Comments on: the new iMonolith mini

By: Randolph Fritz

Randolph Fritz — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:44:34 +0000

The MOTOROKR E6 is a very similar device, and I believe available in China, perhaps even Singapore. Thing is, the cell companies have been so efficiently crippling cell phone technology that it has taken Apple to get them moving again. I’m waiting for the unlocked GSM version, but it may be a while.

By: david still

david still — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:29:30 +0000

great idea! let’s not have man as tool using ape and we can live in total edenic simplicity. Will you be
the first to toss your computer and cell phone and A/C and hair dryier and electric razor and car and flush toilet?

By: Nix

Nix — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:14:40 +0000

The iPod is only closed if you don't know about RockBox.

By: ali

ali — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:46:49 +0000

I already own a clunky unreliable iPod that looks like a pensioners heart monitor. It is a closed, cold, depressingly Californian device.

Would I buy an iPhone? Only if they rename it iPrat then I could not resist.

By: Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:10:26 +0000

The notion that there’s something odd about existing in the space between the body and the cultural and natural world is the error here. We were never located two inches behind our right eye, ergo we aren’t going to lose ourselves in our I-Phones, unless you figure we’ve already lost ourselves in other “technologies” such as the English language, clothes, architecture, traffic signs, etc.

By: perianwyr

perianwyr — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:46:05 +0000

And your teeth and nails are soft from not using them as offensive weapons, too.

By: Lorett loves pictures

Lorett loves pictures — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:48:17 +0000

Yes I agree with you, this mentioned Zoolander is a crazy character. I guess people do only act like him if they take too many pills.

Thank you for sharing this story with me !

By: Arthur Davidson Ficke

Arthur Davidson Ficke — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:19:24 +0000

I like my Zune better.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:27:56 +0000

I’m 3000 miles away from all my books (ie external hard drives for the mind), so you’ll have to forgive me my lack of quotes and names (and having not seen Zoolander, I’m afraid I don’t grok the reference). The way I’ve always read McLuhan is that we augment ourselves with our technology – but our self is static. We can’t just keep expanding our notion of self, so as we augment with technology, we lose something else of our self.

For example, memory. Once upon a time, the social we remembered everything – we were an oral society, writing didn’t exist. Everything was kept inside the brain (as it were). But we began to augment ourselves with writing and reading, and that lessened our need for memorization and oral storytelling (doesn’t Plato lament this for Socrates?). The book became a literal external hard drive for our brain – it augmented our ability to hold knowledge in memory, but it’s no longer in the fleshy memory (and most of us have forgotten how to use our memories, intentionally, for anything other than short-term cramming).

Or to take a modern equivalent: when I was a teenager, phones were still attached to the wall. Maybe the more advanced ones (the non-rotary ones) had a couple of speed-dial numbers, but you had numbers written down in address books, and you had to dial them every time you called them. The more often you called people, the more likely you were to recall their number and eventually have it memorized. These days, the only number I know is my parents – all the other numbers, even of people I call every other day or two? Stored in my cell phone. I just need to press a couple of buttons, and the 10 digits go out without ever interacting with me. …and I am so screwed if that phone ever goes up in smoke.

I don’t know that McLuhan necessarily means that you have to augment yourself as a form of self defense, so much as augmentation is almost necessary if we want to keep up with the huge amounts of data/stimulation that’s now available to us.

But it’s also 3:30am, so for all I know I’ll reread this in the light of day (and after a night of sleep) and find I’ve horribly misremembered the last two years of my education.