Smart Phones and Time Travel

I saw and reviewed the 2011 movie The Man from the Future (Brazilian with English subtitles) yesterday, and noted that I liked the time traveler's use of his smartphone (he traveled back from 2011) to demonstrate to the people in 1991 that he was a time traveler.  He points out that his phone, which is a smaller version of the cellphones and mobile phones they already knew and were using, was also a computer, could take photographs, etc.  This familiarity with a mobile device made it easier for the people in 1991 to accept that the time traveler came from twenty years in the future - had he shown them something totally alien to their culture, it would have been a much steeper climb for them to make any sense of it and him.

But it occurred to me that a smartphone could be a useful passport to the past much further back than twenty years.  People as far back as the late 1870s knew about telephones, and in the 1840s about cameras.  Certainly most people in 1845 could have related to a small device that took pictures, and would have been intrigued by the time traveler's claim that it and he came from the future.

Of course, one problem with smartphones going through time is there would be no service, neither data nor wifi, in the past.  But that's ok.  The camera function would still work.  And for jaunts even further back in the past, before there were photographs, phone apps like the flashlight and mirror would be impressive.  And the smallness of the smartphone, a great advantage to us here in the present, would be a boon to the time traveler, being effortless to carry in a pocket.

Batteries would be a more serious limitation, and it's interesting, isn't it, that just as battery life is the Achilles heel of smartphones in our present, they would also bedevil the use of the smartphone by the time traveler - indeed, far more bothersome than for us, since the time traveler would have no way of replacing them, other than carrying along a supply of batteries for the trip, which would ultimately be exhausted.

Unless ... how about a solar-powered smartphone?  They're not yet here, but are beginning to be available.  That's the ticket.   Ok, add potential use for time travel as another reason I'm going to get one of these.

watch The Chronology Protection Case FREE on Amazon Prime

Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media

I forgot to mention this in September - my original doctoral dissertation, "Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media" (New York University, 1979), has been been published in paperback and Kindle.




from the blurb -

This is my original doctoral dissertation, which I submitted to New York University and successfully defended in  the Fall of 1978. The dissertation presents my "anthropotropic" theory of media evolution (anthropo = human; tropic = towards) which argues that as media evolve, they become increasingly human in function. Thus, telegraph gives way to telephone (we hear words not dots and dashes), photography changes from black-and-white to color, etc. The theory also explains why some media survive the advent of successor media and others do not: radio survived the advent of television because hearing without seeing is a natural mode of human communication (it gets dark every night and we still hear, we can easily close our eyes and continue to hear), whereas silent movies were obliterated by talkies (it is very difficult in the natural world to see without hearing something or other). The theory also predicts the creation of media that will enable us to access all kinds of information from any place in the world, any time, regardless of where we and that information might be - or, exactly what we now do with smartphones.

Hell on Wheels 3.3: Talking and Walking

Hell on Wheels 3.3 starts with a great little piece of anonymous media history - Bohannan smashing his finger as he hammers in the electrical connection at the top of a telegraph pole alongside the railroad. Telegraph and rail went up hand in hand in the middle of the 19th century, the partnership between communication and transportation - between walking and talking - that has always characterized our life on this planet.  The smartphone, which allows you to talk anywhere you may walk - or drive, or fly, or train - is but the latest embodiment of this coupling.

The telegraph connection plays a crucial role in Hell on Wheels 3.3.   Bohannan at first thinks Indians were responsible for an attack on his train crew and cattle.  He telegraphs the nearby US cavalry and tells them to hunt down the Indians and how "no mercy".  He later discovers that, actually, the Indians were not to blame.  But the troop commander chooses to ignore the second, correcting telegram that Bohannan sent along.

That commander is one racist piece of work, and speaks for lots that was wrong in America not only back then but today.  He relies on lame pseudo-science to pronounce the Indians sub-human, and even has a cracked theory to explain why the South lost the Civil War.  He's right that America was on its way to dominating the planet, but one wonders if America could have attained such a predominant position - which had the great benefit of defeating the Soviets and as well as Nazis - without the racist underpinnings that still afflict us.

Meanwhile, Bohannan continues to be a much sharper, redefined character in this third season of life and work on the railroad, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Hell on Wheels 3.1-2: Bohannan in Command

And see also  Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the Track, and the Telegraph ... Hell on Wheels 1.6: Horse vs. Rail ... Hell on Wheels 1.8: Multiple Tracks ... Hell on Wheels 1.9: Historical Inevitable and Unknown ... Hell on Wheels Season One Finale: Greek Tragedy, Western Style



#SFWApro

download Hell on Wheels season 3 on

Quantum Leaps into Journeyman on NBC!

I love time travel - hey, I've written one novel, The Plot to Save Socrates, which is completely time travel, and another, Borrowed Tides, in which time travel plays a role, and I've written half a dozen time travel stories, some of which have been nominated for awards, one of which was made into an award-nominated radio play and a low-budget movie* ... so, you can see how much I love the genre.

Among my favorite episodes of Star Trek are "The City on the Edge of Forever" (Star Trek: The Original Series) and "Yesterday's Enterprise" (Star Trek: The Next Generation). 12 Monkeys is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I really liked Deja Vu, too. And if we're talking classic science fiction, well, Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity is one of my all-time favorite novels, and Robert Heinlein's Door into Summer is right up there, too...

So, how does Journeyman stack up?

Well, it's off to a pretty good start.

Dan Vasser gets yanked around in time. Kevin McKidd plays the role well, and does have a timeless quality - likely because he was so memorable as Rome's Vorenus on HBO.

The getting yanked around gives Journeyman a Quantum Leapish flavor - and Quantum Leap was a pretty good series - but I have a feeling Journeyman will be better. Quantum Leap was mostly the story of the leaps, and only rarely (and powerfully) told the story of the leaper, Sam Beckett. But Journeyman, at least in the first episode, was if anything a little more focused on Vasser's story - more focused on that than the situation in the past he had to resolve (sent to do that by whomever or whatever, we do not quite know, as yet).

Since Dan Vasser's story looks pretty interesting, keeping that on the center stage of Journeyman looks to be a good move. The woman he was going to marry was killed on a plane crash. Moon Bloodgood as Livia Beale looks almost as scintillating as she did in ABC's shortlived Daybreak, and that's good, too. Turns out she was not killed, but is also part of this time-yanking business - I realized that a minute or so before it was revealed - and that's the kind of set-up I like to see in a time-travel story. Dan was already being touched by time travel 10 years before our story began tonight.

Meanwhile, Dan married Katie, who ten years ago was involved with Jack Vasser, Dan's brother. This also creates the makings of a nice hornet's nest of tension.

I also liked the way Journeyman handles gadgets. It looks like Dan has an iPhone in the present - he turns it sideways to see a video - and when he takes it or whatever cell phone it was to the past, the screen suddenly tells us no network. Hey, you don't have to travel to the past to get that message, but it was a nice touch.

I have high hopes for this series, and I'm looking forward to next week. I think Journeyman has the potential to be one of the best time-travel series ever on television...

*That would be "The Chronology Protection Case", the trailer for which you can see right here ...



and here's a free podcast of the complete radio play...

See also my reviews of Kevin McKidd as Vorenus in HBO's Rome

and my reviews of other Journeyman episodes ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ...7 ... 8 ... 9. Dan Unravels His Present ... 10. Jack's In! ... 11. Livia's Beau//Save the Newspaper, Save the World ... 12. The Perfect Time Travel Story ... Lucky 13


8-minute podcast analysis of Journeyman

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

YouTube As A Check on Police Brutality

How many of you have seen the tasering of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer? He was tasered by police after he was pulled away from the microphone by the same police, in the middle of asking John Kerry a series of questions about why he did not contest the election results of 2004.

If you haven’t seen the video of the incident, you can see it here -



Now, I’ve actually wondered about the same thing myself - about why Kerry didn’t contest the counts in Ohio, and several other states. Given the closeness of the election, and the stakes involved with a war going on, John Kerry should have erred on the side of leaving no stone unturned or possibility at large that either deliberate or accidental miscounting cost him the election.

But that’s not the point of this post - which is, bravo to YouTube for making videos of police brutality, such as occurred with Andrew Meyer in Florida, more accessible than ever to the general public.

Video allowed the public to see the Rodney King beating - nothing the police said in its aftermath could contradict what the public was able to see with its own eyes. YouTube has taken this once step further - allowing us to see such videos without having to wait for television to show them to us. The iPhone is helping as well, by allowing people to see such videos when they are away from their desktops and laptops. All of this is by no means stopping police from trampling on First Amendment rights - but it is making it harder than ever for them to get away with it.

On the one side, we have retrograde forces like the commissioners of the FCC, and incompetent out-of-control police, who each in their ways threaten our freedom. On the other hand, we have miracles of technology, which speed us news of the FCC's misdoings, which provide immediate, irrefutable images of policy brutality and misconduct.

Perhaps for the first time in American history, these technologies have made freedom-loving people more equal to the task of combating these totalitarian thugs. At very least, they can't pretend it never happened...

Calling For Federal Legislation to Protect iPhone Hackers

I posted a note yesterday in Light On Light Through about George Hotz’s unlocking of the iPhone - in his case, to work with his T-Mobile card - and how it relates to the history of intellectual property, so I thought I'd spread a little of the joy around here.

But first: I'm calling for Federal legislation to protect hackers like George Hotz - people who work to free equipment that they legally purchased - from threats of and actual law suits.

Hotz's good work seems to have unlocked all sorts of legal hounds, baying about dire consequences to hackers.

A little spin through history:

Although the Romans understood authorial attribution - plagiarism comes from the Latin for kidnapped - the notion of copyright as a legally enforceable right didn’t really begin until the printing press, and the monarchs who at first controlled their printers. Copyright was literally the right that monarchs dispensed to make copies. It took until 1710 and the Statute of Anne for England to make copyright a creator’s right.

And, of course, the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Invention made both copyright and patent often into corporate things.

Even so, corporations gave and give a huge amount of information away for free - that happens every time you hear a song on the radio.

Now, Apple could try to make its iPhones unhackable. But the idea that people who own a piece of property - such as an iPhone - could be sued for using it in a way sellers did not intend is ... plain and simply immoral and absurd.

George Hotz is technically protected under the current law. But apparently that's not good enough stop attorneys et al from offering grave predictions and perhaps thinly veiled threats - see The Boys From The DMCA Are Coming, for example - so let's push right back, and get our next Congress to pass a law which makes it always legal for people to do whatever they please to anything they legally purchase.

It's not a very radical concept, really.

And years from now, people will look back and wonder at how we ever got to the point where control over what you purchase was ever debatable.

Hats off to George Hotz!

Because ... locks are not the way of the digital age...

I just saw George Hotz on CNN, and since I can't very well applaud through the screen, I thought I might do it here:

Bravo, George, for unlocking iPhone!

What, exactly, does this mean?

The iPhone from Apple comes "locked" when purchased - meaning, it can only work with an AT&T sim card - you know, the card on which you have phone numbers from the phone you're currently using. The sim is a great enhancement to cell phone service - it means your directory is not hostage to the phone you're currently using.

But what is someone to do who buys an iPhone, but is currently using a phone with a sim from a non-At&T carrier? In George Hotz's case, that carrier was T-Mobile.

Well, the 17-year old took apart his iPhone, and after two months of tinkering and analyzing and soldering, he got his iPhone to work with his T-Mobile sim.

Which is exactly the way it should have been, all along.

Apple and AT&T may not like it, but what George Hotz did is perfectly legal - owners of cell phones have the right to put in whatever sim card they choose. Apple may have locked the iPhone, but George Hotz, having purchased his iPhone, had every right to unlock it, if he could.

I think he's taught Apple and AT&T a very important lesson in the digital age. It doesn't like locks.

See also about iPhones: ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and New York Times' David Pogue Sings "I Want An iPhone" to "My Way" and iPhone: Not Better iPod but New Species Media ... Mouth-Watering iPhone Commercial and the Real World ... Nano-iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ...

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Coleridge in the Digital Age: Cell Phone as Porlock

Who's Porlock?

Well, just about every literate person will recognize "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, A stately pleasure-dome decree..." and most will have heard the story behind it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was in an opium trance. He started writing that beautiful poem. Fifty-two equally splendid lines came forth- but Coleridge was interrupted by a knock on the door, from a "person on business from Porlock," according to Coleridge's notes...

And by the time he got back to his poem, he had lost it - leaving us just the fragment.

Some cynics claim that Coleridge made up the whole incident to explain his unfinished fragment - that there was no person from Porlock who interrupted him. Others, seeing some high moral ground in the story, accept it, and point to the pitfalls of drugs as its primary lesson.

I don’t know whether the story is true or false. But it has always struck me as having a completely different lesson: the vulnerability of the creative impulse, indeed our thoughts at any time, to interruption from the outside world.

And I’ve long held that this capacity to interrupt - to shatter our inner world when a call comes in at an inopportune time - is the one real drawback of the cellphone. The very power that the cellphone gives to make a call, to express ourselves at the instant we wish, is turned against us when we receive a call we would rather not have - or, even if we receive a call that would otherwise be welcome, at a different time.

Of course, we can turn off our phone - but that incurs social penalties, such as having to explain to callers why our phone was off.

But, optimist that I am, I can see a route to hope: had the iPhone or any cell phones with Internet connections existed back in the late 1790s, the person on business from Porlock might not have needed to pay a call on Coleridge in the first place. He might have received what he needed on the Internet, the access to which is entering a whole new realm of ease via cell phones. And maybe Coleridge, had he been writing "In Xanadu" on his iPhone or Blackberry, might have been able to retrieve more of his memory with the visceral stimulus of the device in hand. And here's the really crucial point- hold it, there’s someone knocking at my door-

When Will iPhone Make Its Debut In a Major Television Series?

Last night's episode of Californication - the new, hilarious Showtime series - had a scene which, for some reason, rang a real bell with me. Hank is writing a blog post for his new gig at Hell-A Magazine in Los Angeles, and his laptop freezes. He throws it on the floor, then goes out to a local Apple store - from which he writes and posts his story.

Now, actually, I was sort of doing the same thing from a local Starbuck's parking lot in the middle of the night a few weeks ago during a power failure - I was able to log on and buy some wi-fi - but the Apple store in Californication got me thinking: when will an iPhone make its first appearance on a television show - in which series?

Well, it won't be Battlestar Galactica, where digital media are banned - lest the humans be further compromised by Cylons - and the phones are attached to walls with wires. It won't be Lost, either, which is not quite yet in the present (though anything is possible after that mind-blowing Season 3 finale in May).

Otherwise ... well, if we're talking about the first appearance of an iPhone, we'd likely do better to look for shows playing in the Fall with new episodes - which would leave out 24 and its January new season debut. (Otherwise, 24 - suggested by Kabren Levinson, no relation, in response to my posing this question over on Pownce, and by Tenacious MC over on my iphonematters blog - would be a great choice.)

Let's also keep this question focused on major, scripted series. Chris Wolf said over my iphonematters blog that an iPhone was spotted on TLC's Big Medicine, but as Aaron H noted, this game is more fun when we stick with fictional characters. Obviously, iPhones have been on a lot on TV news shows already. But we can give Big Medicine a footnote.

OK - so major, scripted series ... certainly any of the Law and Orders, "ripped from the headlines," could sport an iPhone, and probably will, sooner or later. When that happens, I predict it will mostly likely be in the hands, or at least the view, of John Munch (Richard Belzer's digitally savvy character).

But let me offer a flat-out, unfuzzy prediction. I have no inside information, but I predict the first iPhone we'll see will be in .... Heroes ... on NBC ... on a late-November episode.

Why? Because Heroes is technologically cool and sharp, with characters moving around a lot in need of constant, explicit, multi-dimensional information (that's why 24 is a good bet, too). I bet there already may be an iPhone scripted for an episode (and, if not, who knows, maybe all of this talk might encourage that).

In any case ... let's check back here in the November, and see if I'm right ...




Further reading ...

Californication Continues

Galactica Dylan (spoilers)

Lost: Season 3 Finale (spoilers)

24: Season 6 Finale (spoilers)

Heroes: Season One Finale (spoilers)

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Paper, Stone, iPhone

People have been complaining about the big stack of paper printouts they have received from AT&T for their iPhone service. Some have been objecting almost as much to the paper delivery as to the bill, saying that if the iPhone were as a true harbinger of the future as its champions (including me) claim, its telephone carrier would have figured out a way to send the bill electronically.

But I doubt that paper’s really the issue. I've never seen anyone object to getting paper cash in hand.

Paper, of course, has long been waived around as an early item to be replaced by the digital revolution. I remember lots of talk and writing back in the 1980s about the "paperless office". It didn't happen.

I’ll let Sierra Waters, heroine of my novel The Plot to Save Socrates, explain why. Here’s what she’s thinking on the very first page of the novel:

...written on the only substance which could survive decades, maybe longer, without batteries, which required only the light of the sun to be read, or the moon on a good night, or a flickering flame when there was no moon. Paper. A marvelous invention. Thin and durable...

And paper also has what I call "reliable locatability" - what’s written on one part of a piece of paper today will be in the same place tomorrow. Interestingly, paper - like parchment, vellum, and papyrus - was initially invented as a means of liberating the written word from its carvings on stone. But in the digital age, one of the main advantages of paper is its durability.

Which is why, much as I dislike bills, I actually prefer getting them on paper. I like having handy copies of how I spend my money.

Meanwhile, if the history of phone and online service is any indication, iPhone AT&T service will sooner or later progress to very low, flat rates for huge amounts of data - which I doubt that anyone will be complaining about, whether on paper or screen.

See also The Secret Riches of the Panda

And, for more on the history and future of paper - The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Celebrating Prester John

For some reason, I was thinking of Prester John today. He was said, in the Middle Ages, to rule over a kingdom somewhere in the East, or at least somewhere not in Europe. He was reputed to have magical instruments, most amazing among them his "speculum," through he see could every one of his near and distant provinces. Like on television...

Scholars were caught up in this legend, and began calling their surveys and encyclopedias "specula" - speculum literature. There was a speculum of history, of astronomy, of alchemy, of morals. Even a speculum on fools.

Prester John's speculum, in other words, had expanded in its powers, to encompass not only the physical world but the realm of ideas. You know, like the Internet...

But does it matter what we call our wondrous devices today? Whether television, or Internet, or iPhone, what matters is they are real.

Our technology has taken us from the realm of myth to what we can keep on tables, or desks, in our very hands.

That's progress worth celebrating.

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Harry Potter and iPhone

Blackfriar's Marketing reports that buzz about Harry is not quite as much as the continuing buzz about iPhones, as of earlier today.

What's more significant is the enormous amount of buzz for each, which is no coincidence. What is iPhone, after all, if not an embodiment of some of the magic of Harry Potter, that any muggle with half a grand can carry right in hand?

The two, in other words, go hand in hand, as expressions of our yearnings for magical powers over time and space - in fiction and our everyday lives.

More about this in the latest episode of my Light On Light Through podcast - Harry Potter and the iPhone ...

And as soon as I finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - I should have the novel in hand in less than two hours - I'll be back here with a review...

See also about iPhones: Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and New York Times' David Pogue Sings "I Want An iPhone" to "My Way" and iPhone: Not Better iPod but New Species Media ... Mouth-Watering iPhone Commercial and the Real World ... Nano-iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ...

See also about Harry Potter:

The New York Times Spoils Harry Potter - A Little, But Still Too Much

The Elite Attack on Harry Potter

Harry Potter and the 3-D Phoenix movie review

Harry Potter and Spoilers: An Occasion for Basking

Harry Potter and the Refutation of Illiteracy

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Nano iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle

Way back in 1938 - in Nine Chains to the Moon - Buckminster Fuller coined a term, the "dymaxion principle," to describe a progression in technology that he was seeing all around him, and expected to see much more of in the future.

It was this: as technology became more advanced, it did more and more with less and less. Lighter, smaller, more flexible devices were more powerful.

Transistors, which would replace vacuum tubes, were right around the corner. Microchips were a few decades away. Two prime example of the dymaxion principle in operation.

It occurred to me, when I first read Fuller in the 1970s, that our brains are the ultimate embodiment of the dymaxion principle - we think, dream, plan, imagine, reason all from that kilogram of matter in our skulls.

It is therefore not surprising to learn that Apple will likely sometime next year replace its popular iPod Nano with a Nano iPhone. At first, the Nano iPhone will no doubt do less than the bigger, current model. But I predict that pretty soon, the standard iPhone will be both smaller than the current iPhone and more powerful ... all according to the dymaxion principle...

Indeed, this will happen, whether these initial reports are true or not...

See also: Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and New York Times' David Pogue Sings "I Want An iPhone" to "My Way" and iPhone: Not Better iPod but New Species Media ... Mouth-Watering iPhone Commercial and the Real World ... Harry Potter and iPhone ...

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Mouth-Watering iPhone Commercial and the Real World

There's a great commercial for iPhone - in which watching Pirates of the Caribbean leads to calling up a seafood restaurant to satisfy a craving for calamari...

I've loved seafood - calamari, clams, shrimp, mussels, lobster - for as long as I've been thinking about what the iPhone does - since the late 1970s....

And this mouth-watering commercial touches on one of the most profound impacts of the iPhone - it not only lets us go from the real world of cell phones into the virtual world of the Web (the revolutionary, obvious part) but from the virtual world of the Web (watching Pirates) to the real world of calling a restaurant.

That second kind of revolutionary move is not so obvious, and in some ways is even more revolutionary. With Skype, we can call a restaurant offline and make a reservation. But it is a program on a computer, and not as intrinsic and fundamental, and therefore not as reliable, as the cell phone function of the iPhone.

Seamless communication between the real and virtual worlds, going both ways, is the key to the future of communication. We can send java script online, but a real cup of java can't be reduced to electrons just yet. Until it can, web browsers which easily place phone calls to real restaurants are the next best thing.

See also: Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and New York Times' David Pogue Sings "I Want An iPhone" to "My Way" and iPhone: Not Better iPod but New Species Media ... Nano iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ... Harry Potter and iPhone ...


and ... I'll be talkin' iPhone on my weekly KNX1070 Sunday interview, 7:20am Pacific time, July 8

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

talking iPhone on KNX1070 Sunday morning

And ... I'll be talking about how I predicted the iPhone back in 1979, and its enormous impact now, on my weekly media interview by Todd Leitz on KNX1070 all-news radio out of Southern California tomorrow (Sunday) morning....

time: 7:20am Pacific time/10:20am Eastern time, you do the math for the rest

streaming live at www.knx1070.com ... hey, you can hear it on your iPhones... ... (you may have to register on the KNX1070 site - free - to get the streaming)...

interview should go about 7-8 mins...

NY Times David Pogue sings "I Want an iPhone" to "My Way"...

A great new lyric to "My Way," by The New York Times's David Pogue - a paean to iPhone....

Notes -

1. Pogue can carry a pretty good tune.

2. The bald guy is great - I'm wondering if he is a ringer? Nah ...

3. The New York Times says "no rights reserved" at the end of the video - this shows real savvy and awareness of the power of viral marketing. Kudos to the NY Times for breaking free of 19th-century corporate possessiveness.

Much better and more true than all the news that's fit to print...

See that, the iPhone is having beneficial effects on music, videos, and newspapers already...

See also: Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and iPhone: Not Better iPod But New Species of Media... Nano iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ... Harry Potter and iPhone ...


and ... I'll be talkin' iPhone on my weekly KNX1070 Sunday interview, 7:20am Pacific time, July 8

iPhone: Not Better iPod but New Species of Media

Steve Jobs said last January that the iPhone was "the best iPod ever," and now Rolling Stone, switched, and folks all over the Web are debating and assessing this point...

Which, I think, misses the point entirely.

Was television a better kind of radio? Was early word processing a better kind of typewriting? Was writing a better kind of speaking?

Of course - but those new media were much more - they were new media, which did things so far beyond their predecessors that they deserved and received a different name.

The "phone" in iPhone should signal that is a very different beast from the iPod. Sure, it plays MP3s and podcasts. But its telephone and web-play features make it an entirely different and unique kind of beast...

A new species in the evolution of media...

See also: Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and New York Times' David Pogue Sings "I Want An iPhone" to "My Way" ... Nano iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ... Harry Potter and iPhone ...


and ... I'll be talkin' iPhone on my weekly KNX1070 Sunday interview, 7:20am Pacific time, July 8

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed All Expectations

Interesting piece posted in Gizmodo by Wilson Rothman this morning - History Lesson: iPhone May Sell Fast, but not RAZR fast - which says that although 500,000 - 600,000 iPhones were sold over the weekend, Steve Jobs expects to sell only 10 million in the next 18 months.

Rothman goes on to point out that Motorola's RAZR sold 50 million in its first two years. He think Jobs is likely right that the iPhone won't achieve that, and attributes the slower growth to iPhone being perceived as being in the "smartphone" category, which has lower sales than more general cell phones.

I think that's an astute assessment - but I disagree.

First, a little background.

The evolution of media never runs smooth, and in fact is often wildly unpredictable when it comes to diffusion of new media into the general population. The telephone itself took 75 years to get into more than 50 percent of American homes - that didn't happen until the 1950s. In contrast, television was in 90 percent of American homes by the end of the 1950s - just 10 years after its commercial introduction.

The reasons that some technologies catch on much more quickly than others vary. In the case of the telephone, the problem was that your phone did you no good unless people you wanted to talk to also had phones. The telephone, in other words, lacked the necessary social infrastructure at first - it had to be built, from the ground up. In contrast, once you had a television set, it didn't matter whether your friends and sister across town also had one. And the social structure of simultaneous, instantaneous mass media - of sitting in your living room every night and being entertained, with countless anonymous others entertained in their living rooms - had already been constructed by radio.

I'm predicting sales of iPhones will go through the roof, and defy expectations. The reason: the iPhone's infrastructure is already here, and robust. It is the Web, and all the services on it. All the social, economic, political, aesthetic, cultural, etc doings of the Web are grist for the iPhone.

It's a trip not to an uncharted land, but to a city already open for business and teeming.... It is now the best of telephone, and will soon be the best of television.

See also - Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and iPhone Boosts Literacy and iPhone: Not Better iPod But New Species of Media ... Nano iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ... Harry Potter and iPhone ...


and ... I'll be talkin' iPhone on my weekly KNX1070 Sunday interview, 7:20am Pacific time, July 8

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Live Free and Die Hard: Great Movie!

I saw Live Free and Die Hard with my son this afternoon, and loved it! (He did, too.)

It was an especially satisfying and appropriate movie, in this the weekend of the iPhone.

Some background and explanation -

1. I thought the first Die Hard movie was superb, the second excellent (meaning, not quite as good as the first), and the third very good. I'd rate the fourth - Die Hard and Live Free - as definitely better than the 2nd and 3rd, perhaps as good as the first, and in some ways, even a little better.

2. This movie had a James Bond and Terminator feel - two different things, of course - but LF&DH had them both. Bruce Willis (John McClane) was a little smoother than in the previous movies (and Daniel Craig was a little rougher in the most recent Bond, which drew the two characters and performances closer). The Terminator quality - by which I mean getting up from an explosive fire burning all around you - was also in the previous movies, but was more pronounced and effectice in LF&DH. One of my favorite scenes had Bruce taking on a figher jet - from the ground - and doing pretty well for himself.

2a. McClane also has a heightened MacGyver quality in this movie, harnessing the little and big technologies around him, making them work in ways against the villain, when hands and feet and guns are not enough.

3. Justin Long was fine as Matt Farrell, the (at first, reluctant) hacker sidekick. If you think Long really looked the part, you'd be right - he's the "I'm a Mac" guy in the Mac-PC commercials. He also looks somewhat like Kevin Rose of Digg fame, but people sometimes think my "looks like"s are a little off...

4. Timothy Oliphant was a good, tough, highly intelligent bad guy for McClane - following the tradition of the other Die Hards - and his bad girl friend, played by Maggie G - was hot, as well only almost as bad, tough, and viciously intelligent as Oliphant.

5. The true meaning of the movie: Farrell at some point explains to McClane that although so much of our lives and jobs is conducted online, there are still essential off-line components. This not only plays a major role in the movie, but symbolizes McClane - it takes his analog, real-world attributes to combat an ingenious and ruthless cyber-villain (who also understands that the real payoffs may be offline). In other words, there are some things even an iPhone can't do.

Hey, I like this lesson so much, I even wrote a book about it in 2003 - Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age.

But you won't need to read it to see Live Free and Die Hard - it's great on its own.

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

iPhone Boosts Literacy

Well, Blackfriars' Marketing reports, above, that the buzz about the iPhone is diminishing just slighlty - I'd guess it's the inevitable Sunday morning coming down, but we'll see ...

Even so, Blackfriars says this Google news article level "is certainly higher than [for] any other consumer electronics launch we've tracked".

Of course it is, and you gotta love it - some portion of the buzz about iPhones is being generated - written and posted - through iPhones themselves. I've seen numerous posts saying somethinng the lines of this is the first thing I'm doing on my iPhone.

So although the iPhone's images and sounds are its most high-profile features, text is right up there too, making the iPhone another salvo for literacy.

The infrastructure - the teeming Web - was of course already there. I'm betting the iPhone will strengthen its best attributes, and lift it to new heights.

I've seen a grouse or three about all the attention the iPhone has been getting. But it's been a long time in coming, and deserves its day in the sunny blogosphere.

Yeah, I'm a fan... been so since the late 1970s...

See also: Hats off to George Hotz ... iPhone Arrives - I Predicted It in 1979 and History Lesson: iPhone Sales Will Exceed Expectations and iPhone: Not Better iPod But New Species of Media and New York Times' David Pogue Sings "I Want An iPhone" to "My Way" and Nano iPhone and the Dymaxion Principle ... Harry Potter and iPhone ...
and ... Charlie Rose interview of Walt Mossberg about iPhone...


and ... I'll be talkin' iPhone on my weekly KNX1070 Sunday interview, 7:20am Pacific time, July 8

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book