Last night I tweeted this.
I can’t really remember why. I think it was because I’d found myself nodding along with of a bunch of sniping about the Apple announcements. People were moaning about the fact that not much happened. Some stuff got a bit better and a tiny video camera got added to the back of an MP3 player or something like that. Yeah, big deal.
In response @felixturner sent me a link to this wonderful clip: Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy. I think the original has probably had about 1 gazillion views on YouTube but I’ve never seen it before:
But thanks to the wonder of people – here it is in a UK friendly format! Yay!
He’s right you know. And that little iPod with a colour screen, video camera, radio, pedometer, etc. etc. etc. That’s serious witchcraft.
My dad refers to it all as ‘Alien Technology’ because for him it’s totally unfeasible that humans could have made such things. He could just about get his head around the phase of development between LED watches and the ZX Spectrum – he was actually a bit of an electronics tinkerer and OMNI magazine reader back when I was a kid. But when you show him something like an iPhone he is genuinely flabbergasted. He can’t comprehend the massive leap that’s happened between flashing LEDs and the crazy connected HD-quality computing firepower we have now.
I think we should all take a step back every now and again and let ourselves be a bit flabbergasted at what’ve done, and what we’re lucky enough to have at our disposal.
I had a bit of a moment a couple days ago, I suddenly realised that we were working on something that had just a whiff of the awesome infinite potential of technology. Obviously we were applying it to something really pointless. But it did make me stop and think for a second…
Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy, article + hilarious video: http://tinyurl.com/kp4l4d
Yes it is! It’s hard for us lot in our little digi-bubble to do that stepping back thing. But when we do, little bits of clarity start to emerge through our twitter-addled minds.
totally we need more #epic and less #fail
Brilliant!
I feel less guilty now – I still, quite often, imagine what 10-year-old me would think of an iPhone (or laptop, or mp3 player), and feel genuinely amazed by the thing all over again. Try it. It’s nice.
Louis C.K.’s the (largely uncredited) comedian making the observations. Have a look at his other material on Youtube and elsewhere. A perdy good Stand-Up. On a US comedy tip, why not give Patton Oswalt a whirl? (a live standup album of his is on Spotify)
Here’s a thought, prompted by reading this…
Maybe it’s not that we got better at inventing; instead the internet has compressed all the time it took to do the ‘inbetween’ stuff… sharing inventions, studying them, improving…
…which means that our GREATEST invention is something that has made invention itself much, much faster…
Thanks mate. :-)
Brilliant!