The Mother of All Demos™: this was long held to be Doug Engelbart's from the late 1960s. Steve Jobs did an excellent presentation of NeXTSTEP which was also held in high regard. Then came the Steve Jobs reveal of iPhone in 2007. If that wasn't the new Mother of All Demos™ then it was the Demo That Changed The World™, changed it in ways even Steven Paul could not have dreamt of.
Some ten-plus years ago Paul Graham speculated in what could possibly get IT back on the rails, and he saw the same dilemma we all saw. That was over ten years ago, and ten years in IT is a long time.
People don't read anymore - they scan. The world's gone crazier than ever before. People can't focus on one single thing, because there's already more egregious shite in the pipeline. People are on edge, constantly, hysterically. They don't know what to think, they don't have any time to think. They have their smartphones.
Smartphone: what a misnomer, what a slap in the face. Although the device is smarter than ever, the users of the device are dumber than ever, dumber than any biped ever stood upright on the surface of this planet. The device itself makes them stupid and they love it.
The Internet as an ultimate form of global communication? Yeah right. Think again. Spend a few minutes on Twitter. You don't need more time than that. Look around. You'll find it. You'll find millions of people who do nothing all day long but pluck lint from their navels. One is tempted to say that this is how TPTB want it. Twitter users are the product. Who owns Twitter? Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube: are they in favour of global awareness? Or are they just in favour of...
1995. The supposed Web Revolution. When Bill Gates finally released Windows 1994. Suddenly everyone had to get online. Many people didn't even know what 'online' meant. Many people wanted to experience the 'Web' and many of them were unaware you needed a computer to do that.
Noobies in office automation courses. Who couldn't understand how you double-clicked a mouse. Sweden, where 'mouse' was slang for a woman's genitals. Reams of people who didn't even know how to type.
Fast-forward to 2007. Only a dozen years later. (And in IT that's a long time.) Suddenly they don't need to be able to type anymore. They can find the QWERT with their thumbs. People who can't type cannot communicate. They can't share their thoughts. They can at best thumb-click on fun surveys meant to up-sell to new products they can buy with another thumb-click. It's a Brave New World.
'Got robot car, your jobs will disappear, it's called the politics of a brand new year', sang Midnight Oil - back in 1985, thirty-five years ago.
They go on.
You may be safe in your hemisphere
But there's so much junk in the stratosphere
We got our eyes on the firmament
Hands on the armaments
Heads full of arguments
And words for our monuments
Then their singer asks the ultimate question.
'I won't deny it - can we survive?'
People are stupid. They're made that way.
'Some say that's progress. I say that's cruel.'
About Rixstep
Stockholm/London-based Rixstep are a constellation of programmers and support staff from Radsoft Laboratories who tired of Windows vulnerabilities, Linux driver issues, and cursing x86 hardware all day long. Rixstep have many years of experience behind their efforts, with teaching and consulting credentials from the likes of British Aerospace, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Lloyds TSB, SAAB Defence Systems, British Broadcasting Corporation, Barclays Bank, IBM, Microsoft, and Sony/Ericsson.
Rixstep and Radsoft products are or have been in use by Sweden's Royal Mail, Sony/Ericsson, the US Department of Defense, the offices of the US Supreme Court, the Government of Western Australia, the German Federal Police, Verizon Wireless, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Microsoft Corporation, the New York Times, Apple Inc, Oxford University, and hundreds of research institutes around the globe. See here.