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Apple's next big move: Multitouch displays?
Speaking of multitouch, Steven Johnson, the guy who wrote Everything Bad is Good For You and Emergence, isn't normally our go-to guy for Apple rumors, but he has an interesting theory about what the company's next big move might be. He speculates that all these hints about new, unannounced features for Leopard, combined with a delay in the release of new Apple Cinema Displays, the coming launch of the iPhone, and rumors about a new "ProTools killer" that relies on touch screens, all point toward the introduction of new multitouch-capable displays and the rollout of iPhone-like multitouch interfaces across Apple's product line. Yeah, that'd be crazy, right? Jobs definitely loves having symmetry in his product lines, so even though this seems pretty unlikely it's not totally impossible that he'd want to bring multitouch to stuff besides the iPhone. That said, we haven't heard a single thing about new Apple displays sporting multitouch capabilities, so for now we'll file this one under "wild speculation."
Sunday NY Times says Spore is special
Steven Johnson, Colbert Report guest and author of Everything Bad is Good for You, wrote a thoughtful piece on Will Wright's Spore in yesterday's widely read New York Times Magazine entitled, "The Long Zoom." Like any writeup of Wright's simeverything, Johnson's includes equal parts hagiography, history, and hype, imbuing Wright's unreleased masterpiece with transcendental potential.Johnson's title refers to Spore's ability to zoom from the microscopic level all the way out to the galactic level, recalling the Eames' influential Powers of Ten (video embedded above). Wright's collaborative presentation with musician Brian Eno on "generative art," arranged by the long-term thinkers at the Long Now Foundation, also suggested a more cerebral sophistication than we're used to seeing, and reading about, in video games. If you think the hype for Gears of War may be hard to live up to, consider Spore, a game that is beginning to more resemble a panacea for all the gaming industry's myriad ills than a clever expansion of the Sim- series.[A faux pas, and a personal pet peeve: Charles and Ray Eames were not, in fact, "brothers" as Johnson writes, but an enormously successful husband-and-wife design team, responsible for everything from the aforementioned Powers of Ten film, to their famous molded plywood Eames Lounge Chair.]See also: Spore figurines!
Stephen Colbert frags Steven Johnson
Steven Johnson, author of the excellent book Everything Bad is Good for You, made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's faux-news show last night to talk about "how today's popular culture is actually making us smarter." Johnson writes on his blog: "... [Colbert] wasn't too over-the-top with his O'Reilly imitation in our chat last night. He played it a bit straighter than I had expected, which made the conversation a little easier. The interesting twist was that he chose not to do the 'you're destroying the youth of America' rant that you might have expected him to do; in fact, his major in character joke was that he agreed with my argument that books are a waste of time. (By the way, if you're just coming to the site for the first time, that's not my argument at all, of course.)"Almost one year ago (to the day!) Johnson appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (video) pushing the same book and the same message. We're suckers for his argument (not that books are a waste of time, the other one: that video games aren't a waste of time), so we don't mind one bit. He name drops games like Civilization IV and Spore as games that are emblematic of his thesis that today's games are increasingly complicated. I don't know about you, Steven, but I can't stop playing UNO on Xbox Live Arcade. Not sure that counts though ...More on Steven Johnson:Why we should take games seriouslyAn open letter to senator ClintonVideo Games Are Good for You, Except When They're Just Bad(Update: video is embedded after the break. Thanks, daneo!)
