Little Johnny must be truly over the moon with the success of his
latest political masterpiece, the so-called “Australian Katrina” that
is the situation of child abuse in Aboriginal communities.
So obsessed has the media been with reporting on this so-called
disaster, and so favourable has been the coverage for little Johnny
and his merry men, that other real and potentially much more important
issues have simply been asphyxiated. And leading the way has been the
ABC.
Of course the ABC might even regard its leadership of the news as
only right and proper given its desire and reputation. However its
new found focus on web news and providing so-called opinion pieces is
equally illuminating. Where else in the world does the political
leader of the day get this sort of reporting. Perhaps in China.
Oh the power of a Technorati Profile.
No I am not in San Francisco, in spite of the appeal of Apple’s WWDC.
Instead I am musing on the reach and effectiveness of Apple’s PR arm.
For the last couple of days, the WWDC has received press coverage
everywhere, Apple’s iPhone is making huge headlines (it hasn’t been
released) and Job’s reality distortion field is permeating the very
fabric of the known universe, Safari is apparently going to gobble up
Firefox (unless like me you find Safari a bit of a pain) and OSX is
plainly the only operating system you will ever need, especially the
“Ultimate” version 
Having just splashed out on a MacBook (black of course), I get a
small feeling of satisfaction about all of the positive coverage. We,
the faithful, always knew Apple was better, and it is starting to
look like more people (as opposed to less) are starting to agree. But
I reserve a small amount of doubt, sure my Mac’s have been reliable
and easy to use, but they have always come at a premium price
(comparatively). The deal seems to be simple, you pay more for a
better product.
Yet I am wondering about Web2.0 and the trend to appliance computing.
Certainly Apple is thinking about it too. I hope that the Apple
tradition of difference and innovation doesn’t end up as fill for the
foundations of the future Apple Inc.
The Harvard Business Review has an interesting article about the merits
of the internet and PC’s generally in the role of innovation.
Some interesting quotes.
“what some have applauded as Web 2.0—a new frontier of peer-to-peer
networks and collective, collaborative content production—is an
architecture that can be tightly controlled and maintained by a central
source, which may choose to operate in a generative way but is able to
curtail those capabilities at any time.”
“A shift to smarter appliances, ones that can be updated by—and only by—
their makers, is fundamentally changing the ways in which we experience
our technologies. They become contingent: Even if you pay up front for
them, such appliances are rented instead of owned, subject to revision by
the maker at any moment.”
“the idea that for the generative Internet to save itself, it must
generate its own solutions. The more we can maintain the Internet as a
work in progress, the more progress we can make.”
The last quote smacks of simplicity, it does however contain the essence
of the story. The internet is a largely unregulated and uncontrolled
environment, this anarchistic space is a haven for the creative as well as
the destructive. That’s the nature of such a beast, controlling the
internet in the names of safety and certainty will inevitably also
diminish the creative element.
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http://www.qednet.biz