Filed Under Progress

Space Travel 40 Years Later: Close Encounters of the X Kind

Did you notice that most of the latest tech marvels contain an X in their name? Have we already come to a dead end? This picture surely raises some concerns.

Berlin Travel Festival 2018
Falcon Heavy Demo Mission: Spaceman in Driving Seat – Photo Courtesy: SpaceX @ Flickr

Forty years ago Carl Sagan put onboard the NASA Voyager spacecraft 2 golden phonograph records full of sounds and images from planet Earth. He said:

The NASA spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space, but the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.

What does the car with a mannequin inside say instead? Well, at least it should make us reflect on the trajectory we have followed in the last decades, leading us to question ourselves about what happened to that marvelous idea of progress.

The Hammer that Turned Out to Be a Boomerang

Apple imagines and builds a sad, predictable world where all apps do more or less the same things. The difference is only a matter of price. For example, you look for a customizable GPS tracker and they assume that you want to monitor your amazing sports performance, keep an eye on your employees, or look for your lost phone. Unlike Android, you are trapped in an immutable ecosystem.

Why one would ever want to freely access their app files, easily disable location tracking, or connect a wired headset? BTW, did you know that to perform many tasks you still have to use the crappy iTunes software? As in a historical nemesis, Apple’s fans today are the brainwashed viewers. So, who throws the hammer?

Of Headphone Jacks, Pirouettes in the Snow, and Mushrooms

Apple’s main reason for eliminating the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 was to make the phone water resistant without compromising its stylish design. It’s interesting to note how a year later, with the launch of iPhone X, the company continues to praise that choice, as if the AirPods were the “final tech frontier”, able to project us into a new dimension made of pirouettes in the snow.

The truth is that now the lady can throw her smartphone in a puddle (perhaps) but will no longer be able to use Augment, a really strong argument to choose Apple over other manufacturers. The app, in fact, is only available for iOS.

According to Pharrell Williams and other testimonials, Augment’s effects are even more powerful than those shown in the commercial above. So what to do? Buy the SE if you can’t resist to “hear the world your way” (or save big money).