I’d like to make a device that immediately electrocutes anyone using the word “empowerment” or “empowers”. The global IQ would climb sharply and the oligarchy would decline in about a week.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sounds like an oligarch propaganda piece.
How has the iPhone contributed to empowerment and liberty? It’s a technology tool that can be used for both good and bad things. There is nothing “inherent” about smartphones that leads to empowerment and liberty.
And I don’t think he gives a shit about anything beyond his financial position and maintaining his social status and legion of fanboys.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 2 months ago
numanair@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Have you considered the costs of empowering such a system?
Viri4thus@feddit.org 2 months ago
*tesla coil sounds
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There’s an opinion that sometimes it works - “people were weak and strong, comrade Colt made them equal”.
How has the iPhone contributed to empowerment and liberty?
There was a fledgling industry of PDAs, a bit too expensive, but usually with a functional and accessible OS.
There was an established industry of mobile phones, limited by their price expected to be (by iPhone measure) low, but fitting better and better functionality and ingenuity into that limit.
iPhone was an ugly, tasteless thing from the latter at the price of the former.
By the way, people say Steve Jobs was a jerk, that he treated his biological child worse than those able to smell him, that he believed in unscientific medicine which slowly killed him.
But he did have a vision, just not much further than it. Steve Jobs’ ideas were all one-time shockers. In the following generations of products those shouldn’t have been cleansed with fire, but the idea of him being some prophet generating good paradigms is wrong, actually it’s the opposite, his ideas are paradigm-agnostic, it’s clear form over function. It’s fine to salt product lines built around good paradigms with his design ideas, but not allowing them to prevail.
A lot of clueless normies still think a touchscreen slab is a good idea because a physical keyboard and a stylus cost something, ignoring that their touchscreen slabs usually cost a lot more than mobile phones and even kinda good PDAs did cost, with physical everything. I’m not even talking that time and effort to perform an action are a cost that accumulates every day, it may be hard to convert into any currency, but if you do, you’ll weep over all those moments of trying to do something with taps and gestures instead of a few keypresses.
No, a touchscreen slab was Jobs’ shocker to sell stuff! It worked, and it also helped Apple financially, so they went on with it. Pure business. Even if Jobs were a prophet, he’s a different kind of prophet, not usability prophet, but shockers prophet.
OK, it’s graphomania I think.
Point being - iPhone contributed in the opposite direction. Made those things expensive enough to be harder to replace or alternate, more tailored for consumption and two-button apps, and a thing of fashion in the wrong sense.
And I don’t think he gives a shit about anything beyond his financial position and maintaining his social status and legion of fanboys.
That’s why he’s saying such things, it’s a certain tired (Salvador Dali style) way of appearing a cultured person.
concrete_baby@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
The iPhone was the first smartphone that hot insanely popular. It launched the app store model that’s now used on every mobile platform including Android. Those apps have gotten hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in India and China who are doing e-commerce and opening small businesses from their phones. That’s food on the table for the working class. They can earn money while looking after their children because they’re not chained to a desktop computer for internet access. People in remote areas can know instantly about natural disasters and the news, educating them and making them active citizens in a democracy.
People across the world can chat with each other for nearly free using messaging and social media apps, and won’t have to send letters or pay extra fees for long-distance calls. The iPhone got more people onto what formerly only Blackberry-owning business executive had.
It’s such a first world thing to belittle the impact of smartphone (an industry which the iPhone shaped tremendously), when it has so much tangible impact, especially to working people.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I am not belittling the impact of the smartphone, just being critical of the positioning around iPhone bringing “liberation” and “empowerment”. It has the capability to do that, but it also has the capability to enable less positive things.
There are also some inconsistencies in your story.
The iPhone launched without an app store and the app store concept existed even before iOS/Android.
From my experience living in developing countries, work type use cases do not use iPhones. If anything in developing countries an iPhone is exclusively a status symbol.
Claiming the iPhone alone was what got hundred millions of people out of poverty is a ridiculous statement. There are so many other factors at play here.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Because they were marching under the table at that age, not paying attention to tech.
Yes, and of a particular kind of people, relatives of corrupt bureaucrats and their friends usually. People with money and wish to show off still usually have a good Android device.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m not sure if you’ve seen it or it’s a picture similar to what OLPC founder would describe to investors.
Now we learn that Apple invented radio.
Apple also did not invent the Internet, or instant messaging, or social media, or ability to use them on a portable device. And I wonder how old you are, ignoring all PDAs other than Apple and Blackberry in that time.
This really reads like, I repeat, what OLPC founder would tell to investors. A first world thing.
Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 2 months ago
Mans giving them a lot of credit lmao