jimray

I wrote about the next wave of innovation as constellation computers over at Flicker Fusion.

Apple's watch is very much in the tradition of other new ideas like the iPod, the Macbook Air, and the iPad. It refines existing ideas, is a bit ahead of itself technically, perhaps a bit thicker or more ungainly or underpowered than it would like to be, but hints at a certain inevitability.

The watch is also a more fully developed idea in many ways than other first-gen Apple devices. Consider the iPhone rollout, with the compromised antennae designs and chintzy plastic casing of the first few generations. They didn't just release the watch as aluminum and glass models with a set of bands ranging from $49-$99, which they may well have been able to do a year ago. Recall Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone 4, with the obvious pride in the craftsmanship and the refinement of the actual object, not just the ideas behind the glass and multitouch. Apple believes, knows really, the watch needs that same level of refinement, plus a certain personalness, to truly succeed as an idea and do more than merely sell a bunch of quasi-disposable devices.

That they've embraced fashion is something I'm cautiously optimistic about. Apple has always been fashionable, so it's not a huge step, and in the service of empowering more than just the nerds, I'm all for it. The continuum of style and fashion and haute couture, however, is certainly going to be difficult to manage.

We all know where this is going, we've known since we were kids with our comics and dorky sci-fi books. The computers are disassembling and reconfiguring, first they moved off the desk into our pants, soon they'll be on and in us. I'm (mostly, pretty sure) this is a good thing! Even if it takes a few refinements and some social realignment to get there.

Today, though, I can't figure where this fits in my life, and I'm someone who's owned the first-gen of every product Apple has released this century (I waited in line an hour for the first iSight camera). Maybe it's because I'm a dad now with income that's hardly disposable. Maybe it's because I own several mechanical watches that I never wear because they don't quite match my personal style and not a single Apple watch is something I'd consider a complement. Maybe because I've become increasingly wary and weary of the surge of notifications and the drain on my own cognition and mindfulness and I'm skeptical that another device is going to help solve that.

Mostly, I'm having a difficult time seeing how the watch today lives up to the ideal of a bicycle for the mind. It seems mostly to want to take on the parts of my mobile devices that I consciously turn off. The health tracking features are intriguing but also a bit niche and, in order to add value beyond my mobile, would mean the watch needs to be on me all the time, even while I'm sleeping.

It would be hard to talk about the watch and not mention the luxury Edition version, which ranges in price from $10,000 to $17,000. For those of us who grew up and into careers excited about the promise of using technology to empower, the Edition is uncomfortable territory, to say the least. There's nothing new about selling baubles to the ultra-rich, and it certainly feels gauche in this new Gilded Age. That Apple has managed to invert Warhol's Coke1 and put the same $350 device in a $17,000 case is only worth celebrating if you are a champion of conspicuous consumption.

The Edition watch is hardly Apple at its best. If anything, the Edition feels like a manifestation of the kind of empty criticism Apple has endured for decades: that they hermetically seal commoditized components in a veneer of design, packaged with slick marketing and a powerful brand. I hope the Edition becomes truly limited and is dropped in future generations.

The dustup reminded me of a feature request I've had in mind for Twitter (and other social media companies) for a while: hire an ombudsman.

Typically, we associate the ombudsman with government orgs, NGO's, or foundations. Their role is to keep the place they work accountable to the public. Newspapers will often have one (the New York Times calls theirs the public editor) with a regular column dedicated not to covering the news but to how they cover the news1.

What links these types of organizations is a sense of purpose and accountability to the communities they serve. Increasingly, social media companies are taking on this role, though not necessarily with the same sense of obligation. The mission of social media is much more difficult to peg down than, say, a local newspaper, but there's no denying the overlap. And while social media corporations pay lip service to the importance of their work, they've yet to institute the levels of accountability we've come to expect from what they are displacing.

Here's how I imagine this would work: hire someone for a two year gig. Their salary goes into locked escrow, they are not eligible for stock options, etc. They are given a reasonable level of access to anyone in the company, from the board to the interns, and the authority to report on how things operate, without revealing proprietary information or upcoming plans. The right person would be a working journalist, a skeptic, someone who believes in afflicting the comfortable, but also technically adept enough to understand what's going on. My pal Mat Honan would be a good start, or anyone on this list. They'd write a regular column (sure, call it a blog) but it might only get updated once a week or so.

This is different from the sort of "radical transparency" that cropped up a few years ago of executives blogging about their mission to make the world a more open and connected whatever. I'm talking about someone tasked with keeping the company honest, someone accountable to the public, not to shareholders. Someone who's beyond just neutral but a doubter, someone who will hold executives' feet to the fire and call bullshit when necessary.

Twitter is an interesting candidate because of their similarity and proximity to the news business and their desire to at least appear like they have a soul2. Twitter has already replaced the daily newspaper, evening broadcast, weekly magazine, for so many people. We can argue about whether this is a good thing until Cronkite rises from the grave but it's a fact. It's how millions of people start or end their days, get breaking news, and follow the stories they care about.

Twitter seems to realize there's a responsibility that accompanies being this pipeline but has, thus far, remained pretty opaque about how it works with the news. Now that they are public, and are continuing to style themselves as a media company, some transparency in to how they operate would not only be welcome but is of vital importance.

Somewhat tellingly, the Times created their public editor position in response to the Jayson Blair scandal. ↩︎

Adam Ierymenko on the inherent dissonance of the Singularity true believers and the devaluing of a workforce creeping into middle age.

Which isn't entirely true. It's more that you're supposed to have made it by the time you're 35 or 40. You should be able to retire thanks to a few liquidity events, work should be something you can't give up because you've spent your entire life hustling.