[microsound] RIP Steve Jobs

[John Hopkins]

> advancing this: a paired statement and question: i dislike software
> patents, and, would ios be as consistent as it is without them, or to
> generalize, without the autocratic enforcements?
> supporting that: as re: gnome / aqua: and paraphrasing with real
> trepidation, ezra pound: wouldn't gnome be yet "better" if someone
> handed it a fistful of money?

ANY technology is the (optimized) application of a protocol on a range of 
energized material.  A reproducible technology which is inter-operable (with 
itself) has to have (on a sliding scale) a more rigorous set of protocols that 
guide its use.  This, by nature, restricts the use to within the definitions of 
that protocol.  The more open the system, the more potential for evolution, for 
change, and in that same way, for failure (to do a defined task).  Technology is 
about (human) control of pathways of energy flow through the world we are part 
of.  Tighter control means being able to take huge energies 'out there' and 
direct them precisely where one likes (think about owning (or even building) an 
amplifier!).  Less control allows for more noise in the system which can give 
rise to interesting and unforeseen possibility, but it can also, in the case of 
an amplifier, shred your speakers, overheat, and burn down your house.

In any technological deployment there is an explicit struggle between control 
and freedom.  (think 'o-ring' on the shuttle booster rocket!)  More control 
requires more overall energy input into the system.  (This is simple 
thermodynamics -- which is not an optional concept, "it's the LAW.")  With 
infinite energy supplies, one can completely control a system and that system 
will not fail in its task.  Obviously this is impossible, so we have to make do 
with something less than perfect control.  But to make a device that can be 
deployed widely across a huge range of environmental conditions and have it so 
that it fails infrequently, one has to exert intense control over the production 
process, all of the way.

That's why military systems are triple-redundant, for example.  When needing to 
launch a chunk of lead across a space and into another human's body who is 
attempting to do the same thing at the same second at you, you don't want your 
technological support system to fail.  You would not want the manufacturer of 
that weapon system to have employees who were smoking pot the day your weapon 
was rolling off the assembly line!  Thus the idea of wide-scaled social 
engineering to ensure that command-and-control systems are in place throughout 
the supply chain.

Apple, as a techno-social system within a wider techno-social system, is no 
different than any other techno-social system in these issues.  (nation-states, 
military organizations, manufacturing entities, corporations, clans, whatever)

Just a few reflections prompted by the somewhat facile comments here on the list 
regarding a human passing, and how that human's presence affected other humans 
across the planet.  More can be found below...

cheers,
JH

for example -- http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/2657
or http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/2390
or http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/2014
or http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/2008
or just http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/tag/technology