Goodbye, Textbooks

Today the mothership announced new iBooks textbooks, and a new iTunes U. It’s pretty cool, just on the outside, but it only takes a little imagination to imagine what might be possible.

Education is something that has been rather unchanged in centuries. It’s still a group of kids, in one room, with one teacher, and one textbook.

For the first time, in a long time, somebody has the leverage to really change something. Also for the first time, in a long time, that somebody has decided to do something. Apple could do something great. I’m not saying it won’t flop. I’m not saying they’re already there. It’s going to be a long journey, but I hope they get there. They could really make a dent in our universe.

Maybe my kids won’t ever know what it’s like to fight for the best conditioned textbooks. I like that thought.

"Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

Einstein

"Wherever you go, there you are."

Thoughts about Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. Sometimes you go weeks without it. Sometimes it comes to you just when you’re thinking about how nothing is coming to you. And sometimes you start writing about something and then you forget. That’s a bitch.

The sad thing about writing about not being inspired is that you can only do it once, because it’s lame to rewrite things again. It’s like the extra life in a game of Mario, you like it there just in case, but once you use it things start going downhill. That’s a bitch, too.

What I want you to walk out of here with today is that inspiration is elusive, the harder you look the more difficult it is to find. It’s not something you can hunt down, but something you simply happen to come across upon. So venture the world! Well, on second thought, surfing the web will probably do. All you have to do is believe that you are going in the right path, and the path will lead itself.

Madness

What other company has people lining up for hours to pay $700 for a phone… Multiple days in a row?

"Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened."

Dr. Seuss

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Surely one of the greatest men to ever walk on Earth. You have given us visions of the future, dreams of change, and shiny devices perfected to the last detail.

Thank you, for leaving a mark on all of us.

4S

Most people seem to be dissappointed by the today’s new iPhone, how it’s such a small change from the iPhone 4.

Sometimes I feel that too, but think about how you would change it, how you would improve it. So perhaps it’s not a disappointment after all, but a testament to the iPhone 4’s greatness.

In any case, Apple stock seems to fall every time they announce an event where they don’t pull magical unicorns out of their asses.

Favourite Friends

Recently, Facebook introduced a new sidebar for chat. Now, despite how you feel about Facebook’s constant changes, I’m interested in something else. Zuckerberg’s design choices are a conversation for a different day.

Try this. Shrink your Facebook window vertically and you might notice something. There are less people in your contact list! Of course, that isn’t much of a surprise, but look closer. Your favourite friends remain, while the ones you don’t like so much are kicked out due to lack of vertical real estate.

I’m sure Facebook isn’t always right at calculating this, and you might see one or two strange people remain even when there are only 10 contacts on the list. But it’s kind of creepy knowing they are even attempting to do this type of calculation in their algorithms.

Is this useful? Perhaps, it certainly does make it easier to connect with people you are more likely to connect with. Will the average person notice it? I’m not sure, it’s done so quietly and subtly that we’ll just click the friend we want to talk to and not worry about it, since all our favourite people will always be there.

This shows just how complex Facebook is, how fast it’s evolving, how much data they have on us, and how oblivious we are starting to become to the scores of information we are uploading to the web every day.

Maybe we’ve always sort of assumed Zuckerberg would be up to this kind of data mining behind the scenes. I don’t know the implications this has on privacy law, or the benefits it has on society - probably little on both sides so far. But hopefully this makes you think twice. You shouldn’t take everything at face value, pun not intended.

A New Slate

It’s been a while since I posted anything to Tumblr, so today I deleted everything that I wrote before, and I thought I’d start something new.

In grade school, the first few pages of my workbooks were always extraordinarily neat and clean. They were a blank slate on which anything was possible. A place where nothing had been said, no judgements made, and no precedents to uphold. It could literally be the most beautifully calligraphed notebook ever.

Of course… it never ended up that way, as one day I would inevitably slip into the abyss of messiness, but that’s not the point.

I think we all need a refresh once in a while. Anything is possible before you take your first step, because everyone, no matter how successful, once started at the same place.