I Am So Excited About This Phone

Next to the iMac in our home office, there is a phone.

It is not a new phone.

It's a corded phone, one that once hung on the kitchen wall at the apartment I shared with my then-fiancee.  You can see the electronics and the circuit boards through the clear plastic, and all of the components are painted bright colors to create an artsyish effect.

It rings by ringing a bell.  No speaker, no tones, just an actual bell.  You can see the bell, painted orange, next to one of the circuit boards.  It's really, really loud, so we keep it switched off.  The phone lights up when a call comes in, flashing orange.

It has "memory space" for seven phone numbers, in that you can write down numbers on a brightly colored paper insert that slides into a plastic sleeve on the base.  We never did.

It's one of the first things my wife and I owned together, purchased back in the fall of 1991.  It's a cheap, cheap phone, a Kmart phone, a phone whose brand hasn't been in business for almost twenty years.  It's the kind of thing that you buy when you're paying the rent from your salary as a stock clerk in a little store.

There's a large crack bisecting the middle of the handset, from one of the many many times it's been dropped in the last twenty-plus years.  Still, it works.  It's been used so long that the numbers on the handset have been worn away.  Still, it works.

No-one noticed when this phone was released, when the first units came trundling off of some Hong Kong factory assembly line.  No-one waited in line to get it.  No-one wrote excited reviews to distribute to all of their friends.  They couldn't have.   This is a phone that predates general public access to the internet.  This is a phone that doesn't just predate smartphones.  It predates the cellular era, hailing from a time when the only mobile phones were huge brick-like things, owned only by a tiny fraction of the wealthy.

And still, it works.  When I use it, it conveys the voices of those who are on the other end just as well as it did half-a-generation ago.

I answer it, and I can talk to someone far away.

What doesn't it do?  It doesn't do anything else.

It does not try to distract me with apps, or impress me in in any way.  It does not make me feel scattered.  I feel no compulsion to look at it when I'm working or writing.  In fact, when I am not using it and do not need to use it, I forget about it, in the way that I can forget about breathing if I so choose.  It commands none of my attention.  It simply works when I need it to.

And that humble, unobtrusive simplicity feels, in this wild, distracted, scattered mess of an era, oh...what's the word?

A little...

Magical.

The Ethics of Apple

I spend a fair chunk of time in Bethesda, even now that I don't work there.  Many Saturdays, I snag some New-York-worthy bagels at Bethesda Bagel.  This last weekend, I chilled with the missus in Barnes and Noble, she reviewing materials for an upcoming conference, me finalizing my sermon.

Bethesda's business district is a pretty upscale place, filled with high-end boutiques and nice restaurants.  And, of course, an Apple Store.   Their Apple store has been through two iterations, as the first one proved just too small to manage the mobs of iProduct-obsessed Bethesdans.  The new one is plenty big and spacious, with the usual array of t-shirt clad geniuses and shiny shiny toys set out to play.  I've bought stuff there.  It's a nicely run business.

Sitting right next to the Apple store is a little boutique that sells yoga-related products.  It's called Lululemon.  On the March weekend earlier this year the iPad 2 was released, things were undoubtedly crazy hopping busy at the Bethesda Apple store.

Next door, at Lululemon, things were more crazy, in the worst possible meaning of the word.  On that Friday night, one of the employees of Lululemon murdered her co-worker, after the co-worker apparently discovered some thefts from the store.  The killing took a while, as the victim was beaten to death.

After a failed effort to make it look like a botched robbery and sexual assault, the murderer's clumsy and inconsistent story fell apart, and she's now going to trial.  I've been following that trial.  

As it happens, there were witnesses to the killing, who are currently testifying.   Employees of the Apple store heard the whole thing while they were closing up.  All of it.  The screaming.  The cries to "please stop."  The sounds of violence, followed by moans for help, followed by more sounds of violence.  It wasn't short.  The victim, according to forensic analysis, suffered over 300 wounds.   And it wasn't just one employee who heard it.  

Did the human beings working in the Apple Store take a break from what they were doing to investigate what was happening right next door?   No.  Did they take a moment to call the police?  No.   The body of the victim was not found until the next morning.  Although they clearly and evidently knew something was terribly wrong, in the worst possible way that things can go wrong, they did nothing about it.  

It was a product launch weekend.  They were closing.  They listened until the noises stopped.  

Then they apparently went about their business, which, as reflected in Apple's laser-like corporate focus, is not looking out for neighbors or community.  It's producing and selling highly desirable Apple products.

As I recall, that launch weekend was very successful.

Product and Service

I'm typing this on an iMac, which is unsurprising, because my house is littered with Apple products.

The wife and I both have iPhone 4s.  That's 4s, plural, not Four - Esses, which we probably won't get.  My Four is the fourth iPhone I've owned, as the first two met untimely demises at my clumsy hands, and the last one got handed down to my son.

The boys both have old nanos, which see intermittent use.  One has a Touch, which is his camera and primary portable gaming platform.  The other has that repurposed, de-simmed iPhone 3GS, which is serving the same function.  To replace our recently flamed-out first-gen Intel Macbook Pro, we acquired an Air, which is a lovely piece of kit.  Oh, and my wife has a 3G iPad, first gen.

If you've invested in Apple over the years, our family has done our part to insure that your investment yielded handsome returns.

The legacy of Steve Jobs is, without question, those exceptionally well-designed products.  His legendary precision and unrelenting focus on product excellence was what made him such a competent CEO.  The bottom line, if you are making something to sell in the marketplace, is to make that product as well-designed and constructed as possible.   That was always Job's focus, which meant that he had absolutely no tolerance for mediocrity.  He was an absolutely legendary perfectionist, and had an unerring sense of what makes for a solid product.

That, frankly, is what guarantees the profitability of a corporation.  If you focus on making an excellent product, and price it fairly, you will succeed.  If you focus on profit above all else, you will become distracted from that primary goal.  You will start making Chevy Vegas, and you will fail.

In that, Jobs knew and lived out what it takes to be successful in business.

But in the thickets of hagiography for this profoundly accomplished entrepreneur and businessman, I hazard to ask:  is that what matters?

Jobs created great, innovative, well-designed products.  But do they make the world a better place?  I remember what it was to be alive in the pre-iMac era, and a time when Apple was not my preferred provider of quality electronic devices.

Honestly?  It makes no difference.  What has been created is ethically neutral.

Sure, I can use that iPhone to open up new lines of communication with a deaf shut-in, or help a lost stranger find his way.  But that same tech allows that guy down the street to video-sext with his lover while "working late" in his upstairs office while his wife sits alone in their bedroom, or your 15 year old daughter to send NSFW pictures to her manipulative 18 year old boyfriend.   Sure, I can use my Air or my iMac to blog about justice and grace, or to drop a supportive comment on the Facebook page of someone in need of prayer or kindness.  But I could also use them to spew anonymous hatred as the stalker-troll on some other human being's online presence.

The world is shinier and faster and more elegant.  But better?  To speak true, it does not feel so.

As I consider Jobs' life, I wonder at the meaningfulness of a life driven by perfectionism.   Having worked in the field of philanthropy for a while myself, I know that unlike many leaders in industry, Jobs had no interest in charity.  It simply didn't process.  He had no time for it.  He was far too busy and far too focused on product.  Unlike Bill Gates, who has poured his wealth into fighting diseases, or Warren Buffett, who has used the fruits of his business acumen to support Gates in that effort, or countless other leaders in the business sector, Jobs did not use his wealth...or the wealth of Apple...towards any end other than the improvement of Apple products.

Though the products are desirable, and exceptionally well crafted, they are just that.  Products.

And I wonder...is perfectionism what makes for a worthy existence?

And I wonder...is creating profitable and elegantly-designed products what merits a "that'll do, pig, that'll do" at the completion of this life?

I respect Jobs ferocity of purpose, and his creativity, and his intelligence, and his showmanship.  There was much to admire in his life.  I'm just not sure I'd want to live it.

Creating Jobs for Commie Robots

Yesterday, in perusing the business news, one little tidbit stuck out for me as I sought relief from the endless coverage of the debt-ceiling hoo-hah.

That tidbit had to do with the manufacture of the Apple products that seem to pervade my home.  The iPods and iPhones and MacBooks and even the iMac upon which this is currently being typed are all designed by folks on the West Coast, but are assembled by FoxConn in China.

That's where all the jobs created by our vaunted  "job creators" go these days.  Well, there or Mexico, or Vietnam, or Burma.  

But yesterday, Foxconn announced that it is going to be letting go hundreds of thousands of workers over the next three years.  It appears that with the growth of their economy, the Chinese who have so diligently performed for next to nothing on the assembly lines are now starting to expect better pay and some protections in the workplace.  Even though they're making a small fraction of what American workers used to make, it's still too much.  It's biting into profit margins.

So in the name of efficiency and improving profitability, Foxconn has announced that it will replace those line workers with around 300,000 robots.  Remaining workers will be "higher up the value chain."   Profits will be retained.  Your iPhone 5 will be a marvelous, magical wonderment, assembled with the help of our Chinese robot friends.

Here's what I just don't get about this.  Within the context of our global economy, we appear to have reached the point where even the most marginally compensated human labor is an impediment to profitability.  Providing wages to line workers is, even in the context of the Chinese economy, now a greater drain on capital than the purchase, energy, and maintenance costs for robotic production.   When you add in the outrageous demands that Chinese workers make...for four hours of fitful sleep a night, a few morsels of kung pao rodent, and a chance to urinate more than once a day without their pay being docked...it's clear that where Foxconn goes, so ultimately goes most production.

But here, the pursuit of profit ultimately is a spiral into economic oblivion.  If workers are no longer necessary in factories, and robot harvesters and combines are the future of profitable agriculture, the question becomes...how does capitalism survive its own governing ethos?  If there are no workers to buy the products that are produced by the robots, then the pursuit of profit margins will have poisoned the economic ecology.  You'll have lots of product, cheaply made, but no global base of salaried workers to consume that product.

Capitalism becomes the serpent consuming its own tail, a system doomed to fail as it devours itself.

Such odd creatures, we humans are.

Fruitless

I've always walked a fair amount.  It helps keep me centered and fit and helps me at least pass for sane.  So it was a source of some dismay this spring to discover that our new puppy didn't make the best hiking companion.  Long leisurely meditative walks are hard when one arm is attached to a creature that seems intent on heading in any direction but the one you're heading in, and the other arm is attached to a bag of poo.

Now that my dog is reaching the point where she's got a tiny bit more focus, and will walk with me rather than roaring off like a squirrel-seeking missile every 15 seconds, I'm finding my Monday morning rambles through neighborhoods and nearby woods have returned.

This morning as I wandered through the bright briskness of a Virginia October, I found myself noting the absence of something.  Back when I was a kid, my parents had an apple tree in their front yard, right outside of my window.  It was quite productive, and one of the primary yard tasks I had as a teen was to collect the best of the tart green apples for the occasional pie, and to rake up the rest for composting.   It was also an amazingly friendly climbing tree, one you could scamper up easily.  In the summer of 1989, a big storm took it down.  It felt like a loss.

I make a point of mixing up my walk routes, wandering through neighborhoods in such a way that I'm always exploring somewhere new.  But though I've hit most of the nearby neighborhoods, I see pretty much no fruit-bearing trees.  There aren't apples.  There aren't pears.  There aren't cherry trees.   I don't see blackberry vines, or raspberry vines.  Virginia soil is perfect for these fruit, and yet my neighborhood seems devoid of it.

I suppose it's a bother having to clean up, or feeling obligated to make preserves and pies.  We're just too busy.  We're willing to spend endless hours mowing and trimming, or perhaps growing tomatoes or zucchini.  But fruit?  Apparently, at least in my neck of what used to be the woods, we don't have time for it.  It's just not part of our suburban desert.

So we get our apples under bright florescent light, wrapped in plastic, sprayed with pesticide, trucked in in bulk.

For some reason, the fence in my back yard suddenly looks like it might just be the ideal place for a blackberry planting or three come spring.

Sweet Lord Me-sus!

For some reason that I can't quite fully fathom, the iTunes App Store is just a hotbed of faith-based folderol lately. The latest 99 cents worth of downloadable God silliness comes not from an app you can get on site, but from an app that was recently rejected by Apple. The failed software was the Me So Holy application, which really involves nothing more complex than slapping your face onto some significant religious figure. Want your face on Jesus? There you go. Want to look like the Blessed Virgin? Hail [your name here] full of grace!

There did not appear to be a Marduk-Me option, but I'm sure they'd have remedied that with add on content.

Some folks are crying censorship, and there may be some truth in that. But as I look at the app I can only see raging, flagrant lameness. Slapping your face onto a religious figure...as a mobile app...just could not be weaker. So you've got some time to kill during a layover at O'Hare, and decide to graft a mugshot of a random traveller onto the body of Shiva? Wow...I can imagine that happening all the time. Sounds. Like. A. Hoot.

Of course, there's no real point to my faux taser app, either.

What this bit of censorship is, of course, is just reflexive corporate lameness, that wheedling profiteer's fear that somewhere, some hypersensitive zealot is going to make a stink about your product. Apple is manifesting the same corporate counsel tushie-covering instinct that Sony showed in delaying the launch of Little Big Planet last year because they were terrified someone might take offense at a song that included verses of the Koran.

I mean, gracious. This program does nothing that Photoshop doesn't already do ten thousand times better. Who's going to be riled by it? Apple would have been better off just letting the marketplace handle it. We'd have taken one look at this bit of tedium, uttered a collective yawn, and then let it get buried with the tens of thousands of other broken, faddish, or weak attempts at applications.