№ 50. Steve Is Risen Interface (SIRI)

Tsk, tsk. Not an iPhone 5, as many were hoping---to douse the dour mood, but a mere 4s. Regardless, the reviews are mostly glowing. Steve Jobs must be mighty smug somewhere at the pearly gates or by the black river.


Let me glow with anticipation, then. Someone from Greenbelt Apple Store told me it'll probably be available by December this year. Somebody loan me some. Quick!

SIRI, the acronym for 4S's voice command interface (aka robot assistant) has excellent feedback. I see possibilities for SIRI!

I am a kibitzer by avocation. So here's an excerpt of the Wired review, with a liberal helping of my side comments (SIRI Version 2):

№ 45. iElvis

He was a wizard of the first order.

He had conjured both marketing hypes and niches---which had us enthralled, corrupted and addicted. Only he could produce, with a sleight of hand, consumer technology that is magic. Everyone else is reduced and separated by the Red Sea either as a parishioner drunk with his vision or a philistine mocked with envy.

"'What made Steve Jobs truly great,' U2 singer Bono said Thursday in a statement, 'is that he was only interested in doing truly great things. He was bored by an easy ride or easy profit. In a world littered with dull objects, he brought the beauty of clean lines and clear thought. [He was] one of a very small group of anarchic Americans who through technology literally invented the 21st century. We will all miss the hardware-software Elvis.' (LA Times)

On a related note, iPhone has this neat, sentient (almost?) voice command interface. Why SIRI?! Somebody asked if this stood for "Steve Incarnated Robot Interface."

Until the next iPhone iteration, then. Not 4s but a version 5, please. Maybe this time SIRI will feel, sound and look like Steve Jobs. One more, lace the chips with his DNA?



Bento Box:

Steve Job's DNA in vitro? (LA Times)

№ 30. Animated Saturday

They're art born from relatively new and still evolving media. But the processes, I can imagine, require almost the same mindful creativity, vortex of resources, obsessive reach for perfection and marrow-seeping tedium as the genius behind Sistine Chapel.



Sometimes, just seeing the result, without the necessary but painful process, makes us forget of what it takes to create a gem. Is pain a necessary assumption for genius? Will art be denied its fruition without the fuel of misery? Is it really true that the boost of agony or the burn of acid at the seams of the tortured soul may propel the next breach in the limits of quantum physics? Should creators and their kind be unhappy? Otherwise, no art. Nada.

Well, assuming they already have the gift of genius, why else should they have access to a torrid sex life, right? Or at least a gum-pink healthy love life? What more do they need?