Tag Archives: Technology

Kara Swisher And The Female Ego

Posted on by
4

I regularly listen to both of Kara Swisher’s podcasts, her own, and hers with Scott Galloway. As a result, I’m an expert on all things KSwish.

She’s a fascinating case study in gender because she prides herself in being atypically female. Her extreme self-confidence often tips over into bragging about herself. She makes no apologies for being the self proclaimed “best tech journalist” currently working. When you look up “swagger” in the dictionary. . .

She is good at what she does and she has accomplished a lot. At present, she’s on a nationwide book tour for her new book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, which is selling well. Among other things, people like that she’s so opinionated.

Normally, I think of her braggadocio as a harmless personality quirk, but her promoting of her book tour is proving way, way too much. The to-this-point undefeated male ego has finally met its match. Name an especially egregious male whose ego runs amok. KSwish would give that dude a run for his money.

Case in point. She recently bragged about doing the best job of anyone reporting on what really happened with Sam Altman’s firing and rehiring at OpenAI. She said something to the effect of, “It was cool to see I still got it. And that I can still be the best beat reporter going.” Swisher isn’t a reporter anymore because her ever expanding ego makes it impossible to defer to interview subjects. She has to be the story. End of story.

Maybe a women with an unbridled ego is alright, fuck the patriarchy and all, but I’m repelled by egomaniacs of either gender. I’m at an “advanced” stage of my life where I’m drawn to people who sublimate their ego in the service of others. Especially when that service takes the form of disciplined listening. Of choosing not to speak. Of looking, and listening, and learning.

That said, I am down with KSwish-like ambition. And even her admittedly excessive work ethic and intense focus on professional status. With the critical caveat that we keep Qoheleth’s Old Testament Ecclesiastes insight front and center—that’s there’s a season for everything. Including ambition, professional status, and ego.

In your 20s, 30s, and 40s, go crazy. Be ambitious. Work hard. Achieve things. Line your pockets. Increase your status.

But KSwish, like your Humble Blogger, was born in 1962. And listening to her promote herself over and over makes me wonder, when should one stop giving a shit? When is the time to cull our professional “to do” lists and create space for others?

Of course it’s a personal decision. KSwish would vehemently reject my suggestion that we think about our professional identities in terms of life chapters. She would profanely brush off my suggestion that we defer to our younger colleagues on their way up.

And that’s her prerogative.

I’m repelled by KSwish’s self promoting, look-at-me, in-your-face ego. But, but being the expert I am, I can say this with total confidence. She doesn’t give a shit about what I think about her. Which is her most appealing trait.

It’s 1995

Posted on by
2

Said one technology analyst this week on the heels of artificial intelligence chip maker Nvidia’s red hot quarterly results. Meaning just like when the internet caught fire in 1995, Nvidia is igniting a whole new technology whose trajectory requires educated guesses.

Let’s press pause and ponder whether we’re better off now than in the early 90s. Inevitably my privilege contributes to my belief that we are a lot better off. Partially because of convenience. Specifically, we take for granted the time we save on almost a daily basis from internet-based personal tech. Case in point. A friend recently posted a picture of himself on Facebook at the Westminster, CA Department of Motor Vehicles where I got my license 46 years ago and I thought, “Why the heck did he go in person?” because I can’t remember the last time I went to the DMV.*

Granted, not a substantive example of human progress, but I suspect it is the cumulative effect of relatively simple and smallish such examples that translate into an improved quality of life.

More meaningfully, here’s a far-out social media adventure I went on last week after an extended family member posted this gem to the ‘Byrnes Family’ group text.

That’s my oldest bro teaching me the sweet science in Muhammad Ali’s hometown. As I looked at it, my attention drifted to the background and my best friend’s house. Jimmy D and I were in separable from ages 3-9. Heartbroken over the end of our friendship, when we moved from Louisville to Ohio I sobbed in the back seat halfway there.

Where the heck is Jimmy fifty-five years later I wondered? A quick google search turned up his dad’s obituary from 2020 including his and his sister’s places of residence. A few seconds later, I was on Jim’s Instagram page looking at his island home just off the Maryland shore that he and his husband were selling.** Then I watched a video from inside his home art studio where he talked about his process. Another quick search turned up his new location. After scouring his instagram and admiring his big white fluffy dogs, I visited his sister’s Facebook page and saw a picture of Jim and his elderly mom. And then back to the obituary and some remembrances including an amazing picture of a very young Jimmy with his parents and sisters on the back brick patio of his Cardiff Rd home. . . the one in the picture.

A miracle of modernity.

I listen a lot to people on the forefront of large language models and my take-away from their predictions is that this technology will greatly accelerate economic productivity and further save people time to pursue more non-work interests and activities.

Not all boats will rise to the same degree, because they never have, but artificial intelligence will in all likelihood induce a much higher tide. White collar people in particular will work less while enjoying simple and smallish and quite possibly complex and more substantive improvements to their quality of life.

BUT will any of us be happier? One way to get at that is to reflect on whether we’re happier now than in the early 90s. Despite internet-fueled economic growth, there’s lots of evidence that we are not. In fact, some would argue that a large part of the internet’s legacy, especially among the young, is steadily worsening mental health. And a coarsening of civic life.

Another way to approach the question of whether we’ll be happier in a post AI world is to consider whether it will foster stronger interpersonal connections. Will it, I wonder, enable us to enjoy the company of more close friends? I also wonder whether it will enable us to slow if not reverse the environmental degradation that threatens our well-being. And will we, I wonder, experience more art that moves us more often, and in the end, makes us feel more alive. Alive in ways that renewing car tabs on-line and skimming friends’ Instagram pages never will.

In the same space of time, 29 years from now, in 2053, I suspect we won’t be much if any happier than we are right now. I would like to be wrong and still around so that you can recall this post and roast me for not being nearly optimistic enough.

*needed to do an eye test to renew his license

**someone in my fam asked if I knew Jimmy was gay, “LOL,” I said. “We were six, I don’t think I knew what ‘gay’ was.”

The Future Is Here

Posted on by
Reply

Everything exists on a continuum. For example, while running down San Vicente Blvd in Santa Monica last week I marveled at the amount of money a fair number of West Los Angelenos spend on cars. Why do they do that I wondered? I concluded, rightly or wrongly, it was because they’re vain. Porsche, Mercedes, and Range Rover make bank on people’s vanity.

Just as I was starting to feel really superior I caught myself. Glancing at my watch, I saw my average pace for the run was 9 minutes and some seconds. Prompting me to pick up the pace in order to avoid uploading a 9 minute per mile run to Strava.* Why you’re asking yourself. See above paragraph. Granted, more subtle and nuanced, but same concept. The only difference, the degree of vanity.

What does this have to do with Apple’s new Vision Pro you’re wondering. Well, I’m here to connect those seemingly disparate dots.

Maybe the mostly likely reaction to the Vision Pro is to fear for a future where tech laden introversion obliterates interpersonal relations even further. But when I walk into the Plum Street Y weight room almost everyone is already listening to their own music and/or podcasts making spontaneous meetings and convo highly unlikely. Including me.** Same on subways and lots of other public spaces. People are already using smart phones, head phones, and related personal tech to tune out the outside world, including the people they are damn near rubbing elbows with.

Steve likes to talk to me whenever he sees me at the pool or in the weight room. In the weight room, when I see him approaching, I pop out one of my AirPods. Easy-peasy. This is what came to mind when watching this Casey Neistat’s review of the Vision Pro.

Just watch from the 7+ minute mark. The first seven minutes are ridiculous, dystopian, depressing, pick your most negative adjective. But let’s do what Casey does at the end of his review and fast forward to a future where Vision Pro-like products are way way lighter, less obtrusive, and less dorky.

Something like eye glasses that morph into sun glasses in the sun seems likely. It would be easy to sit alone on a bench in New York City and switch seamlessly from being alone in your own multimedia world and then either resting the glasses on top of your head or letting them dangle around your neck whenever someone sits down next to you.

There’s no putting this personal tech toothpaste back in the tube, but my tribe, the introverts, will not roam the world alone, figuratively or literally. There will still be a normal distribution of extroverts. And we will still talk to one another even after the Vision Pro becomes semi-affordable and reaches critical mass.

Vain people will even continue expanding their circle of friends, and sometimes even fall in love, and sometimes even have children.

*Fail.

**Love me my AirPods. You can pry them from cold, dead hands.

Can You Explain This To Me?

Posted on by
Reply

A few days ago I was cycling southbound on the Chehalis Western Trail (CWT), a gem of Thurston County public infrastructure. And thanks to attentive parents, I successfully dodged a few 3 year-oldish riders on those amazingly small bikes that darn near enable babies to ride home from the hospital under their own power.

And I wondered what would it be like to be three years-old, to live through the 21st Century and check out sometime in the 2100’s? On the surface, probably pretty great since technology and medical advances continue to amaze and you don’t have to go the Department of Motor Vehicles in person anymore. And some of us don’t have to go to gas stations. And global poverty is way down. And despite Fox News propaganda, crime is down. And despite serious income inequality and low savings rates, people can find jobs and the economy is resilient.

And yet.

I wouldn’t want to be my tiny CWT cycling friends because if I had to capture the current zeitgeist in one word it’s “sad”. Despite continuing substantive improvements to our quality of life, a critical mass of people in the (dis)United States seem, for lack of a better term, sad. Why is that?

And why don’t I know the answers to that. Does my multi-layered privilege blind me? Short answer, of course.

I don’t think I’ll beat myself up for not knowing, because as I tell my students, “It’s okay to not be okay. And it’s okay to be okay.” Still, I would like to better understand why you are sad or why people you know well are sad. Is it as simple as the rent is too damn high or is it climate anxiety or is the answer more abstract, philosophical, even spiritual?

If you accept my premise, that we’re in the grips of a wave of sadness that shows no signs of abating, please enlighten me as to why. Thank you in advance.

The Humanities Are Not Dead

Posted on by
Reply

In recent years the humanities have been the Phoenix Suns; the Miami Marlins; the Arizona Cardinals; the Theresa May; the Sears, Roebuck, and Company, of the academy.

Science sexy. Technology steamy. Data analysis super hot. Religion, art history, English literature, philosophy, decidedly unsexy.

Partially due to the escalating costs of a university education, “What is the ROI—return on investment?” has replaced universal questions about the purposes of life and a life well lived that are the lifeblood of the humanities.

That is the context in which I read this Kara Swisher New York Times commentary titled “Is This the End of the Age of Apple?”

Swisher touches upon Apple’s recent struggles and asks:

“Where is the next great boom of innovation going to come from, when even the strongest brands and products might not be sure things anymore?”

She contends:

“Now all of tech is seeking the next major platform and area of growth. Will it be virtual and augmented reality, or perhaps self-driving cars? Artificial intelligence, robotics, cryptocurrency or digital health? We are stumbling in the dark.”

She concludes by imploring:

“We need the next wave of innovation, and we need it now.”

Only if we concede to our President that everything is transactional and deem the humanities completely irrelevant, should we conclude we’re stumbling in the dark because a high profile technology company is struggling. As I write, Swisher has inspired 1,105 comments.

Dig the top rated one, as determined by New York Times readers, by “Childofsol” who resides in Alaska:

“No. What we definitely do not need is more technological innovation in the world of things. How about this: What would truly be innovative, is to develop an economy that isn’t based on endless growth and the mindless consumption that endless growth entails. We need to become a country that values its citizens, as evidenced by clean air and water, the right to health care, and the right to retirement security. A culture which reverses its headlong rush into ever-faster everything, and celebrates the art of living in harmony with the environment which supports us. That’s the kind of innovation we could use more of.”

Or the silver medal comment by “Berk” in Northern California:

“’Where is that next spark that will light us all up?’” A fantastic, memorable vacation? A good story? A great meal with friends? A walk in the woods on a crisp fall day? Experiences, not things.”

All of the top rated comments are similar. Clearly, if we can generalize from New York Times readers even a little, there’s serious skepticism about mindless technology. And a longing for some semblance of balance where the humanities rise from the mat before the quants hurriedly count to eight and declare a technical knockout.

That is heartening.

 

 

2118 Thinking

Posted on by
1

Easter service at Good Shepherd Lutheran brought a surfeit of babies. One particularly endearing one craned her neck to look up at the ceiling lights one minute and head butted her grandpa the next. The red-headed one, sadly, didn’t get quite as much attention as the blonde head butter.

Those babies may live until 2118, which prompted me to think how differently a President might govern, a Congress might legislate, and a Judiciary might rule if they focused their attention on the later years of Good Shepherd’s littlest Easter service congregants.

What if our news cycles were ten years long and all of us adopted 2118 thinking?

We’d reign in our federal debt, we’d conserve natural resources, and we’d focus on reducing global poverty. In contrast, the Associated Press reports, “The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will roll back automobile gas mileage and pollution standards that were a pillar in the Obama administration’s plans to combat climate change.”

Is that what he means by “Make America Great Again”?

 

 

The Lure of Technology

Posted on by
1

Last week at the U, two adherents of The Maker Movement tried convincing an audience that letting young students create tech-based products is a panacea for improved schooling. Students are making small robots that can bowl they enthused and ties that light up when a room darkens. And someday, they intimated, they’ll build a frig that will notify you or the grocery store when you’re almost out of milk.

Like tele-evangelists, the two speakers said they weren’t advocating for technology for technology’s sake, but that’s exactly what I took away from their altogether uninspiring examples.

Seventy-five percent of what young and old technologists produce is unadulterated gimmickry. Another 24 percent makes life a tad more convenient, which shouldn’t necessarily be mistaken with “better”. When I opened my refrigerator this morning, I saw that I was out of milk. We sold our previous house without photos from overhead.

One percent of technological innovation fundamentally improves the quality of people’s lives. My friend who makes educational apps for autistic children is a one-percenter.

No one has made an app or device that helps me communicate better with my wife. Despite the Maker Movement and related Technological Revolution, I still say and do stupid things that upset her. More generally, where’s the technology that ameliorates gender, racial, political, economic, religious differences? The technology that creates improved interpersonal relationships, and kinder, more caring communities?

I’m not holding my breath.

 

 

 

Apple Watch and iPhones: iNitial Reaction

Posted on by
Reply

The Apple Watch. My favorite Apple watcher, John Gruber, said this Benjamin Clymer review of the Apple watch is the best one yet. If Gruber says it, it’s true.

Henry Blodget is smart, that’s why his ignorant comments that the Apple Watch is completely irrelevant shocked me. He’s forgotten history, in particular how unenthused nearly everyone was when the iPhone and iPad were first released.

Having said that, I will not be keeping my word because I will not be buying it this go round. I’ll wait a few iterations. I bought a new watch a year ago. My Garmin Forerunner 10 is one of my favorite possessions. It’s a brilliant watch because it only has the most essential functions I need. Meaning it’s simple to use. And it’s waterproof. And, unless I’m using the GPS feature a lot, the charge lasts several days.

The Apple watch isn’t waterproof. Deal breaker. I do not want to take my watch off every time I hit the pool or bathtub. And allegedly, you have to charge it overnight meaning I wouldn’t be able to use it to wake up. My one-third the cost Forerunner 10 has the perfect alarm—not too grating, but loud enough to always do the trick. No doubt Garmin knows what Blodget seemingly doesn’t, the Watch will get much better pretty quickly and prove brutallly tough competition. I may end up being their last customer. Maybe I should buy an extra “10” or two in case they die a sudden death.

Also, most of the Watch apps will require iPhone tethering. Really, I have to carry a new larger iPhone in order to see fitness data on my Watch? A two-part problem. 1) Getting a comfortable enough, water/sweat proof carrying case so that the phone “disappears” while running. Cyclists will most likely use a case and then just toss it in their back-middle jersey pocket. 2) The additional weight. When you pretend you’re an elite athlete, every gram or ounce counts. :)

I had a great run this morning. It was 52 degrees out and it was pitch black when I left, and 10k later, I was bathed in beautiful morning light. I took three things—shoes, socks, shorts.

The only reason to buy the first Watch is to subject acquaintances, friends, and family to status envy. That is always sufficient motivation for lots of people.

The phones. All previous sales records will be shattered. Sleepless nights for Samsung. Their worst fears are being realized as evidenced by this. I’m holding my AAPL shares and should probably use my Watch savings to buy three and a half more.

I THINK I want one. The pretend elite cyclist in me is thinking 4.7″, but the aging reader is thinking 5.5″. Maybe I’ll take a year to decide.

That collective sigh was my friends who have grown weary of my annoying quirk.

A Peace Corp for Geeks

Posted on by
2

Call me inconsistent. I’m skeptical of the new national religion, data analysis, but a huge fan of Code for America, a Peace Corp for geeks. Code for America recruits young tech savvy entrepreneurs to improve government. Participants take a year-long leave from their IT positions and earn $35,000, way more than a Peace Corp volunteer, but way less than normal for them.

This ten minute NewsHour segment shows wonderfully diverse, socially aware people with serious technical chops solving real problems like helping homeless people find the services they most need.

A salve for my cynicism. Here’s hoping it achieves Peace Corp-like status some day.