SOME MORE APPLE
I don’t have a clue, not an inkling, of how a computer works. I’ve heard mention of it all being 1’s and 0’s in some combination but have no idea what that means. And yet I live in a world where all kinds of miraculous knowledge and awareness happen all around me. And all of this is virtual, very, very real and not real at all. I am astonished that I can drive down the road and a disembodied voice in the accent of my choosing can tell me that after the next stop light, at the second stop light I should turn right. And when I get within several hundred feet of the second stop light I am told to turn right again. And however this magic is happening it is happening on every car on the road that turns on their GPS all at the same time. Even more fantastic is that I can tap on my iPhone and be connected, free, with someone in Germany or India, and can see their face and talk with them. It blows my mind.
I was born in the Landour Community Hospital in Landour, India in the colonial world which came about because of the steam engine and industrialization of England which led to the domination of India. I lived in the huge house of my missionary parents with twenty foot ceilings and, in order to live at an American standard of living, with no modern conveniences, not a refrigerator or electric stove, washing machine or lawnmower we had more than ten servants who cooked, washed clothes, swept the floor and cut the grass, people whom I didn’t know and barely paid attention to. A modern technology free life.
In my lifetime of 88 years the world has been transformed around me again and again and again: radio, automobiles, television, air travel and then the speed up of all kinds of technology which these days has become a whirlwind of change that is getting faster and faster until it is about to explode through AI. And I don’t understand any of it. I accept each change and adapt and assume that it is normal, functioning through these changes in an ignorant and intuitive way. It just works.
But at the same time the computer as a magic typewriter, the IPhone as a way to sit beside distant people, eye to eye, and smile and talk seems natural and even ordinary.
So the reason why Apple: The First Hundred Years fascinates me so much is because it gives me a hint of how this rapid transformation has happened.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 