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There is a Horse in the Apple Store

blog.frankchimero.com

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Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#31

Post by Splines »

jacoblyles wrote: post #29
alexophile wrote: post #13

I really like the observations his niece makes, specifically “When I play hide and seek with my friends I have to hide, but if I don’t want to be seen by grown-ups I just have to be quiet.”

The interaction between children and adults in our culture is weird nowadays. I was at the zoo with my girlfriend in the reptile section. A little boy was staring into the same tank that we were, his mom was maybe ten feet away. You know how reptiles are, they are always hiding behind some rock or branch or just blending in nefariously. So I ask the boy, "Do you see the snake?" It felt awkward to ignore another human…

Probably a U.S. cultural thing. I find it weird talking to other parents' kids too (I'm a father of two), as you don't know how the other parents will handle it. I'd like to think there are places in this world that aren't so paranoid.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#32

Post by s3graham »

_delirium wrote: post #25

For me personally, some of the not-being-that-excited-ness is that I grew up reading sci-fi and cyberpunk, and basically always assumed these things were possible and likely, just a matter of implementation details. A device that can translate any language at a button-push? Sure, I heard about it when I was eight. A device you carry around that instantly connects to some sort of communication network? Yeah, I've prob…

> For me personally, some of the not-being-that-excited-ness is that I grew up reading sci-fi and cyberpunk

I remember being 10? (12? not sure) and having my Mum tell me we had not, in fact, landed humans on any other planets. "Only" the moon. Seemed pretty lame.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#33

Post by danilocampos »

_delirium wrote: post #25

For me personally, some of the not-being-that-excited-ness is that I grew up reading sci-fi and cyberpunk, and basically always assumed these things were possible and likely, just a matter of implementation details. A device that can translate any language at a button-push? Sure, I heard about it when I was eight. A device you carry around that instantly connects to some sort of communication network? Yeah, I've prob…

I grew up with a ravenous appetite for science fiction too. In particular, I was fascinated by handheld computers.

Tricorders, PADDs, Al's Handlink, SELMA, they all drove my imagination nuts.

From my early Handspring visor to today's iPhone 4, real life handhelds have been exciting because they slake my childhood thirst for a piece of the future.

I'm a little sad, though. The first iPhone pretty much put all scifi handhelds to shame, and the iPhone 4 with FaceTime beats even the video communicator from Earth: Final Conflict. After playing with Epic Citadel and seeing the ridiculous graphical power in that tiny package, there's nothing left to thrill in me in the land of pocket computers. The depths of those childhood fantasies have been plumbed.

Ah well. We still have ocular implants with augmented reality HUD overlays and telescopic vision to look forward to!

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#34

Post by _delirium »

danilocampos wrote: post #33
_delirium wrote: post #25

For me personally, some of the not-being-that-excited-ness is that I grew up reading sci-fi and cyberpunk, and basically always assumed these things were possible and likely, just a matter of implementation details. A device that can translate any language at a button-push? Sure, I heard about it when I was eight. A device you carry around that instantly connects to some sort of communication network? Yeah, I've prob…

I grew up with a ravenous appetite for science fiction too. In particular, I was fascinated by handheld computers. Tricorders, PADDs, Al's Handlink, SELMA, they all drove my imagination nuts. From my early Handspring visor to today's iPhone 4, real life handhelds have been exciting because they slake my childhood thirst for a piece of the future. I'm a little sad, though. The first iPhone pretty much put all scifi ha…

Hmm, I can see that on the technological front, but culturally to me it hasn't surpassed the imagined future. I might've read too much cyberpunk, but when I was a kid I really thought this kind of tech was going to totally change things... we were going to live in cyberspace now. Somehow, using smartphones to look up yelp reviews, traffic directions, and email doesn't seem like what I was hoping for. In some weird way, BBSs were more exciting and futuristic to me, creating an ASCII-based virtual world out of beeps on a telephone line between my computer and some random sysop's computer, and with a cultural ethos that this was a new world we could define. Maybe I'm jaded, but now the internet just feels like an extension of irl.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#35

Post by danilocampos »

_delirium wrote: post #34
danilocampos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up with a ravenous appetite for science fiction too. In particular, I was fascinated by handheld computers. Tricorders, PADDs, Al's Handlink, SELMA, they all drove my imagination nuts. From my early Handspring visor to today's iPhone 4, real life handhelds have been exciting because they slake my childhood thirst for a piece of the future. I'm a little sad, though. The first iPhone pretty much put all scifi ha…

Hmm, I can see that on the technological front, but culturally to me it hasn't surpassed the imagined future. I might've read too much cyberpunk, but when I was a kid I really thought this kind of tech was going to totally change things... we were going to live in cyberspace now. Somehow, using smartphones to look up yelp reviews, traffic directions, and email doesn't seem like what I was hoping for. In some weird wa…

Yeah, perhaps the thing you took from what I'm guessing was a much more literary exploration of Scifi than my own was a sense of a new sort of place, driven by technology. A new way of conceiving of community.

And in many ways, though it was clunky by modern standards, BBS satisfies the conception of "cyberspace" much better than what we have today. I was a little past BBS when I was a kid, using Hotline instead, but it did feel like I was going somewhere when I connected to servers with decent communities. Everything was real-time, you could exchange data, there was just placeness to it.

So now we've got stuff like Second Life, which satisfies Stephenson-esque Metaverse fantasies, but it hasn't fundamentally changed anything. Everyone still meets up for drinks and fried chicken, goes to work in their cars. The internet ended up lacing around our lives instead of redefining them.

I could see you being, perhaps, underwhelmed with that in mind.

Re: There is a Horse in the Apple Store

#39

Post by cglee »

qq66 wrote: post #3
ugh wrote: post #2

I know it’s not the topic of the submission but I would have very much liked to get an explanation. Is it maybe a guide horse? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_horse

Yes, this is the only way a pony would be allowed in the Apple Store, and probably why people are not going to pet it and stuff -- it's not nice to interfere with the behavior of a guide animal.

I believe pets are allowed in Apple stores. I've taken my dog several times.
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