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Samsung's "Human Digitalism" Explained By The Only One Who Can Explain It
If you haven't seen it yet, look at the new-age speak, flash and dance about Samsung's "Human Digitalism" and be just as confused as everyone else.
They're trying to explain a concept but can't quite get it out. Access, Align, Amaze, and Act. Really? With teen dancers and partnerships with forward-thinking companies like Adobe and Time Warner Cable. It seems they're covering a lot of bases trying to be part of something but aren't sure what. They're like a Dylan character: "And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr Jones?"
But there is a technology company that understands it, and has explained it in a simple way without requiring marketing names and choreography:
The reason Apple's able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. To be able to get the best of both. To make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so they really fit the users. The users don't have to come to them, they come to the user.
The contrast between these two companies' explanations couldn't be more dramatic. One explains it concisely, the other pushes it out in a rush of words, images and production numbers. Which one do you think really understands the "human" in "human digitalism"?
Fortune ranks Steve Jobs first in list of 'smart' technology CEOs
Jobs is credited with salvaging Apple from near-bankruptcy, and subsequently turning it into the most valuable tech company in the world. He is also described as having radically altered four different industries: music through iTunes, animated movies via Pixar, telecoms by way of the iPhone, and computers as a whole via the iPad.
Who even comes close? Aside from Apple's success, the most obvious point in Jobs' favor is that the smartest move other tech CEOs can make is to try copying whatever Apple does.
Jobs' grip at the top of the list is so tight he should occupy the first five positions.
How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.
Fantastic article by Douglas Adams written 11 years ago. It's great not just because Adams "got" the Internet, but rather "got" technology and society as a whole.
I chose the above passage because it's generally true, but also because I'm an exception to it. Though more than 20 years past the stated cut-off, I still love seeing technology progress. Especially in the areas of mobile and personal computing. Though a geek myself, I believe the more technology is taken out of the hands of IT groups, geeks and "gurus", and put into the hands of a typical family home, the better.
