new religion became the official and only verson and the books chosen by the Nicean council were the only accepted "canon", one Bishop Athanasius decreed that all non-canonical books and gospels to be found and destroyed, and decreed that anyone who did not accept the 'new' religion were to be killed. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church was born.
Much of the original teachings of Issua did survive the pogrom of destruction, with several sub-sects going to great lengths to hide un-edited copies away from the long arm of Constantine and his pet bishopric. Today, the purest form of the original teachings of Issua can be found in the Egyptian Coptic Church. The oldest surviving texts of the first gospels are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi Library, and translations show an almost perfect match with today's Coptic and surviving Gnostic gospels. Much to the Roman Catholic Church's chagrin, the rulers of Egypt at the time decided not to hand over these holy texts, but keep them temselves as a national historic treasure available to all scholars, instead of being locked away in the Vatican's library and out of reach of all but the highest-placed clergymen of the See.
Issua is, of course, better known as Jesus Christ, aka Jesus of Nazareth, and his wife Miryam is otherwise known as Mary Magdalene.
Some years later, Issua ended up at a Buddhist monastery in the Jagannath region of western India, an area still rich in a blend of basic Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Monastic texts described him as "a young Yida [Arab], dark of skin but light of spirit for the ways of Buddha are as air to him", who became an acolyte and then a mendicant teacher and healer for the region. After a few years, he decided to return to his homeland.
After rejoining the Essene communities of Jerusalem, he became dismayed to see how downtrodden the people had become under the rule of the Romans and the ruling theocrats, the Pharisee Jewish elite, and began to teach others the ways of living he had learned amongst the people of India, who still managed to lead a fulfilling, harmonious life despite the opression of the Brahmin rulers. Like any idea which seemed to offer escape from the opression of their elders, the young people took to Issua's ideas with enthusiasm, and despite his upbringing this notoriety prompted him to resume his mendicant ways, traveling across Judea teaching this new belief. Like Siddhartha Gautama did several hundred years before him, he roamed the country from vilage to town to city with several self-styled disciples and acolytes, using his fame as a healer to attract people, and his natural talent as a storyteller to spread his ideas wrapped up in parables.
With notoriety as both a highly skiller healer and spellbinding storyteller spreading before him, the sick, the infirm, the dissatisfied and the curious flocked to the larger towns along Issua's route to the northern border. it did not take long for news of the crowds Issua was getting to reach the ears of the Holy Roman Empire and the Pharisees; Issua's basic message was one of respect, harmony and self-trust, and as all he was doing was teaching people how to have a better life and was not actively advocating rebellion against the Romans or the Pharisees, they were content to just keep a watchful eye.
During a stop-over to heal and preach in the large town of Migdal, on the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee, Issua healed a young woman named Miryam, and she became a daily visitor to Issua's camp to hear him speak. Sharp of mind herself, her frequent and insightful questions caught Issua's attention, and being both young adults, mutual attraction took its course and they fell in love. As they were both practicing Jews, they did it 'by the book', petitioned Miryam's family for permission to marry, and on return to Migdal several months later, were married in the large synagogue that served the region around Galilee. Miryam's insights and deep understanding of Issua's teachings ensured her place among the inner circle of Issua's growing ministry, and disciples would often turn to her for interpretations and understanding, as well as being the public female face of Issua's movement. Miryam eventually bore two children by Issua, a son and a daughter.
When any public movement grows large enough, you will get hot-heads, and Issua's ministry had its fair share of militant idealists. Issua and the inner circle tried to distance themselves from the hot-heads, but this was all the Romans & Pharisees needed to deal with what they were now seeing as a political threat to their hold on power. In Jerusalem, he was taken at spear-point by Roman legionaries, made to sit through a sham trial of heresy by the Pharisees using a paid stooge to testify against Issua, and then sentenced by the Pilate to be executed by crucifiction, ironically only a few miles north of where he had been born just over thirty years earlier.
Some three hundred years later, with the rapid rise to popularity of Issua's version of Judaism threatening to replace the religous pantheon of gods that formed the backbone of the failing Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine set plans into motion to adopt this new religion as the official Roman religion. Realising that the Roman empire could no longer maintain its absolute rule as a power through military might, the only chance the Empire had of surviving was to become a theocratic power instead. To this end, the First Council of Nicaea was formed to gather, codify and edit a mixture of the available gospels with the brutal aspects of Rome's vengeful pantheon of gods so they were acceptable to the Roman people. As the Roman people (and their subjugated cultures) were used to the concepts of gods (or a god), the Council decided to make Issua a demigod, removed all reference to his marriage to Miryam and portrayed her as a repentant prostitute, and because Rome and the theocrats were male, deliberately excluded the three gospels written by women, and created the myth of the virgin birth.
To ensure that this new religion became the official and only verson and the books chosen by the Nicean council were the only accepted "canon", one Bishop Athanasius decreed that all non-canonical books and gospels to be found and destroyed, and decreed that anyone who did not accept the 'new' religion were to be killed. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church was born.
Much of the original teachings of Issua did survive the pogrom of destruction, with several sub-sects going to great lengths to hide un-edited copies away from the long arm of Constantine and his pet bishopric. Today, the purest form of the original teachings of Issua can be found in the Egyptian Coptic Church. The oldest surviving texts of the first gospels are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi Library, and translations show an almost perfect match with today's Coptic and surviving Gnostic gospels. Much to the Roman Catholic Church's chagrin, the rulers of Egypt at the time decided not to hand over these holy texts, but keep them temselves as a national historic treasure available to all scholars, instead of being locked away in the Vatican's library and out of reach of all but the highest-placed clergymen of the See.
Issua is, of course, better known as Jesus Christ, aka Jesus of Nazareth, and his wife Miryam is otherwise known as Mary Magdalene.
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