Multi-tasking and the iPhone
7/20/2007A lot has been said about Apple as "innovator," but I think the term is grossly misused. All innovation is simply incremental convergence. Innovation is man managing to walk and chew gum at the same time. While that is not something a toddler can do, it is not "revolutionary" when an adult blows a bubble while walking and chewing gum. While innovation does occur, it is also inevitable, if we are to believe that Hegel's dialectic has any merit. The idea of "checks and balances" is based on the same observation of opposites coming together to create a third entity. Life itself is based on the same phenomenon, with some random exceptions like sea-horses that allegedly self-procreate. :-)
So what is the iPhone? It is the convergence of a mp3 video player (itself a convergence,) a portable telephone (a convergence of radio and telephone), a digital camera (a convergence of tv and computers) and a Blackberry (a convergence of web-services and telephones.) Apple has always been about multi-tasking. When DOS users were closing one program to open another, Apple left one application running while opening another. Multitasking is efficient. One device that does many things is efficient. Most living rooms have two or three video remote controllers in them, and most universal remotes do not live up to their promise. The iPhone is today's most advanced universal remote, but the time saved is only in the act of switching, or in this case, of carrying. As humans we can only do one thing at a time, and the iPhone will not change that. To blow a bubble you have to stop chewing. Some people already want an improved iPhone with GPS, an FM or satellite radio, and more storage. Those incremental convergences will surely come eventually. But what about the tasking?
Does it make sense to watch a movie on a tiny screen, or type on a miniature keyboard? Is there anything on the net that must be read immediately? What is the rush? While we can double the quantity of storage on our technological devices easily, shouldn't we also be weighing the quality of our lives that we store within them? It has always been easy to be alone in a crowd. Are we becoming more and more like the pod people in The Matrix? Are we unable to live without technology-fed invented dreams as mindless consumers creating energy for a Mothership? We believe we are doing many things, when in reality we are doing only one thing many times.
In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awakes to discover that he has been "changed into a monstrous verminous bug." But what made him that way? He worked too hard. He was perpetually multi-tasking; there was always more work to do. "Demand" is an insatiable appetite within the marketplace. He became a bug because bugs are always working. Bugs don't know how to enjoy life.
As Apple works too hard to rush the pace of innovation to keep stockholders happy, are we, as consumers, caught in a new version of the maddening cycle that Kafka and other's have described before? Are we losing our humanity to microchip technology and a frantic pace of work, or is technology serving humanity by improving the quality of people's lives? In The Matrix, the goal of the machine-world was to keep humans happy so that they would live longer and produce more energy. Science advances with the same capacity to kill lives as to save them. Is this convergence meaningful? Is the quest to build an insanely great box now favoring just the insane part of the equation? Why is a computer company multi-tasking as both manufacturer and retailer, making phones, selling music and movies, and trying to cure AIDS and end global warming? If the iPod clothing line took off, would the Apple Store have a GAP in them, too? Like The Cat in the Hat balancing on a ball while juggling many things, this may not end well.