Ever wonder when (or if) manual transmission cars will fade into the past? I’ve owned more manuals than automatics, seeking them out in at least two new car purchases.
I love them, personally, yet can see knowledge of driving stick fading in society as a whole. Thinking the days of a manual in a small hatchback or four door sedan are fading…
I am a child, largely, of the Post-Cold War world. Born in 1980, I did not live under the immediate threat of Soviet Bombers in the 50s and 60s, the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Vietnam War. I became largely aware of the broader world as the Iron Curtain crumbled, the Wall tumbled in the middle of the night and Russia produced a President standing on a tank, facing down a coup.
A recent discovery (for me) is the massive, Nike Missile program of the 1950s and 60s. The installation of hundreds of sites around the United States, protecting population, industrial and strategic centers is completely staggering. Everyday citizens went about their lives at the height of the Cold War, in places like Dayton, Norfolk and Chicago under the blanket of surface to air missile batteries.
Equally impressive is the painstaking precision that modern enthusiasts have gone to to catalog these sites, complete with GPS coordinates and present conditions of the structures. I am inspired to hunt down some of these sites in my back yard.
David is selling popcorn in support of his Cub Scout Pack and activities. If you would like to purchase his “awesomely delicious” popcorn, you can order online:
After delaying for several months I’ve finally gone and done it… pulled the plug and closed the book on World of Warcraft for the last time.
Truth be told I stopped playing three of four months ago. I have not raided, with dedication, since shortly after our youngest son was born in February. As the new year crossed into 2011 my dedicated two or three nights/afternoons a week of raiding sunsetted. Gone was the era of my investing dozens of hours per week in game, progressing and spinning my wheels. The game changes were not a deal breaker, indeed towards the end the evolution of the world was for the best… real life and real life priorities shifted.
I bid farewell to a game that held me, clutched, for the balance of five years. For many of those months and years I mainlined WoW, abstaining from all other entertainment.
In the end I am fully ready to walk away.
Much has been written and shared about Steve Jobs, his impact and his legacy, in the days since news of his death entered the collective conversation. His passing saddened me and I have been ruminating and reflecting upon his legacy ever since.
As with many, I first learned of his death via Twitter, as my feed exploded with platitudes, compliments, reflections and simple comments, coming across in a torrent. I am unable to count myself as one of the lucky few to have met the man personally. My closest contact with Steve came in a mass of many thousands, packed into the High Temple of Apple Keynote as Jobs delivered, with aplomb, the message of the day.
The occasion was the unveiling of the iPhone, January of 2007, at MacWorld San Francisco. Waiting in line with thousands of fellow migrants the excitement and anticipation was palpable. The spectacle of a Jobs Keynote lived up to legend. Clothed in his signature black turtleneck, jeans and sneakers Steve worked the crowd, his delivery and timing perfect. I have watched many pitchmen, many a executives make presentations. Steve was the best there was and the best the technology community has ever seen. Above all, Jobs was a man of passion, vision, poise and supreme confidence. He was speaking to the collective masses, believers in his vision for a technological future but all the while he was making a much broader pitch. Steve was transforming his company that morning. Twice before, in the preceding decade Apple lurched in new directions, first with a rebirth of consumer computing under the iMac and years later a new focus on personal content and media with the iPod. The iPhone pitch, it’s vision for a quantum leap in mobile communication and collaboration was equally important.
That morning, as Steve stood on stage, trumpeting the advantages of his new technological wonder, you shared his vision. You believed, as he did that everything that had come before was leading up to this. Every piece, every step along the way, building atop one another to some larger, master plan for the future. Flawed or perfect, correct or misguided Steve’s vision, for his company, for the industry, for society he believed to be the correct one.
Jobs’ second act at Apple is, unquestionably the greatest business comeback in American History. Steve, rightly, deserves the plaudits as an entrepreneur, industrialist and executive. Yet what separated Steve Jobs from many other leaders, and what makes him truly a special person is his overarching vision and force of will. As leader of Apple 2.0, Steve made missteps, errors in products and services however a unified, cohesive vision always outwardly guided his leadership. Vision, true confidence of where you want to move something, people, an industry, indeed a culture is far too rare in this world.
To this day, the brilliant advertising campaign, spawned by Jobs shortly after his return to Apple, Think Different, and its opening television ad moves me to near tears. Vision, passion, true belief in making tomorrow better than today need not be separated from business interests and the bottom line. Steve was a great man. He left the world better than he found it. His legacy upon technology and culture will persist. Steve thought differently and changed things…
I am as guilty as the next person for sharing drivel, harsh comments and incongruity on Twitter. Tweeting has an element of vanity and free flow that other services lack. I find myself more sharp tongued and snarky on Twitter than on other social networks. It is difficult to quantify how my tone is on Twitter vs Facebook for example. I do find my usage expanding, year over year and often default to this service for news and content updates. My filter bubble has become largely driven by Twitter interactions (for better or for worse).
A check of my profile on Tweetstats indicates that I tweet 7.3 times each day and the volume remains heavy. My 6,917 tweets play out as follows:
Likewise I gravitate to, and opt to share other’s content ~1/8th of the time, again, from generally a few sources I like and trust. My political news and content consumption, for example, generally comes from two meta sources (@TheFix and @Politico) while I further influence my filter by leaning on a (wicked smart) blogger (@FiveThirtyEight).
(Side note: @DangerRoom (Wired.com), damn cool defense, security technology blog. Just wanted to interject that.)
Looking at my common hashtags… ya know, I don’t know what to make of it…
Guess I like the Dodgers, Virginia… and Curling…
Curiosity set in last evening as I was reading the highlights of the Republican Presidential Primary Debate in California. I wondered how the terms and catch phrases used last night compared to the previous competitive Democratic Debate in 2008.
Visualizing the transcript from the Barack Obama / Hillary Clinton debate in Philadelphia in April 2008 reveals:
And here we see a visualization of the September 2011 Republican Primary Debate held in the Reagan Library in California:
To be fair there are not many patterns in the noise but I have a few take aways:
David (age 10) had the great fortune to spend a week at Space Camp this summer. Needless to say it was a fantastic time for him and he proudly proclaimed that it was the third best thing in his life (after his mom and dad and the birth of his baby brother).
