This was interesting; kind of made me wish I’d made more of an effort to hook up with Paul Carr before Christmas…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/04/nsfw-apple-tablet-kindle-and-furbies-oh-my/
As was this; from the ever-illuminating Mark Potts…
http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/recovering_journalist/2010/01/apples-tabula-rasa.html
Both men are clearly singing off the say hymn-sheet… Or rather, tablet. Of slate, apparently.
Why both posts appealed isn’t too hard to fathom; particularly if we return to this idea that there is a revolution afoot the like of which we haven’t seen since 1649 when the Diggers came to town…
Because if you return to Christopher Hill’s work and re-read his introduction – written, remember, in 1972 – there is a line therein that perfectly chimes with what Mr S Jobs and Co at Apple have long made their goal…
‘The present book,’ writes Hill. ‘… does not attempt to tell again the story of how the Army of the Long Parliament overcame Charles I and his supporters, executed the King and established a short-lived Republic.
‘Although there was considerable popular support for Parliament in the 1640s, the long-term consequences of the Revolution were all to the advantage of the gentry and the merchants, not of the lower fifty per cent of the population on whom I try to focus attention…’
That’s the line… ‘the lower fifty per cent of the population on whom I try to focus attention…’
Because as much as the Diggers, the Levellers, the Ranters and, I guess, the Ravers, set out with this glorious intention of creating ‘a common treasury for all…’ their dreams were crushed by Cromwell’s iron fist; old orders were restored; people paid rent to the masters, bowed to the lords…
As much as they hoped to turn the world upside down, the ceiling stayed the ceiling; the floor remained the floor.
Some 350 years later, however, and you wonder whether the revolution now upon us isn’t, indeed, our world turning upside down.
Certainly Mr Jobs finds few masters or lords with the technical or legislative wherewithal to thwart his plans to create said ‘common treasury for all’…
Evidence?
For many a varied reason, I found myself shambling through the Grafton Shopping Centre in Cambridge the other day. Walking past the door of the Apple Store.
I even poked my nose in. The rest of my body had to wait; the place was rammed.
It was alive; it had a buzz about it that no other shop in that centre offered; people were enraptured; enthralled; energized.
And the people weren’t the masters or the lords, the merchants or the magistrates… those that restored order in 1649.
They were the other half with whom Hill sought to connect.
They were the 50% of the population that metropolitan, big media London rarely – if ever – acknowledges.
They were the Mirror readers that Matt Kelly saw in his speech to the World Association of Newspapers…
… the same 50% of the population who, in years gone by, would have been enslaved to whatever story was on the back – or the front – pages of the Cambridge Evening News. Or the Norwich Evening News. Or the Leicester Mercury. The Newcastle Chron…
Ordinary Joes. Decent, hard-working ‘common’ folk. Who ‘get’ what an iPhone can suddenly do for them.
The same as an iPod did. Only with knobs on. Or, rather, apps on.
Looks good; feels great; it’s smart; its savvy. It’s mine.
Suddenly cocktails are made easy. Thanks to our Ian…
In fact, everything is made easy; there is – after all – an app for just about everything these days.
Apart, you suspect, for the Cambridge Evening News. Or the Norwich Evening News. TrinityMirror, in fairness, have an app to call their own…
But the point is simple; these are the people that are turning our world upside down. Them and Steve Jobs.
And, if Messrs Carr and Potts are to be believed, there’s every chance he could do it again come the summer when the tablet comes to town.
Towns like Cambridge, Leicester, Taunton, Alnwick and Amber….
These are the people that once were our audience; suddenly handed the kind of tools that the Diggers and the Levellers could only dream of; perfectly enabled to create this ‘common treasury for all’ and make Mr Jobs the apple of everyone’s eye.
Because that’s the other interesting point. Look around your family and friends this Christmas and see how many of them have fallen in love with their new iPhone.
How many times have you heard this line: ‘That X or Y was a real technophobe… but he or she loves their iPhone… thinks its great…’?
Therein lies the revolution; within the 50% of the people that big media all too often forgot.