Phil Smeeton's Tech Thinking Blog

Status of owning tech hardware, the fancier your smartphone the more desirable you are to others, why owning great tech matters. The efficacy of companies like Apple in creating status is a very impressive thing to observe, people seem to love paying sums of money to own a high status mobile device, I think it is worth remembering that Apple's devices are mostly high power general purpose computer devices using a clean UI on top of a Unix kernel. I think Apple's philosophy of clean, simple and elegant products creates a lot of value and I think in humanist terms people like to feel  they  are some of those things, the psychology of being clean, approachable, uncomplicated yet capable, expensive and beautiful. I think it's worth examining what is happening when the user of a smartphone drops and damages the device. The chances are excellent that the user will be in a public place when the damage occurs, other people will very likely see the event, so what is happening here? ...

 Mobile, web, smart apps, bots – A discussion, what's the win? Back in the early 1990's I was driving around the local area one summer evening in my modified ford sierra and I noticed a young lady staring curiously at something she was carrying in her hand, the look on her face was one of excitement, optimism and awe, I thought at the time something special is happening to this person, I think she was thinking about the potential of a mobile device. I still remember thinking that maybe she has some ideas and I ought to talk to her about it. I never did talk to this person although I hope their mobile device lived up to their expectations! What I'm describing here is a certain excitement of possibility, some people describe this as the gift of possibility.  In terms of brain function I think this person in the 1990's was experiencing similar excitement we see users experience today with their new iPhone. Immediately I felt that this hardware could provide a certain unity...

 Community, virtual worlds, virtual techniques. As I write this the Microsoft tech community is around 500k people in size, making it a large community similar in size to the population of a fairly big city. I think most people see tech as an enabler of communities, a host of virtual communities and a method of increasing the flow of information within communities. Tech is very rarely opposed to the idea of community, its often open architectures promote growth, inclusiveness and increase in community. I think that the philosophy of inclusiveness within the tech community is a virtue and strength. The phenomenal potential of virtual worlds is very exciting, making experiences possible that are not possible in our real world. Does this virtual world offer an infinite number of experiences? That's a tough question, it would be easier to agree that the virtual world will be different. Will people someday prefer the virtual world? Possible and slightly likely in my opinion, I think muc...