Craig Michael Patrick

Category: Technology

  • Apple’s Post-iPhone Era

    The Vision Pro, Apple’s version of augmented reality goggles, was recently announced at its World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). At $3,500, it is not a B2C device. Keep in mind, it was announced at a developer conference. Keep in mind, it is effectively, a Mac on your head (at this point). Apple is relying on developers to run with the concept, based on the API framework they created. The general look and feel is that of the classic Spielberg film, Minority Report.

    Much like the iPhone, which was not a consumer-friendly device until the 4S model, the Vision Pro will be great in about five years when it evolves into a more consumer-friendly price model, can offer a better transformative work/lifestyle experience, and (broadly) the Internet infrastructure in the United States — currently ranked 12th in the world — can provide the necessary bandwidth to properly leverage the experience.

    Five years.

  • Age of Anxiety

    This is the Age of Anxiety for the reason of the electric implosion that compels commitment and participation, quite regardless of any “point of view”. The partial and specialized character of the viewpoint, however noble, will not serve at all in the electric age.

    At the information level, the same upset has occurred with the substitution of the inclusive image for the mere viewpoint. If the nineteenth century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist’s couch.

    Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

    McLuhan wrote that in the mid-1960’s in a gunpowder cloud of the Vietnamese War and the Civil Rights Movement. Understanding Media‘s publication year was the birth caul of Jeff Bezos and his convenient consumer culture. It’s a compressed, brilliant read.

  • Protection

    David McCabe and Cicilia Kang writing for The New York Times:

    A second provision [of President Biden’s executive order] will encourage the Federal Trade Commission to write rules limiting how the tech giants use consumer data, a response to criticism that companies like Amazon can leverage what they know about users to gain the upper hand on competing services and businesses.

    Technology companies have long concealed their businesses behind complex End User License Agreements (EULA) to subjugate consumer data in return for free services. Upon accepting the EULA when using Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other social media publishing platforms, privacy became a fiction to tell children before bedtime.

    If people want to publish their thoughts, amplify their ideas, connect broadly with the rest of the world, there is one question they need to answer — what am I willing to trade? Is it my privacy or my money? There is no clause in the Constitution concerning the freedom to publish, only freedom of speech: two entirely different means of communication.