For another take on the matter, see The Singularity Hypothesis, a discussion that lays claim to assess the matter scientifically inasmuch as the authors (hi! Eric) are keen on the same. Rah!
Can’t get Apple and Lenovo (IBM) or some other PC to play right? Buy a Mac, say the experts (and then get ready to buy a lot of software, all the stuff you already have, once more, and innumerable times more, because what Apple really excels in is getting its customers to like buying stuff, apps, upgrades, software, tech time, etc.) Make a virtual machine, dual boot it (at least for the minority still capable of doing that these days). A recent tech tip for those who wish to sweat the details (most folks would rather switch than fight...) is here (though if you read this PC World article it turns out that it too is all about switching...) or here. Or because, like the two party system in the US, it is really only a matter of profit (i.e., there is no feud between Apple and Windows) here.
Apple and IBM still won’t play right but you won’t know it.
Linux operating systems are not the answer because Word, which is arguably the touchstone (no one can handle WordPerfect, which has given up and become a Word impersonator as a consequence) is not the same as Open Office. In fact, Word on a Mac and Word on a PC (I bristle at this because what are Macs if they are not PCs, toasters that don't toast? jetpacks without rocket fittings?) does not give one identical results, although you need to look at the print results to note the difference (so make a PDF and minimize it, it’ll still be there, but coherent unto the file you crafted without the changes introduced by the new platform: WTSIWTG). So let’s all go blame Microsoft as if it were the great evil that besets your technological woes (slow computer? get a Mac!) but the problem is that hardware makes a difference for what software you can use. Your screen makes a difference (as Mac knows all too well), your computer/software settings make a difference (whether known to you or not) and now Google and Facebook and Twitter other bubble protocols to go with your television programming also makes a difference. The trick will be figuring out what kind of difference that difference makes.
Or maybe, owing to our own contouring of our own consciousness to the limits and constraints of the digital interface, be it that of email or of gaming or of the increasingly ubiquitous social networking (Facebook now appeals to the young, and the old and everyone in between, despite the social horror that it is for teens to ‘friend’ their parents), we increasingly find the flatness of computer enhanced experience exactly as charming as its purveyors claim.
Here we note the very specific (and very popularly Nietzschean) “faith” in science and especially industrial, corporate, capitalist technology, if we read our Sloterdijk aright, or better yet if we read Guenther Anders, Theodor Adorno, or even Ivan Illich, we also know that same industrial, corporate, capitalist technology has been with us since the interregnum between the two wars. But this is again and also to say that such a vision is fascist through and through. All this gives us is another reason to prepare for the coming singularity. And as with other raptures, one does not expect to have a choice. And one thinks this no matter how underwhelming the experience turns out to be in fact.
Like Conrad,[1] the object of girl-fan affection in a bygone musical, we “love” our iPhones — O yes we do. Here what matters is not affect as much as brand loyalty — O Conrad, we’ll be true. Even with all its limitations, we are happy to say: O iPhone, we love you.
There is a lot published on this, but see Jonathan Franzen’s op-ed piece, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” New York Times, May 28, 2011.
[1] I owe this reference to Tracy B. Strong who persisted in singing this for no apparent reason day and night while I was writing this essay. And repetition, any repetition, affords rather the same propaganda effect as a commercial.
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