Welcome to the 2020’s, some quotes to live by?

Seeing New year 2020 across Manchester
Seeing New year 2020 in from my windows in central Manchester

The 2010’s are over and its now the 2020’s… Happy New Year all…

As we enter the next decade, I’ve been thinking about what things I certainly want to bring forward. At the same time while writing Other things to know about me in my user manual, I used a cluetrain rule number 7.

“Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”

― Cluetrain Manifesto

I think quotes are a useful to convey some meaning in to the future. Something which may be useful when looking into the 2020’s.

“Sometimes I forget that my world is not the mainstream (yet)” ― Eric Nehrlich

“We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

“Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.”

― Sherry Turkle

“ Sometimes the most modest changes can bring about enormous effects.”

“People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.”

― Malcolm Gladwell

“Do the unexpected. Find the others”

― Timothy Leary

“In the future that the surveillance capitalism prepares for us, my will and yours threaten the flow of surveillance revenues. Its aim is not to destroy us but simply to author us and to profit from that authorship.”

― Shoshana Zuboff

“When you don’t have to ask for permission innovation thrives.”

― Steven Johnson

“Freedom is about stopping the past.”

“If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they’re free for people to build upon as they see fit.”

― Lawrence Lessig

You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

– Steve Jobs

Despite their good intentions, today’s businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives – to do good and make money simultaneously.

– Cindy Gallop

“If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you.”

– Jonathan Zittrain

“By viewing evolution though a strictly competitive lens, we miss the bigger story of our own social development and have trouble understanding humanity as one big, interconnected team.”

― Douglas Rushkoff

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.

– Marshall MuLuhan

All food for thought, and there are so many more I could add…

I can’t believe I forgot my favorite of them all

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete

– Buckminster Fuller

Through the Illusion of the Apple distortion field

iCow Syncing

You got to hand it to Apple, they always have the press eating out their own bowl. You only have to look at the latest apple announcement for the apple watch.  This use to be termed the Steve Jobs distortion field then when Steve died, there was a fear that Apple may not be able to keep things up without their leader.

However this turned out to be not true (to a degree).

How does Apple manipulate the media and press has been a question which many have asked, and very have been brave enough to come forward and explain how. Those who do tend to get put on the blacklist and starved…

Apple can already tell what a review is going to say from [a publication’s] pre-coverage, and they’re not going to give you a review unit if you’re not going to play ball.” In other words, Apple feeds the writers who will do its bidding, and starves the ones who won’t follow its messaging.

One such brave people is Mark Gurman from 9to5mac. Who wrote a super detailed look at the distortion and absolute manipulation Apple roll across the media. 9 indepth pages of stuff everybody kind of guessed or knew but dare not write about? Don’t expect to see Mark at any Apple press events for the next 10 years at least.

You limit your imagination by what you know

Elon Musk

I’ve been catching up on my instapaper and liking the interview with Elon Musk by Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson compares and singles out Elon Musk and Steve Jobs as serial disrupter’s.

It is no surprise, then, that Musk has often been referred to of late as “the next Steve Jobs.” The comparison I want to make between them, however, is not just in the diversity and scale of their achievements. It’s also in their thought processes. I see in them a mental trait that is incredibly rare, a trait that has made me a huge admirer of both men, and of their creations.

So what is their unique brand of genius? Here’s how I think of it: system-level design thinking powered by extraordinary conviction. Each of those italicized phrases is critical.

I like what Chris picks out in them both. Although not a fan of Steve Jobs choices and direction later with media and computing. I do respect his brilliance of thought. Elon is frankly the tony stark of the real world. I can’t say enough about his achievements and I’m sure many more are to come.

I love the way he thinks… as he gets going in this paragraph about the spaceX.

“What I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn’t be able to get through the day,” he said. “But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach. Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive.” Reasoning by analogy would be someone in 1900 thinking that the way to get faster transport was to breed stronger horses. You limit your imagination to a simple extension of what you already know. That is not how the world changes.

What is there not to love? Its a good interview and full of good observations.

Well here’s some passing words to think about…

Dream big! Don’t focus on making money! Work for an idea that’s bigger than you are! Broaden your mind! Embrace thinking from outside disciplines! Expose yourself to the world’s most inspiring designs and designers! Make things as simple as they can be (and no simpler)! Immerse yourself in science and leading-edge technologies! Don’t be limited by what’s gone before! Play with radical outside-the-box future possibilities and keep playing until you find something really big that you believe in!

Reminder that Jobs wasn’t always right

1984-steve-jobs-ipad

Got to love the new Google Nexus 7.

Recently I have seen a lot of people with the Apple ipad mini, so much when I see someone with the ipad full. I can’t help but touch it and lift it. Usually saying something like “wow its really that big and that heavy!

Although I use to get ratty when people confused my Samsung Tab 7+ with the ipad mini

So ironic being the fact the Galaxy 7+ was released in the middle of fight between Samsung and Apple. Apple said the Galaxy tabs looked like the ipad and got the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 7.7 blocked in different parts of the world. Samsung fighting the blocks, decided to make a Galaxy Tab 7+ which I ended up buying.

Back to the point…

People making the mistake of thinking my Galaxy 7+ is a ipad mini… Thats finally starting to go away now the market is flooded with 7inch tablets.

Steve Jobs famously announced, there is no need for a 7inch tablet.

No tablet can compete with the mobility of a smartphone, its ease of fitting into your pocket or purse, its unobtrusiveness when used in a crowd. Given that all tablet users will already have a smartphone in their pockets, giving up precious display area to fit a tablet in our pockets is clearly the wrong trade-off. The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.

These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the 7-inch bandwagon with an orphan product…

Well he was so wrong, even Apple themselves ended up building the 7.9inch ipad mini. But more interestingly is the overall demand for 7inch tablets is very high.

Getting over the fear of rejection…

Don't be afraid of rejection ~ don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!

There’s something which holds back many people from what they really want. Its the fear of rejection…

As most people know too well, the fear of rejection is a nasty fear… It can be totally inhibiting.

I could wittier on about it being a self-fulfilling prophecy, the nature of fear and what fear is… but frankly I’d rather not.

Personally I don’t claim to have the answer to the fear of rejection, I like everyone also fear rejection but deal with it in a different way.

You can watch me present on stage too but I would like to expand on the later part.

When I was lying in my hospital bed I thought a lot, maybe far too much. It was like my sabbatical (best way I can describe it?). I thought about many things. How my life was, what I had done with it and now I have a second chance what I’m going to do different.

When I finally made it to the next year’s Thinking Digital, I was at one of the workshops with talking about happiness. A couple things really hit me…

Happiest

We have 60,000 thought’s a day 95% of those are the same as yesterday… 80% of those are negative thoughts

Fear is in the mind, we build it up in our mind till its inhibiting and all consuming. Now I understand better than most about what fear can do. I was terrified of needles and I still don’t like them but I faced my fear with hyponosis. I remember years ago people asking me if I needed to have a shot to save my life what would I do… Jokingly I would reply knock myself out and then let them do it, or just take my chances. Generally I was suggesting for real, than I would consider death over having a injection.

Sounds insane but thats how bad my fear was…

Our minds are incredible, we can achieve such great things, ponder infinity, dream about the impossible, conjure technology and spread our thoughts far and wide. Our minds can literally out do the matter.

So whats this got to do with the fear of rejection (if you’ve not worked it out already). The human mind’s capacity is endless limitless but fear holds it back from its true potential.

How I look at the fear of rejection…

One More Thing, Steve!

Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life (…) Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life  – Steve Jobs (2005. Stanford University)

Once again while in that hospital bed, I thought about things and decided on the grand scale of my life. These moments of fear should/will not dominate my life and if so they are purely a blip in the graph. One which I won’t remember in many many years to come. With that in mind, I do things and not worry about the social ramifications as much, just telling myself whats the worst than can happen?. Don’t get me wrong I do wonder (rather than worry) but I don’t let it grow in my mind. If I want something I’ll go and get it, make it happen, make it so.

I refuse to live someones life, expectations, fears. Don’t waste your life living someones life

Who thinks this is a good idea?

Tribute to Steve Jobs | We are orphan...

One of the most stupidest things I’ve heard of late…

Finding the next steve jobs… Will i am and Simon Cowell cashing in on a dead man’s legacy more like it. Not only is it insulting to the intelligent working on new and cutting edge things but also a nasty thing to do on the 1 year anniversary of steve jobs death in my view.

To be frank its as dumb an idea as offline netflix… At least its not as offensive as Simon Cowell and Will i am jumping on a bandwagon.

Follow the money… or rather follow the naff ideas to eternity? Stupid…!

Apple vs Samsung, consumers lose…

 

Apple have won their case against Samsung…

A US court has ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05bn (£665m) in damages after upholding allegations that several Samsung devices had infringed Apple’s intellectual property, including design patents and some functionality.

Samsung has promised to appeal against the decision describing it as “a loss for the American consumer”.

I can only say, the consumer will lose out in Steve Jobs legacy to take down Google

The chilling effect will be felt…

 

Don’t waste your life, living someone else’s life

Its rare, very rare that Tim Dobson will tweet something at me which is actually worthy of blogging about. Love the guy, he saved my life… 🙂 But he doesn’t half send some crap my way…

Anyway this time he send a very touching video which is about a engineer who goes speed dating. Unlike the usual crap you get about speed dating, this one is much more measured and the overall moral is something which directly ties to my story of me talk at TedXManchester yesterday.

On slide 56, I quote Steve Jobs from his Stanford university speech

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…

And with this deep in the way I do things since mybrushwithdeath, I will be going on this dating show and not acting any differently than my usual self (yes I’ll even be wearing a black shirt)

It may not make great TV but it will be honestly me. No playing up for the camera, no bull, just me. Actually I keep thinking with the current crop of suggestions that online dating is a bit poo, maybe is the perfect time for my lifestreaming dating idea. Bring a bit of honesty and trust to online dating, rather than projecting an ideal image of yourself…?

Now if I could only get Tim to send less crap and more signal…

The real elegance of Steve Jobs?

My last blog post about the late Steve Jobs caused quite a stir but to defend my thoughts just this once… I’m not the only one saying could be seen as unpopular things about the late Jobs.

In the The Tweaker (The real genius of Steve Jobs) by . He points out some of the more interesting pieces of his biography…

The angriest Isaacson ever saw Steve Jobs was when the wave of Android phones appeared, running the operating system developed by Google. Jobs saw the Android handsets, with their touchscreens and their icons, as a copy of the iPhone. He decided to sue. As he tells Isaacson:

Our lawsuit is saying, “Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.” Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products—Android, Google Docs—are shit.

In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”

Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

Jobs was someone who took other people’s ideas and changed them. But he did not like it when the same thing was done to him. In his mind, what he did was special. Jobs persuaded the head of Pepsi-Cola, John Sculley, to join Apple as C.E.O., in 1983, by asking him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” When Jobs approached Isaacson to write his biography, Isaacson first thought (“half jokingly”) that Jobs had noticed that his two previous books were on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, and that he “saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” The architecture of Apple software was always closed. Jobs did not want the iPhone and the iPod and the iPad to be opened up and fiddled with, because in his eyes they were perfect. The greatest tweaker of his generation did not care to be tweaked.

Frankly I’m not a fan of Bill Gates but he’s very right in his statement and Gladwell is also right.

There are a bunch of things like this which can be found in the biography, but for now I’m done with the subject to be honest…

Steve Jobs… what more can I say?

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

I’ve said nothing about recently Steve Jobs, his death was very sad just like anyone who dies earlier than there potential age. His cancer wasn’t just life threatening it was a killer.

Saying all that, however I do have serious problems with his late view point on the world and I have a lot of agreements.

He was a smart guy and what he did for Apple and the industry speaks for its self but…. there’s some things which I can’t help but remember…

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said.

“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

What on earth…? Who says this kind of thing and really mean it? Frankly I would suggest rightly or wrongly, a psychopath? This psychopathic nature is something most people ignore or overlook. I can’t, I mean can you imagine Bill Gates saying the same about Linux, with such venom? (I’m assuming not, but I’m sure someone will prove me wrong).

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Yes this is quite spooky but I’ll be honest and say death will do that kind of thing to you.

When I was lying in bed after my brush with death last year, I thought damn hard about my life and made quite a few decisions.

It sounds like Jobs had a similar thing but I can’t understand why he would hold on to his fear about Android?

As Yoda says

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

It pains/saddens me that he went to his death bed worrying about the challenge of Android. Letting go is essential and not doing so, just seems like a very sad thing.

He seemed to have forgotten his own words…

all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

I never want to go to my death bed thinking how I wanted to right the wrong of Apple. Its ludicrous… Yes I’m not a fan but you know what I’m not a fan of a lot of things including crappy fluff filled TV. I would never want to go to my death bed thinking must see a end of Xfactor or something.

Sure some of you are saying, yes but you almost went to your death bed hating Apple? Well not really, even in previous blog posts I’ve expressed happy feelings for Apple. The question should be, if I could stop Apple with all the money I owned, would I do it? Answer is a absolutely NO!

The plan was to buy the Steve Jobs book which was released but frankly I won’t really read it (plus the media has pretty much uncovered most of the book for us all) and as I said before, its very tragic but I’m personally not going to dwell.

He was a genius but also made other peoples lives hell and frankly if he was doing this still after learning about his cancer, he has certainly gone down in my estimations.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

I know he strived for perfection but at what cost? The misery of others around him, was it really worth it in the end? Remember the way he treated his child? Once again was it really worth it in the end?

Life is such a precious thing and so many people never face the reality of how precious life really is…

I will remember Steve Jobs as a super smart man who was driven, who even on his death bed loved what he did, and did everything he could to building his own personal dream. I’m still convinced he was nuts to fight the opening up of the world and the more human engagement everyone is finally adopting…

RIP Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs steps down

Steve Jobs talks about the iTunes Movie Rental stuff...

People have been asking me, what do I feel about Steve Jobs stepping down as CEO of Apple.

The markets have already spoken… But to be honest, I do wish him well although I talk smack about him and Apple all the time. For Apple, I do think the real test will be 2-4 years down the line when the current crop of products and services are a little old or long in the tooth.

The problem with having a leader dishing out his wisdom from on high, means when their gone (in what ever way) the single vision is lost or not communicated in the same way. And frankly I don’t think anyone will be able to follow Steve Jobs into the void.

Of course I don’t want to speak too ill of the sick but I’m really hoping Tim Cook can bring a little more openness to Apples future. Under Steve Jobs it was just never going to happen.

They say when you get older you become more conservative than before, maybe this sums up Apple’s recent moves to control and conquer?

The end of optical media? Goodbye Blu-ray…

Ben metcalfe has a blog post about Apple’s move to remove all optical drives from there new range of laptops.

You can install an operating system from any external drive – it doesn’t have to be a DVD, it can be a USB disk, external hard drive or even an SD card. But you do need some kind of external disk, in case you can’t boot into the laptop, leaving the OS as the only piece of software that needs to be delivered via physical medium.

You can already download iLife and iWorks via the internet and license them online. And with the announcement of the App Store for Mac, Apple is clearly signaling the end of physical distribution of software.

Tell the truth although I quite like the idea of optical drives, I’ve lived without them for years. I had a Toshiba tablet PC back when I was in university/college and it had no optical drive but lots of flash media slots. I guess now the Mac supports SD its a lot easier to imagine the ability to remove optical drives.

So in one mind, I’m thinking great but something also comes to mind, and ben’s on the money with this.

Finally, if you subscribe to the Steve Jobs way of consuming media, the CD and DVD also dead there too. All the music, tv and films you could ever want are available for download via iTunes – be it to your Mac, iPhone or AppleTV.

Even if you consume your media independently, the Amazon MP3 store, music-on-demand services such Pandora and the continued widespread use of p2p all support the end of the physical distribution of media. NetFlix (probably anticipating this) are about to release a streaming-only service very soon too.

If you subscribe to the Steve Jobs way of thinking. Well I don’t but I’m interesting in the battle between online media and optical drives. Steve Jobs has always seemed to hate Blu-ray and I’m wondering if this strategy will shift to the desktop machines too? I’m sure control over all entertainment media is in Steve Jobs master plan somewhere?

Welcome to Steve Jobs distortation field, where open is closed

infrastructures

Steve jobs is a tricky figure, theres no doubt about that. When he talks, you can feel the distortion field emerging from everything chosen word he uses. As I’ve always said Steve Jobs and Apple are against choice and therefore freedom. Evidence? Well theres tons this week

Steve jobs slagged off Android saying Android is too difficult to build for due to many different types of handsets. He then said "Twitterdeck" (yeah I know – think he meant Tweetdeck, has he got any clue about social media? This wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t use it as a example) was having a nightmare developing for Android.

Steve Jobs’ amateur sleuthing last night brought up that gorgeous TweetDeck chart showing the vast variety of Android handsets out there, which the Apple CEO used to illustrate the "daunting challenge" he perceives developers have to face when creating apps that work across all devices and OS builds for the platform. Only problem with his assertion (aside from Steve calling the company TwitterDeck)? His opposite number on the TweetDeck team thinks nothing could be further from the truth: "we only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is."

Next evidence.

"Let’s talk about the avalanche of tablets. First, there are only a few credible competitors. And they all have seven-inch screen. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps."

"And this size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size. We’ve done extensive testing and 10 inches is the minimum tablet size."

"Given that tablet users will have a smartphone in their pocket, there’s no point in giving up screen size. Seven inch tablets are tweeners — too big to be a phone, and too small to compete with the iPad."

What a load of crap, if people want something smaller then the Android tablets are ideal to serve them. In Steve Jobs head, a 12inch tablet might be ideal but for the rest of us, its too big and too heavy to be really useful. Once again choice is the key word here. If you like the idea of smaller tablets, then Apple isn’t offering you the choice. Most iPad users I speak to wonder when the camera version is coming.

Even more crap…

We think this open versus closed argument is a smokescreen that hides the real question: What’s better for users, fragmented versus integrated?

"We believed integrated will trump fragmented every time."

"We are very committed to the integrated approach, no matter how many times Google characterizes it as closed, and we believe that it will triumph over the fragmented approach, no matter how any times Google characterizes it as open."

Android is fragmented, we all knew it would happen but thats not a excuse to give up your choice. I have friends who would like a physical keyboard why penalize them for this? For some people the touch screen isn’t friendly, but steve jobs doesn’t care about them. In actual fact its "Its my way or the highway!"

iOS is closed and google are right to call it so.

Finally in Q&A

One of these days we’ll eventually learn the Android numbers, and I imagine we’ll compete with them for a very long time. But we have very different approaches — ours is to make devices that just work.

Oh yeah of course just work? I’m very sure Android developers are thinking the same. Your not alone in that steve. No in actual fact your only interested in telling people through hardware and software how to live there lives.

Welcome to the steve jobs distortion field…