“When describing his period of exile from Apple — when John Sculley took over — Steve Jobs described one fundamental root cause of Apple’s problems. That was to let profitability outweigh passion: “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.” — Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator’s Dilemma - James Allworth - Harvard Business Review
“In just four years, one billion people will own smartphones, many of whom will be professionals taking these devices to work, says Forrester, a research company. And because of that, businesses need to think big about how to use mobile products to engage with customers, the company says.” — Get Ready for 1 Billion Smartphones by 2016, Forrester Says - NYTimes.com (via mediafuturist)
Men’s final snowboard world championship (Taken with instagram)
got myself a new avatar, thanks M!
“So do I think a fourteen year old could have pulled it off? I sure think so, but I realize in 2009 it would have taken a very tenacious fourteen year old. But that was 2009. If you’re skeptic about my prediction for the past, how about applying them to today or 2015? How long till the technology that, at the time, precipitated the fastest wealth generation humanity had ever seen, can be replicated by a teenager with next to no budget during summer break? How long till it’s something you write as a pet project while learning to program. Our tools are still getting more powerful, and our collective understanding of software problems is still increasing at a rapid pace. Do you think there’s an upper ceiling for how good we can get at writing software? Are we close?” — A 14-year-old could build 1998’s Google using her Dad’s credit card!
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“Modern society tends to regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and technological advance reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University, who has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary France, argues that “the marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the internet.” Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition. Modern digital networks may be able to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the sharing of media could play a supporting role in precipitating a revolution. Today’s social-media systems do not just connect us to each other: they also link us to the past.” — Social media in the 16th Century: How Luther went viral | The Economist
“The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. It would be as silly as saying that you don’t need oceans because you have a bathtub. How nice your bathtub is. Try building a continent around it if you want to get my point.” — Scripting News: Why apps are not the future