Amid the flurry of speculations and distress regarding Steve Jobs and Apple’s withdrawal from the Macworld conference next month and the distress of hardcore fans, I’d like to point out a funny Simpsons episode aired a couple weeks ago that mockingly flatters the cult of Apple users and frowns on its tethered technology.
In “Mypods and Boomsticks,” (which, of course, I watched on the Internet at fox.com) the Simpsons go shopping to return gifts after Christmas and discover the new “Mapple” store, a glass cube sitting in the center of Springfield Mall.
“It’s so sterile,” Lisa gushes. (Could it be that Matt Groening read Jonathan Zittrain’s Future of the Internet?) “MyPods! MyPhones! A Brainiac Bar!” She recognizes, however, that everything is too expensive for her. She tries to buy some MyPhonies- white ear buds so she can pretend she has a MyPod- but even those cost $40.
Homer also takes interest in a MyCube, a device “powered by dreams and fueled by imagination,” the salesman says. “What can I do?” Homer asks. “You should ask, ‘What can I do for it,'” the salesman replies.
Everyone is interrupted by a live message from Chief Imaginative Officer Steve Mobs. “He’s like a god that knows what we want!” one Mapple fan says excitedly. Mobs says he will announce something “that will change the way you completely look at everything,” but then Bart intercepts the video and dubs Steve Mobs’ product announcement with some harsh criticism towards Mapple fans.
“You’re all losers! You think you’re cool because you buy a $500 phone with a picture of a fruit on it? Well guess what? They cost 8 bucks to make and I pee on every one!” shouts Steve Mobs with Bart’s voiceover, “I’ve made a fortune off of you chumps and and invested it all in Microsoft! Now my Boyfriend Bill Gates and I kiss each other on a pile of your money.”
Shocked, a disturbed Mapple fan hurls a hammer at the screen, reminiscent of Apple’s 1984 “Big Brother” commercial. “Your heart is blacker than your turtleneck!” he screams as the glass shatters.
The episode was very memorable not only because it made fun of how Apple users are willing to pay big bucks, but also because it also showed how young people download content without much thought. After some 1212 songs, Lisa realizes she has rung up a a debt of $1200 and seeks out Steve Mobs in his Mapple headquarters in the bottom of the ocean.
“I know our poster says ‘Think Differently’ but our real slogan is ‘No Refunds,'” Mobs tells a tearful Lisa, “How would you like to work for Mapple?” In the last scene, Lisa is shown in a MyPod costume, handing out flyers on the street. “Think differently,” she says in a flat voice.
You want to make the world a better place, but you’re sort of lazy. What if I told you you could make a difference without doing anything?
I know that doesn’t sound right, but all it takes is installing a program to your computer (okay, so you did have to do something). After the initial installation, you don’t have to do anything but let the program run on its own while your computer is on… so what can you do? Let me give you the details.
1. Track Earthquakes
Seismologists at the University of California at Riverside and Stanford Univ. are making an earthquake detecting network by linking laptops that have built-in motion sensors. Most laptops have these sensors (called accelerometers) that enable the computer to protect itself by turning off the hard drive if the laptops are dropped. Check out details at the Quake-Catcher Network.
Volunteers can download a special software that reports sudden motions of the laptop to a central server on the Internet. You don’t have to worry about keeping the laptop stationary– the system only picks up sudden motions that happen in multiple computers simultaneously. The central computer determines the computer’s location based on its IP address, which has its flaws, but not computers have GPS chips.
This system is a cheap way to track earthquakes– seismometers are huge and expensive but precise; laptops are less precise, but if you have more participating, the data becomes more accurate. It is also better in tracking the impact area of the earthquake.
The system is new and being used primarily now for education purposes and needs to be fleshed out more; like having interactive maps to show movements of earthquakes over time.
2. The Herdict Project
Herdict has two projects- Herdict Web and Herdict PC- both of which you can see on its site. The uber-cool program (in my opinion) is Herdict Web, which lets you see “what is inaccessible, where it’s inaccessible, and for how long.” By “inaccessible” I mean “not being able to access the Internet.” That concept may be confusing, but many countries block certain websites. With Herdict installed in your computer, the program checks out Internet filtering around the world, by seeing which sites are accessible (and which are not) according to country (and what sort of content it was that triggered the blockage).
Reporting in the age of web 2.0 has a new element: aggregating information from first-hand online sources and presenting it in an orderly fashion.
First-hand online sources used to be online press releases, or government-released documents, (compared to reporting from second-hand online sources such as local newspapers) but thanks to the at-large reporting community, the pool of first-hand sources is expanding– exponentially. Through Twitter, Flickr, blogs, and other sites that support real-time content, one can get updates on the situation without leaving the country. The recent tragedy in Mumbai was a great example.
I’m not suggesting that fieldwork is not important, but the definition of “journalist” is getting blurry. How is a journalist different from a reporter? If we are we using the term “participatory journalism” instead of “participatory reporting?” does than mean the definition of journalism has already changed, despite legacy media’s reluctance to acknowledge it? Most probably in the future, journalists will have a bigger editorial role in aggregating information, weighing it, and presenting it to those of us who don’t have time (nor want to spend the time) visiting various Twitter feeds or reading multiple blog sites. Then we should have to coin a new term for journalists who do their own legwork.
But I don’t think we should be pessimistic about the new technologies that are changing journalism. Even in Web 1.0, hyperlinks totally changed journalism. Although there are downsides of hyperlinks, they are great in providing information because digital articles can easily direct people to more detailed information– something print articles couldn’t do.