Simplicity: The New Star of the Digital Age
I got an iPad for Christmas. Ol’ Saint Nick was on his game this year. I love my iPhone and thought the pad would be a nice gap device between my phone and Macbook Pro. It’s more than a gap device. The iPad is robust enough to easily do a lot of the tasks that I used to do on my laptop, much easier to read on than the phone, great when you’re on the go, and most of all simple. And ‘simplicity’ has been my new mantra.
Dr. John Maeda, an award-winning graphic designer and computer scientist who sports a PhD from MIT, had this to say back in 2004: ‘There is too much needless complexity in the world. Technology, which was supposed to make our lives easier, has taken a wrong turn. In 20 years we went from the simplicity of MacPaint to Photoshop. While the first gave birth to a creative explosion, the second gave birth to an industry of how-to books and classes. It’s time to break free from technology’s intimidating complexity.’
The guys at Apple, along with a lot of software developers, must have been listening. The vast majority of people need computers for ‘casual computing’, things like social networking, research, getting news, email, videos, music, etc. They don’t need the processing speed and memory that professionals need, nor the complicated & expensive software. They want software that’s easy to use (like ipad apps), and portable, simple, affordable hardware. The iPad and the many clones that will follow, are IT.
These are pretty exciting times. Hundreds of simple new apps are being created every day for just about any task you can think of, many of which are free or will only cost you a couple of bucks. Combine this with the power of cloud storage and you’ve got a new game. The power has returned to the average Joe, and it’s gonna quickly change (again) the way we communicate, sell, and educate. It feels like the age of ‘MacPaint’ again, and I think I hear another creative explosion beginning to rumble. All we needed was a little simplicity.
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Kevin:
I haven’t posted in a while, so let me congratulate you and the team on your fantastic Christmas initiative. Take a bow!
Now, I love this article, I love the new tech, and I’m as addicted as anyone to my apps.
But (and you really knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you), relative to the phrase in the last para “many free or a couple of bucks”, I want to reflect on price and cost. Most who post here are engaged with marketing, sales, or advertising, so the consumer relationship with and acceptance of cost and price are pretty key issues. I use the two words in this way: price being what we see on the sticker, cost being the “value” (high or low, good or bad) which the consumer apprehends. It is possible for the price, in objective terms, to be great, but the cost, in subjective value terms, to be less than great. (Maybe I should make that a question, is it possible…)
My interaction with technology causes me to move to a low value assessment when the system requires me to purchase “one more thing”. There I am feeling good about the price, and there is a feature or application which is key to my purchase that can only be obtained by buying this other program or app. Then inevitably I need to get something else, maybe as simple as a connector cord, maybe a full software program. Doubtless, the reactions of people like me, who once thought a dial telephone with a private line was pretty cool, causes the pursuit of the “free” referenced above, characterized these days as “the cloud”.
“The cloud” – what an interesting characterization, it is formless, shapeless, “free?” “To the cloud” says the current advertisement (see, I can’t recall the name of the advertiser, just the concept of “the cloud”), and I can remake my family in another image, remake my life in another reality. And there is … what, no cost?
Whatever we here feel about free as “the cloud” as consumers, free and “the cloud” are perhaps words that, as marketers, should give us gas – another “cloud” if you will.
During the dot.com and IT explosion of the late 90s, the biggest challenge to technology and telecomm providers of the day was how to keep up with, let alone get ahead of, the consumers, usually kids, who were figuring our free “apps” faster that the business could develop them, or sell them. Try putting a price or something that has already existed for free. Tell me your value, or cost, proposition, I dare you.
Of course, the more free apps you load onto your machine, the more memory, demand, and pressure, which can only be addressed by upgrading, or purchasing the hot new thing. So the value, the cost, like the internet, like the app, like the … what … I know … “the cloud” is dispersed, mobile over a range of items. It exists not in one place, but many places and no place, each a tiny wisp of some need, each a small element of our world, each a small price to pay for our benefit.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”, said Wordsworth, who asks of his world of wonderment
“I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought”
Indeed. Indeed.
A reflection for your morning pleasure, and I do hope you enjoy. After all, I’m simply building casytles in the air.
Regards
Harry Connors
Personaly I don’t think simplicity is always the best. Simplicity only make people more lasey to do things for themselfs,the kids are sat at there computers more than they are out enjoying the life around them and even when they are out they have there noses stuck in there latest simple cell phone and ignoring everyone around them. Because of this thing you call simplicity everything is bought for the kids and not just kids and when you don’t learn how to respect what you have because you didn’t buy it for yourself.
To many times I see people in my cab and they can’t even say hy or good day to you because of these simple things, don’t get me wrong I enjoy a lot of the simple things as well but I also see the bad things it brings with it and what it cost.
“It’s a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small.”
said another wise man, with a little more funk, in 1997.
“Futures made of virtual insanity
now always seem, to be governed by this love we have
For useless, twisting of our then new technology.”
Jamiroquai – Virtual Insanity
(hmm… a technologically-advanced video of the time, made possible to share with you now by advancements in video technology. Can’t escape it!)
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