House of Eratosthenes

At the beginning of last year, I saw something wrong with the little-i…something so wrong that I included it in my essay of What’s Wrong With the World.

Notice how every hot luxury item now, the thing you get your significant-other to show how much you love them, has a name that begins with a lowercase “i”. There is deep psychological symbolism involved in this. “i” is a pronoun we use to reference ourselves…as individuals…usually capitalized, but here, curiously, not. It’s as if we have been conditioned to think less of ourselves. Lowercase “i”…as in…”i’m so glad i have this personal music player because i wouldn’t be worth much without it.” Or, “i hope people will think better of me now that i have a phone that everybody else would like to have.”

These items represent the culmination of energetic research and development, and tend to be quite capable. But people don’t want these items for what they can do…people want the items for what they are.
:
[W]hat arouses this wonder about things that begin with “i”, is a curious brand of self-contradictory confusion. Everybody wants to be like everybody else…but not really. They want to be different, to have what nobody else has…but not really. All this passion is aroused from the fact that so many others want the item in question. Or to be more precise about it, so many others recognize the item in question. But not so many others have it just yet.

It’s an attack upon the individual, but not a complete one. The individual’s desire to be somewhat unique, is what drives the marketing here. But only somewhat. The individual desire to show his individuality not by being a real individual, but by being part of an elite crew…with some members in it…but not too many. Recognition is widespread, almost universal. Actual peerage is narrower and more coveted. That’s the key. The capability of the technological hardware, or lack thereof, is a decidedly second-hand consideration.

Now, I don’t know whether Weisshaupt reads this blog. I’ve long maintained that hardly anybody does. But how then would you explain this gem which appeared at Townhall this weekend:

[M]ost iPhone users are liberals. They are people who WANT a Mommy and Daddy watching over them. iPhone developers must navigate a Byzantine approval process that is so bad, that some even stoop to using Microsoft’s .NET to get things done. Apple tests and approves every application offered on the iPhone to make sure they all play nice together. This of course ensures the phone will deliver the beautiful and slick user experience Apple has decided its users will have. The iPhone is a good example of the “one-size-fits all” top-down mentality of liberals. If you want a different experience from what your masters thinks you SHOULD have and SHOULD want, you are just SOL. The lowercase “i” in iPhone doesn’t occur by accident. The individual just isn’t as important, and the “Phone” takes precedence.

Weisshaupt also included this YouTube clip which helps to make the point. Perfect. Wish I’d known about this.

Hat tip to Dr. Melissa Clouthier, who is not in favor of the analogy even a little bit. She protests. Almost viscerally. As if she has an iPhone herself, it seems.

Sorry Melissa…I see your point, and if you muted your message a little bit, perhaps said something more fluid like “the analogy has problems,” I might have gone along. But fails from the very beginning?

It’s not a failure from stem-to-stern, no. Can’t agree; there’s something to it. Of course, I don’t have a Druid and I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t completely disagree either.

But a culture has been built up around the iProducts; a culture appealing to some, abhorrent to others. The decisions about how the products are to be supported, are made according to an understanding of this culture. How the product is supported, in turn, affects the decisions people make about whether to buy one or not…depending on whether they find that culture appealing. And the culture is decidedly antagonistic toward the concept of the individual making autonomous decisions about how to live his own life.

You know what’s a fantastic illustration of what I’m talking about? Microsoft. They stand alone in being consistently…inconsistent. They put out a product, and the product makes all these assumptions about not only what I want to do, but how I want to do it. The assumptions are wrong and I end up hating it. Next time, they put out a product that is more easily customized to the work-area I’ve put in place, and I end up liking it so much I’ll pay full price for it years and years out of its support window. (Just licensed Excel 97 two weeks ago.) Then they come out with some other pig-in-a-poke that goes back to telling me how to work, and to add insult to injury, makes some decisions about what menu items I don’t want to see anymore and what big friendly in-your-face buttons I’d rather see instead. I end up wanting to throw the goddamn thing against the wall.

The difference is that I — capital-I — and others like me, have this “work-area” at all. If your mission in life is more along the lines of simply fitting in, you might not have one; or if you do, it might play second-fiddle in importance to the next veiled leviathan’s attempts to manage every facet of your life for you. It is a virtual work area, not a fixed location. I’ve put it together piece by piece; there are projects in it, initiated for purposes known only to me. The projects have versions, they have task lists, they have resources, they have prerequisite tasks…I’m above every single one of those…and beneath all of them, are the tools. When I buy a doodad or a gizmo, it’s a tool. Just like the newest guy on the boat mops the deck, and I’m the Captain. You fit into my boat, or I’ll throw you the hell overboard. You just joined the crew and you want to run the whole thing? Not here, bub.

But that’s me.

Other folks are perfectly content to have the newest product step on board and “take charge.” I recall a certain election a year ago that’s turned out rather dismally…and out of the teeming masses that voted for Mister Wonderful, still over half of them still can’t manage to admit the experiment’s been a failure. I rest my case. It’s like Joker said in Dark Knight: (some) folks couldn’t possibly care less what the plan is, just so long as there is one. They want to be managed.

There’s a real cultural divide here, and Apple is firmly on one side of it. I’m not entirely sure how safe it is to say all iPhone users are liberals…but I think it’s pretty safe to call it that nearly all liberals are iPhone owners, or would like to be.

I started to leave a comment, but it got at least as long as Morgan’s post. So I left it as a post over at my place so your comments won’t get lost.

But, on this subject, I’d also like to leave a couple of pertinent and humorous links:

Apple introduces the keyboardless laptop from The Onion, and the ultimate spoof:

Introducing the Apple i
- philmon | 11/03/2009 @ 08:27
About 67 WPM.

And it took a LITTLE time. 😉
- philmon | 11/03/2009 @ 08:39
Damn, philmon, you beat me to it – the Apple i commercial incorporates the entire Mac-head/Puff The Magic Dragon/We’re-all-one-except-you-Republican-poopoo heads world in one 5-minute flash of snark. Brilliant.

This cultural divide has been long among us – the earliest Personal Computer users I encountered in the Mainframe world in the ’80s illustrated the same strange split. AppleII users were ALWAYS the people who thought the universe would be better if people just attended more potlucks, while the build-a-computer-out-of-spare-parts guys always gravitated from Radio Shack to PC’s at the earliest opportunity – and bristled at the notion that what they were doing was in any way like what anybody else was doing.

Guess who was the most fun to be around (if you were male and over 9 years old)? Guess how they viewed themselves politically?

Guess which, ah, “computer users” you’ll be dealing with if you ever have the misfortune to provide tech support for a “Nonprofit”? Ever noticed how the calm, rational approach to criticism of Mac-heads and Liberals is indistinguishable?

Face it, kids. Mac users put the Socialists in power. If you’re a normal person using a Mac, that oughtta lead to some late-night soul searching.
- rob | 11/03/2009 @ 09:00
Sorry, not even close to a good rule of thumb.

I’m an early majority adopter of most technology, and a fairly radical libertarian, which puts me most often into the conservative camp purely on grounds of opposing government, even though I’m socially agnostic on the left/right continuum. My platform of personal responsibility and liberty doesn’t line up with either Republicans or Democrats, but I end up voting Republican almost always.

You can see where I’m going with this.

Anyway. I have an iPhone, as do most of my conservative/libertarian friends. It’s simply a convenience. I don’t need to define myself as a conservative by denying myself a tool simply because most of the people who use it are self-satisfied, smug douchebags.

The iPhone is the best combination phone/PDA on the market right now. I don’t care for iPods, don’t like the interface. I don’t bother with Macs- not enough of the market uses them for it to be worth my while, as a comuting professional I go where the money is, and that is supporting Windows PCs and Servers, and Cisco network gear. I’d no more bother with Macs than with HP switches, for example.

But I like my iPhone because it does a lot of things I’m interested in. I can adminsister a network from my iPhone. I despise the Blackberry I’m compelled to carry for work. It’s cheap and extremely flimsy/breakable. The goddamn trackball is terrible. The interface sucks in comparison. On my iPhone I can watch a movie, read a book, use social network media, RDP into a PC, use it as a remote control, listen to the radio, or even the police scanner channels, and thousands of other things. I can track my hiking stats with a GPS function. And I can type on it fairly quickly even with my orangutan hands and fat fingers.

I know some, probably many people get these toys for status symbols. But nearly as many of us get them because they’re useful and fun.
- thebastidge | 11/03/2009 @ 14:58
Actually I haven’t read this Blog, but its my first Instalanche and so I am enjoying the privilege of visting some new places as I see new referrals show up. Its always nice to discover like-minded people.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier is certainly right when she says the anaology isn’t perfect. It isn’t. I thought there was a slightly humorous connection in making an analogy between phone Operating systems and platforms and the OS/Platform we use to run our country. Yeah, its a bit silly, and no I don’t think you can really predict political orientation by looking at someone’s phone. To many the iPhone is just a phone… a really neat, useful, well executed phone. And that is as it should be. However, I still contend that to some, its a way of life.

What disburbs me more is I think I have ruffled more feathers over questioning an iPhone purchase than I have ever done questioning someone’s politics directly. I was caught somewhat by surprise by some of the reactions – because to me they are just tools. I figured the butt of the joke would be that one guy we all know who was just a bit too over-zealous about Apple products. However, I think I struck a deeper chord somewhere along the way. And maybe your comment about Status Symbols is at the root of it.
- weisshaupt | 11/03/2009 @ 17:57
Glad to have you here, W.

There was a guy at work today in exactly the same position as bastidge (see above); leaning anyway-but-liberal politically, nevertheless has an iPhone, loves it, is hooked on it. But in response to my questioning he ‘fessed up to some of the points you’ve made about Apple’s foolish and cumbersome sign-off process for the apps. Definitely not in his “never noticed” file, it was more in his “yeah it’s a bitch, but I’ll put up with it for awhile” file.

Part of the reason I disagreed with Dr. C, is that even from reading her comments a couple times I’m still a little unclear on how it is what she said — which I consider to be accurate and worthy of merit — contradicts, or even differs, from what you said. Plus I think you’re more than on to something. This support mechanism you’ve described seems to me to be a perfect parallel with what’s been proposed for our new health care system. And anyone who hasn’t been living on Mars understands: A whole lot of folks have a huge problem with that, and a whole lot of other folks simply can’t see what all the fuss is about.

There certainly is a conservative/liberal correlation even if it isn’t a total one. Like I told the guy at work, and he readily agreed: When I first got my Treo I would install this, install that, install some other damn thing into it. And if I got the wrong combination, it would turn into a boat anchor and go up and down like a whore’s drawers. Who’s fault was that? Treo’s? No…MINE. There wasn’t any finger-pointing whatsoever. I simply did some tests to figure out who wasn’t acting nice, uninstalled that, and then tried again. All…my…headache. I jumped into the hole, it’s my problem to dig out.

Within the phone, as well as outside of it — what in tarnation ever happened to that?
- mkfreeberg | 11/03/2009 @ 18:22
Sorry…just thought of something else that might help to explain the “ruffled feathers.” I recall from awhile ago Apple had chosen to take some heat when they slashed the MSRP of an iPhone (3G I think, I can’t recall) by 50% just on-the-spot. And it was within 90 days of the goddamn thing coming out.

I guess you could think of this as the reverse of sour grapes. You spend eight bucks on a pack of chewing gum that’s only worth $1.50, and you kind of know you’re getting ripped off in the moment it happens…later on someone points it out to you…that is mildly annoying. Now, you pay $30k for a car that’s only worth $12k — and you kind of suspect it from the moment it happens, and later on someone points it out to you — that is a completely different conversation. That rubs emotions raw. That’s an “I know some animal sounds your wife makes that you don’t know she makes” type of conversation.

It’s like Obama’s election. If the customer had been treated right by the people who put out the product, they’d be much more receptive to hearing the obvious that in the end the transaction was a folly. Since they weren’t treated right, you as the messenger of the obvious are acting as a lightning rod for a charge that was already built up before you came along.

So I guess the things you can’t mention in a bar, now, are politics…religion…and iPhones. 😀
- mkfreeberg | 11/03/2009 @ 18:53
Yeah, the whole analogy looses it once you realize we are talking about a phone in a public market, and not a Government. The only reason the idea came to me is because I am in the market for a phone ( my old Widow’s Mobile Touch screen died) and I am trying to decide if I should leave Verizon and get an iPhone ( even though I hate AT&Ts network) or if this new Droid thing will work for me. So I am reading reviews and the same idea keeps popping up in review after review — The Droid will not entice iPhone users because iPhone users want the top-down and managed slick safety of the Apple product and don’t care about the open development/multi platform aspects of the Android. So I wondered is that true? I certainly knew people who fit that description, and the Apple marketing campaign does nothing to dispell that idea. I think some people really want the life without application crashes, mishaps and conflicts and are willing to give up their personal decision making power to have it .. More power to them, as long as they aren’t dragging me kicking and screaming into the same lifestyle or expecting me to pay for it.

In a market you look at a product, and if the tradeoff of the good points outweighs the bad points, you buy it and you are done till something better comes along. Dealing with it or not is YOUR decision.
With Obamacare or any other socialist program – Someone else, somewhere else decides what you are going to pay for and deal with, what decisions are “safe” for you to have, and which will be made by a central authority.

Its unfair to compare a market driven decision to buy a top-down driven product with the forceful coercion of government to buy a certain top-down driven product. ( say a health insurance plan defined by people in Washington and sold by certain appoved vendors) And perhaps its that unfairness that is generating such a visceral response. But then that unfairness was also part of the point of the post – that we SHOULD have that market driven choice, and its looking more and more like its going to be denied to us.
- weisshaupt | 11/03/2009 @ 18:59
Yeah, I hear ya, I just think you’re giving them too much credit. Your observation was about the appeal, not about the choice or lack thereof. I’ve seen it over and over again that when the nanny-state approach has personal appeal to people, they really don’t give a rat’s rear end if the next fellow is being offered a choice or is being forced to do it the same way. Overall, their tendency is not to care. That generalization works even better than the iPhone/liberal thing. There’s something about the “I want to be managed” mentality.

Here’s a question I find interesting: What if President of the United States was a market-driven product? By which…it’s time for an election, you get to vote for your President, I get to vote for mine, for the next four years we’ll have two Presidents. If it worked like that, would Barack Obama have enjoyed His enormous appeal among the starstruck? Because I contend — no. “I want to be a part of this thing” implicitly meant “I want to be a part of making this choice for us ALL, and forcing it down the throats of people who don’t want it.” This just gets into my personal observation about people over the years. They value freedom, or they don’t, and if they don’t value their own freedom they don’t value anybody else’s.
- mkfreeberg | 11/03/2009 @ 19:38
To a certain extent the President is a Market Driven Product. There are tradeoffs to who you vote for. GWB was certainly a mixed bag for me. But here is the point. In picking a president, we are buying an Application for the Government OS – the Executive Application. If we was following the rules of the OS ( the Constitution) there are only certain APIs he is allowed to use. He can’t legislate, he can’t appoint Czars, he cant call the CBO into his office, he can’t bring the Census under his control., he can’t interfere with Bankruptcy laws..

He IS doing all of that though – because he and those before him over the last 50 years ( including the so-called conseravtive party) , have been making OS code changes – giving their applications new privileges and granting themselves root access to do anything they want. Only We the People are supposed to have root. There is a reason why people ae calling for a Reboot of congress. We need the wipe the drives and start again fresh. There are just too many corrupt files now to keep going.

Everyone values freedom. Its just the kind of freedom they are after. Liberals are after FREEDOM FROM RESPONSIBILITY like they had when they were 5 years old. Conservatives/Libertarians want the freedom to control their own lives and to take responsibility of their decisions – you know – adults.
- weisshaupt | 11/03/2009 @ 20:13
Excellent conversation, gentlemen – and no, the analogy of Mac (iWhatever) products and liberal do-gooders is not strained at all.

“Something about knowing what’s going on under all the magic makes me, well, uncomfortable. And you wanting to know what’s going on in there makes me uncomfortable too. What I want is for everything to be wrapped up in a nice shiny shell that isn’t, you know, icky. And I want you to want that too. Or I’ll kill you.”

Mac-heads. Liberals. mePhone cultists. All the same.
- rob | 11/04/2009 @ 01:07
I love all things apple and I don’t have a liberal bone in my body. The products are the antithesis of all things liberal, they’re smart and function properly.

The intelligent Melissa Clouthier is right and you, my friends, are wrong.
- Daphne | 11/04/2009 @ 17:49
In my phone, I want a slick, packaged app that works flawlessly. In my more powerful computing platforms I want felxibility.

One thing is not everything to everybody.

Our government would work fairly flawlessly if the core of it were kept basic. It’s the complexity that makes it break down. It’s creeping into every aspect of our lives.

Keep it simple, keep it basic, and let the people do the customization of their lives through the civil society interface.
- thebastidge | 11/05/2009 @ 18:08
“I love all things apple and I don’t have a liberal bone in my body. The products are the antithesis of all things liberal, they’re smart and function properly. The intelligent Melissa Clouthier is right and you, my friends, are wrong.”

Dr. Clouthier is right in that people want some amount of order, but not too much. The question I as asking is if the order imposed is conducive to personal decisions and individual liberty? That you happen to love the decisions made by Apple managers by no means implies everyone else will. What happens if the Apple Managers make a decision you don’t like?

mkfreeberg is right – I give too much credit.

” I’ve seen it over and over again that when the nanny-state approach has personal appeal to people, they really don’t give a rat’s rear end if the next fellow is being offered a choice or is being forced to do it the same way. Overall, their tendency is not to care. That generalization works even better than the iPhone/liberal thing. There’s something about the “I want to be managed” mentality”
- weisshaupt | 11/06/2009 @ 06:51

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