iPhonification

And so it encroaches… this year (2009) is the year that iPhones started to get everywhere.

I think that will be its historical relevance. It was also the year that Obama did fuck all, apart from Not Be Bush… but that will be lost in the mists of time. Looking back (down the wrong end of the historical telescope), this will be the year that we failed to do anything about Climate Change, and the year that the dominant interface between Humanity and The Universal Mind took (like Kudzu in the Deep South) hold.

So… exhibit 1, not an iPhone exactly, but the principle remains:

A tool to help people not die when crossing the border from Mexico to the US

Which ought to have the nutjobs seeing red – but is at least a humanitarian antidote to their vigilante border-patrols. I can see this being quite a… thing. The ability for disenfranchised, dispossessed people just to have access to maps is a big deal… let alone the ability to have a reliable single point of contact… but the flipside of course is that they’re now trackable.

Exhibit 2:

From the other side of the wall, Aiders and Abettors of Murder and taxational parasites, Raytheon appear to be developing an iPhone “situational awareness application” which will “combine data from many sources to try and give an accurate picture of hotspots such as sniper hideouts and vantage points.”

The decision to use iPhones being due to “building software for the gadget is cheaper and simpler than some of the expensive options specifically designed for military use.”

Once more unto the breach – the very same reason for the proliferation of crossbows, guns, punk-rock, file-sharing etc etc. Still… I shouldn’t think it would make much of a dent in the million dollars a year that it costs the US to field a soldier in someone else’s country.

Exhibit 3:

Apropos of that, but not directly about iPhones…

Apparently people fighting to get the Americans out of Iraq and Afghanistan (note, both locations) have managed to hack into predator video feeds with a $26 bit of software called SkyGrabber.

The DIY drone commenters/community are suitably unimpressed, , but it does illustrate a general principle – the ill advisability of trying to maintain an asymmetric advantage based on wealth in the midst of a technological Cambrian explosion. We all win or we all lose.

But there it is… the seepage becoming a flood – cheap, throwaway tech getting into the bloodstream.

On a lighter note,

exhibit 4:

A nice bit of potential vapourware…

from Copenhagen (in fact called “The Copenhagen Wheel“) – a bike wheel that uses braking to charge a battery that can then be used when going up hills etc… which I’ll believe when I see to be honest, there’s a whole attention-industry in green “concepts” that never get made.

The interesting part to me though, isn’t the braking generator, but the way that an iPhone is used as a (really) smart dashboard. That’s doable – that has mileage – whereas I suspect quite strongly that the motor in the wheel won’t be strong enough to actually get you up the hills that you’d want help with.

Still, the iPhone is the ultimate in-car GPS-system killer.

(iPhone hackoff)

Ok… exhibit 5:

AT&T’s customers get so fucked off by them that they attempt to bring to down their network. – which to me seems like a brain attacking it’s own nervous-system… but… you know… we are at war with corporate control. No doubt about it – and my big prediction for 2010 is that this will escalate. 2010 will be the year when the gloves come off.