Marco Arment argues that free trials with higher-priced applications in the App Store would undermine people’s tendency to try out a number of applications even if they don’t use them long-term because they’re so affordable:

If the App Store mostly moved to higher purchase prices with trials, rather than today’s low purchase prices and no trials, this pattern would almost completely disappear. Instead, we’d get the free trials for almost everything, and then we’d only end up paying for the one that we liked best, or the cheapest one that solved the need, or maybe none of them if we didn’t need them for very long or decided that none were worth their prices.

In this type of market, the winners can make a lot more, because you can indeed charge more money. But the “middle class” — all of those apps that get tried but not bought — all make much less.

I think Marco’s right. (Please do read his entire piece. It’s very good.)

Since releasing Basil last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and paid upgrades, which is a related topic. Trials seem like they would be a positive thing for developers; users could try out our applications, see how good they are, and then, theoretically, they would be willing to pay a higher price, and would do so at such a volume that our current sales would increase or, at minimum, wouldn’t suffer. Charging $10 for an application sounds a hell of a lot better than charging $2.99 or $3.99.

Marco is right that this would fundamentally change the nature of the App Store. Rather than spend a couple bucks here and there to try out new applications, users would more likely try out a large number of applications and end up paying for the one that best fits their needs. Of course, that may be more fair; users only pay for the application they need, and only the developer who provided it is paid. But as Marco points out, that erodes the entertainment aspect of the App Store.

As a result, since that market would resemble the PC or Mac software market, he argues the outcome probably would, too. A relatively small number of developers and companies will do especially well, and most others will make very little. That’s convincing.

I don’t think there’s a net benefit here for introducing trials. That market may support deeper, more full-featured applications, but it could also throw out one of the App Store’s greatest attributes: the ability for a single developer or small team to take a single good idea, turn it into an application, and make it accessible to a huge audience—all while possibly making a decent income and having the chance to make it a huge success.

Rather than hope for trials or even paid upgrades, I think developers need to utilize the tools we have: in-app purchase and subscriptions. IAP can allow developers to reach a wide audience with a low initial price (or free, even), and make more from those customers who are willing to pay for more. Paper for iPad is an excellent example of how to do this. The application comes with a “pen” drawing tool for free, but pencil, marker, paintbrush and color mixing tools are available through IAP. There’s nothing predatory or abusive about Paper; it’s a beautiful, useful application, and the tools available for purchase make it even more useful.

Those are the kinds of things we should be thinking about. Not only is hoping/waiting for trials unproductive, but it limits what your application is capable of. IAP is an incredible tool that allows for unique, powerful applications for users, all while making it available to a very large audience. That capability shouldn’t be shunned; instead, we should think about how to use it to make businesses that are sustainable for us and useful for customers.

Ken Segall on Apple’s camera iPhone ad:

What this commercial does so well is capture the human side of technology. It’s a reflection of daily life, and it’s easy to see ourselves in it. The ad shows us how essential our phones have become, enabling us to capture the people, places and images we don’t want to forget.

What’s powerful about this ad to me is that it’s just people living, experiencing and enjoying little moments and big moments, and the iPhone is just there to capture some of it. Not to be front-and-center, not to be the focus of attention—just to snap a little part of it and continue on. It’s not that the iPhone is incidental to these moments; in fact, in many of them, it’s integral (kids videotaping their friends skating, snapping random photos of puddles). But none of these little vignettes have someone with their head buried in an app, ignoring everything around them—the iPhone is there to capture or make certain moments better.

Of course, the iPhone certainly does allow people to bury their heads and disappear from what’s going on around them, and people (we) certainly do that. I think, though, that’s counter to the iPhone’s spirit, and I love that this ad embodies that the iPhone is meant to make day-to-day life better, rather than to capture our lives altogether.

The ad doesn’t provide a ready-made tagline for why you should purchase the iPhone. There’s no explicit or implicit comparison to competing devices (except for the ending “Every day, more photos are taken with an iPhone than any other camera,” but that says more to what the iPhone is than to what the competition isn’t). It’s simply an affirmation of what Apple believes the iPhone to be, what its intent is, and that intent is much larger than the feature set.

And it’s a powerful ad because of that. I think this is Apple’s best ad since the “Think Different” campaign, and it very much the same kind of ad: it’s about what Apple is, not what their products do.

When Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, they presented it as a device that did three things: made calls, played music and video, and browsed the web. When I saw the announcement, I knew that day that I had to have one when it was released.

That wasn’t because I was an Apple geek (although I certainly was). It was because I immediately knew what it did and what it would do for me. It would do what I’d tried to do with a PocketPC for a couple years—put the web, my contacts and calendar in my pocket, wherever I am—and combine my phone and iPod into a single device that is superior to them at their intended function. I knew it because that’s how Apple presented it. They presented it as a device that did those three things.

They could have presented it as a technological marvel, a device that combines a high-resolution multitouch screen, fast mobile processor, cell and WiFi radios, and proximity, ambient light and accelerometer sensors into a handheld device with desktop-breed software and surprisingly-good battery life, a PC in your pocket. But they didn’t; rather, they presented it in terms of what it did for users and what they would find useful about it.

This isn’t important just for presenting the iPhone, however; of course, doing so made it immediately intelligible to me and many others, even those for whom the technology underneath it is closer to magic than science. They presented it from the user’s perspective, rather than from the creator’s, and showed what role it could play in our own lives, rather than make the viewer do that translation on their own. That’s an important lesson for how to market a product, but I think what’s even more important is that this focus on what it does for the user didn’t start at Apple when they began creating the presentation to introduce the iPhone—it began all the way at the beginning of the project itself. They envisioned and designed the product as a user, rather than as a designer or engineer.

What this means is starting with a problem or unfulfilled need that people have, something that, if it were improved, would make people’s lives better in some way. Then, you must understand precisely what that problem is, what the person really wants, and what the underlying causes of it are. Only then will you start designing a product or service. By doing so, the entire product creation process—from generating ideas (“ideation,” a word I loathe) to packaging and delivering it to customers—is within the context of solving a concrete problem. Every design and engineering decision made happens within it, and there is a built-in decision process for whether to add or remove something, and metric for how well each part succeeds: does it better solve the problem for the user?

This goes beyond “empathizing” with users.¹ Instead, it means thinking as a user, from beginning to end, and using that perspective to decide what you should or shouldn’t do, and what your product or service should or shouldn’t be.

Apple does this better than any other company, and that’s the case in part because they are ruthlessly focused on it. One of Jobs’s more well-known sayings is that he is as proud of the products they didn’t ship as the ones they have shipped. This line is held up as a reminder that to do great work, companies must focus. But focus on what? This provides us with an answer: focus on what will do the most good for users. All decisions flow from that.

1. “Empathize with your users” has always seemed rather disgusting a concept to me—it shouldn’t be some great insight to empathize with your users, and in fact, it sounds clinically calculating to me: empathize with your users and you will have more success! Empathy—understanding the feelings of others and caring for them—should be the starting point for all businesses rather than something to bolt on in order to increase sales. [↩]

Urban TxT is an L.A.-based group that introduces Los Angeles high school students to web and software development, and to the process of coming up with an idea for a product, designing it and building it. The group is doing fantastic work, and I’ve been lucky enough to help start a short iOS development course for their students. It’s a wonderful group.

The group and their students have a big idea for how to make L.A. a great place for youth (and people of all ages) to learn how to build things and to work on their own projects: they want to create a “hacker space” that’s open at all times for people to work and learn from others:

Imagine what life could be like if a teen in South Los Angeles could see more computers than liquor stores while walking home from school. Imagine if South LA did not have the highest unemployment rate in the city but instead produced the highest number of tech pioneers in the country. URBAN Teens eXploring Technology (URBAN TxT), a local nonprofit with a city-wide focus, seeks to accomplish that by building a technology innovation center in one of the most underinvested areas in the city. URBAN TxT will build a “hacker space” – a space with technology equipment and an open-door policy for everyone who wants to express creativity, address social issues through computer programing, and innovate through collaboration.

They’re competing for a grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation to make this a reality. I think it’s not only a wonderful idea, one that would benefit a lot of people, but the kind of idea that can improve how our staid and ineffective education system works—and make it more engaging and more transformative for students.

Watch the video they’ve made about their vision, and if you think it’s a good idea too, you can help them out by leaving a comment showing your support (or, even better, with your own ideas for the project). They’re doing fantastic work, and I think they deserve all of our support. Let’s help make this happen.

Power of a filibuster:

A year ago, as the presidential race was taking shape, The Washington Post’s pollster asked voters whether they favored the use of drones to kill terrorists or terror suspects if they were “American citizens living in other countries.” The net rating at the time was positive: 65 percent for, 26 percent against.

Today, after a month of Rand Paul-driven discussion of drone warfare, Gallup asks basically the same question: Should the U.S. “use drones to launch airstrikes in other countries against U.S. citizens living abroad who are suspected terrorists?” The new numbers: 41 percent for, 52 percent against.

Wow.

When I released Basil a year ago, I had no idea what to expect. Not only was it my first iOS application (or application altogether), but it was the first real thing I’d conceived, designed and built for people to use.

The last year has been incredible. Not only has Basil sold fairly well on the App Store, but it’s been useful to a lot of people, and something they’ve loved to use. It’s incredibly gratifying that Basil is helping people to store their own recipes, find new ones, and cook them. Since it was released, though, there’s been one request people have made that’s dwarfed all others in terms of quantity: photos. Surprisingly, people want to save photos along with their recipes. (Okay, well. It’s not so surprising.)

Today I am releasing Basil 1.5. You can go get it on the App Store, check out the new website, or keep reading for the details.

There are four big new features, but the headliner is that Basil now has full support for photos. When you save recipes from supported sites with photos, the photo will be, too. For other sites, you can add the photo as well. And as you’d expect, when you’re creating your own recipes, you can add photos of your own recipes.

Being able to see what the recipe looks like makes browsing your recipes more engaging and makes Basil much more useful, because you have a much better idea what the finished meal will end up like. It’s sometimes difficult to picture it in your head from a recipe’s description and if you haven’t looked at a recipe in a while, it’s easy to forget, too. When I was thinking of how to build in photos, I wanted to do it in such a way that it added all of that, but also so it didn’t detract from what’s special about Basil, which is its focus on making sure there’s nothing in the way of you and the recipe while cooking. I think that’s exactly how it ended up; it took what’s good about Basil and made it better. I think you’ll agree.

Photos is the big new feature, but there are three more large additions to Basil as well. The first is the ability to import and export your recipes to Dropbox.

Dropbox

When you’ve taken the time to enter in all of your favorite personal recipes, and to collect recipes from the web as well, keeping them safe is even more important than finding new favorites. Recipes aren’t quite as important as family photos, but they’re definitely important, and very personal to people. Some have been handed down from parents and grandparents, others created by you, and many are a part of past memories or memories yet to make—special dinners for special people in your life, parties, family events.

That’s why Basil can now export its recipe library to Dropbox and import it as well. Now, you can periodically export your library to Dropbox and never have to worry that you’ll lose your recipes. Basil always backed up its recipes when you backed up your iPad to iTunes or iCloud, but this will make it much easier to restore your library or to transfer your recipes to another iPad.

Unlike a typical backup/restore feature, importing will not replace your current recipe library; instead, it will add recipes that aren’t currently there. That way, if you delete a recipe that you’d like to bring back, importing from an older export file that includes that recipe won’t wipe out the recipes you’ve added since—it’ll just add back the one you deleted.

This isn’t the most exciting feature in the world. But I think it’s going to prove useful to a lot of people—make their recipes more secure, make it easier when setting up a new iPad or giving recipes to a spouse—and I think that’s pretty great.

Notes

Here’s another feature many people have asked for and I think is really useful: you can now add notes to each recipe. I’ve found this really useful for making smoked brisket in particular, because I usually adjust something each time (the rub, what kind of wood I used, whether I mopped it while it was in the smoker, et cetera). You can use it to note any changes to the recipe or method you made (“I used half the salt,” “sauté the onions for 5 minutes longer”), or even specific instructions for how certain people like it made. Whatever you want to remember for next time. It’s a very simple feature, but also quite useful.

Cross Off

This is my favorite new feature even though it’s the simplest. (Maybe that has something to do with it, actually.) Now, while cooking, you can “cross off” ingredients you’ve already used by tapping them. Basil will turn them gray and put a line through them, so when you look at the ingredients list for the next step, your eyes will be drawn to the remaining ingredients—no need to scan a long list of ingredients. It’s ridiculously simple, but it’s also ridiculously useful while cooking.

I am incredibly excited for you all to finally be able to use this version of Basil. I’ve been using it for the past couple of months, and there’s no doubt that it’s a superior application. Better looking, more flexible, more powerful, and makes cooking easier.

One last note: I love adding features like cross off, notes and automatic unit conversion. My goal is to add new capabilities to Basil that make cooking an easier process but don’t at all distract from cooking itself. They should be purely additive: if you use them, they help out, but if you’re not use them (or don’t want to use them), they aren’t in the way. Hopefully I’ve achieved that, and I am working away on some new ideas there, too.

Go get the update! And if you don’t already own it, go get it on the App Store!

Last week, Google announced they are shutting down Reader. Many people were upset by the move, especially because so many of us depend on Reader for reading RSS feeds even if we don’t directly use it. I’ve settled into using NetNewsWire on my Mac (which I have for years) and Reeder on my iPad and iPhone, and this set up has worked very well for a long time. It certainly is a pain to figure out a new workflow.

Some, though, have suggested that Google could charge for Reader or for developer access to its (private, undocumented) API if they really wanted to, so this is more evidence that Google believes so much in free-with-advertising they’d rather forego that revenue and kill the service than keep it around and charge.

I think that’s a misread of the situation. First, Reader was released during a very different part of Google’s history. In 2005, Google experimented with many different services that didn’t necessarily fit an obvious plan; instead, the strategy seemed to be to plant many different seeds, see which ones grew, which ones sprouted beautiful flowers, and which ones didn’t. And even within that environment, Google’s leadership was apparently unsure about Reader from the very beginning. I believe, then, that Google’s mistake was in releasing a product they cared little about, and for refusing to develop it into something more that could contribute to Google’s top and bottom lines. One of Google Reader’s creators, Chris Wetherell, wrote in 2011 that Google was ignoring many opportunities with Reader; specifically, it was a direct publishing mechanism from content creator and audience, and a huge opportunity to direct it toward information junkies (journalists, etc). The opportunity was there, but Google didn’t take it.

That’s a smart criticism, but it’s different than criticizing Google for shutting down Reader. Since Larry Page took over the company two years ago, Google has revamped their products to form a cohesive whole, largely in orbit around Google+, and have eliminated products, projects and teams that don’t fit their new focused strategy. Google’s management team apparently doesn’t believe that Reader is a part of that, and that seems more than valid to me; a pure RSS reader (which is, more or less, what Reader is) doesn’t have much opportunity, whether it’s monetized through a developer API or not (and, to be clear, there’s not much money there anyway). So they cut it, so they can focus their time and resources on projects they believe are important to Google’s future. That’s the right move.

I think this is a tiny part of a much larger movement within Google to follow a more integrated approach with their products. Until 2012 or so, Google used Android as a means to control the mobile market and to commoditize hardware, which together would make Google the dominant company in mobile and put them in position to make it their next big revenue source through advertising. This hasn’t been successful, though. Google makes relatively little from Android while one company—Samsung—makes more operating income from Android than Google as a whole. Think about that! Google is doing the hard work of developing the operating system and applications, but Samsung is capturing all of the revenue and income. Google’s Android strategy failed.

I believe that Google is streamlining and re-focusing its products around Google+ so they can create integrated products. Rather than just create Nexus devices (manufactured by other companies) that have been little more than reference designs, Google instead intends to combine Android/Chrome, their services (Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Google+, et al) with their new-found ability to create great hardware, and create first-class computing devices. Phones, tablets, notebooks, and wearable computing, all designed by Google, under the Google name and sold by Google.

This makes a lot of sense. Not only can Google create better products by doing so, and better push the bounds of the technology industry, but this also answers how they’re going to make money from Android: sell devices. Everyone is better off. Except, of course, for Google’s “partners” on Android. Samsung certainly isn’t, but HTC and the many others that make Android-based phones will be hurt as well. Perhaps Samsung will decide (or already intends to) fork Android and develop their own platform, but I don’t think that really hurts Google at all; Google already receives basically zero benefit from Samsung’s use of Android, so making and selling their own hardware and losing Samsung in the process seems like a worthwhile trade to me.

I want to say, too, that I not only think this is exactly the right thing for Google to do, but it’s exciting that they are. This embraces what makes Google great—their obsession with pushing the bounds of what’s possible in ways that are useful to everyone—but does so with a bring-it-to-market focus. This isn’t the old days of forever “betas” that we are used to; I don’t think it’s any accident that we’ve been hearing so much of Google’s X lab recently, considering that in years past, all of Google was effectively a lab.

Google’s undergoing a transformation before our eyes, and I love where it’s headed. I’ve been quite critical of Google Glass, but it’s part of a much bigger change at Google that I think is not only necessary but positive.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a big update to Basil. It’s probably large enough to call it a 2.0, but I’m going with 1.5. There are a number of features I think you are going to love, but the big one is photos. Photos for recipes from the web, photos for your own recipes, browsing through your recipe’s photos—it’s all there, and it turns Basil into an entirely new app. It’s awesome to be able to look through your recipes and browse their photos to see what you want to cook, especially when they’re photos you’ve taken.

The release is coming soon, and I am beyond excited. To be notified the second it’s out, you can sign up here.

I have another announcement, too. I’m going to do something a little special for this release. Signing up there will also give you the chance to win a Baratza Virtuoso coffee grinder and a few bags of fantastic coffee courtesy of Tonx!

It’s hard to go wrong with that combination, whether you’re already a, uh, coffee enthusiast, or are just starting. I hope you are all excited for the new version of Basil and for the chance to get a Baratza grinder and Tonx coffee!

Now that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg have all reported that Apple is working on a wristband-like iOS device—in other words, Apple’s preferred method of pre-announcing products to the public—it’s certain that Apple is working on such a device.

The last time the New York Times’s Nick Bilton made a similar report about Apple was mid-July 2012, when he and Nick Wingfield reported that Apple is expected to announce an iPad Mini sometime that year. The iPad Mini was announced in October, just three months later. Bilton’s report on the watch, though, does not suggest an announcement date (just that it “might soon become a reality”), and says that Apple is “experimenting” with wristwatch devices made of curved glass. Peter Burrows and Adam Satariano’s report for Bloomberg, though, says that more than one hundred “product designers” are working on it, and that the team includes marketing group employees, which would suggest that the device is being actively developed as a product and is not merely an experiment. That makes sense with the near-simultaneous reports in the Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

I think, then, we can reasonably expect that such a device is coming. It’s an incredibly interesting device to think about because such a form is right on the edge of what we can do with mobile computers today and because it presents very difficult decisions about the device’s form and function. As such, I want to think through the watch a bit.

Form and Function

Ideally, a wristband-style mobile computer (hereon referred to as the “watch”) would be a standalone device that could also interoperate with the iPhone or iPad. It would have a decent-sized color screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular data, GPS, a microphone and speaker. In other words, it would have all the hardware features of the iPhone, except in a much smaller package and would attach to the wrist. You would interact with it through touch and voice using Siri. It could act as a bridge to the iPhone or iPad (see messages and notifications on it, control media playback), but it could also be a replacement for many uses; instead of wearing an iPhone or iPod Touch while running, exercising at the gym or cycling, all you’d need is the watch on your wrist to track your distance and route. With Bluetooth headphones, you could listen to music and hear prompts from an exercising application, too.

Many places we go, a standalone watch would be completely sufficient. There’s little that you actually need an iPhone for while going out for the evening that the watch couldn’t do (texts, calls, finding where to go for dessert or a drink), and its smaller screen size—the main limiting factor—is actually a positive in this case (and many others), because it can be less distracting. You’ll probably zone out less checking Twitter, Facebook or Instagram while out with friends when all you have is a tiny screen to use.

But the watch will almost certainly not be standalone, at least initially, simply because our current battery technology doesn’t seem able to keep such a small device powered for a reasonable amount of time. The iPhone’s battery life is just acceptable, so it’s difficult to imagine a much smaller device with the same networking needs having anything approaching reasonable battery life—and that’s assuming it can all be miniaturized to a reasonable size. The odds are that the watch will instead be a Bluetooth accessory for the iPhone.

What, though, will it do? The standalone watch can replace a smartphone in many cases, which is reason enough to get one. But what about the watch-as-accessory? When Apple announced the iPhone, it had two uses that made it immediately obvious why it was a big deal: it replaced your phone and iPod with one superior device, and it could use the full web anywhere. What will be the watch’s defining use that clicks with people?

The apparent use is what Pebble and others do: alert you to phone calls, text messages and other notifications, and allow you to control media and some other functions. Apple could provide even greater interconnection so that the watch could use Siri through the iPhone’s connection. That could be convincing; with an improved Siri, there would be much less need to use the iPhone directly. You would be able to see and make quick responses to messages as they come in (or ignore unimportant ones), find a restaurant or bar to head to and get directions using Siri, get movie times, and control what music is playing in your car; in other words, you’d be able to do much of what we use the iPhone for without ever touching it. Passes in Passbook (airline flights, games, movies, etc) could be used without ever taking out your iPhone.

There are many potential uses for third-party developers, too. The immediately ones are for exercise. Even a dependent watch would still be a very useful exercise device; it could still track how far a person runs and for how long (like the Nike Fuelband and Jawbone Up do), instruct people on gym exercises and perhaps even track them, and do so without being connected to an iPhone. Even without a data connection or GPS, it would still be a very useful device for exercising. And if Apple could somehow build in a heart rate sensor, it could provide even more data than these applications have currently.

But there’s more potential, too. Tethered to the iPhone, it could serve as a tour guide for cities and other locations, instructing you where to go and pointing out interesting landmarks and information. While driving, it could alert you to new traffic jams up ahead.

Those are all fantastic uses (or at least I think so). Along with third-party services, the watch could completely eliminate the need for dedicated fitness devices like Nike’s Fuelband, Jawbone’s Up, and Fitbit’s various devices, it would make many tasks (like getting directions or information about things around you while walking around) much less intrusive and annoying, and could open up completely new uses.

That all might be enough to make the watch a compelling accessory—I would certainly like to use it. And perhaps that’s the right path to take. Rather than bill it as a new device, Apple can sell it wholly as an accessory, something that isn’t necessary but makes the iPhone better. From there, Apple can develop it until it’s something that can largely stand on its own. At that point, we would have a fundamentally new device.

A New Relationship

With the smartphone, because it can pack (relatively) large amounts of information on the screen and we can access it easily through touch, it’s very easy to spend minutes or even hours using it to browse the web, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other services. The smartphone is so engaging that you can end up disconnected from what’s going on around you, whether you’re waiting in line at a store or out to dinner with friends. We are all familiar with doing this or other people doing it. The smartphone is engaging because of its method of interaction.

Users, though, could have a much less engaging relationship with the watch. Because the form (small screen on the wrist) and means of interaction (voice, some touch input) are less engaging and carry less information than touch input with a large screen, our relationship with the watch will likely be very different. Rather than spend long periods of time using it, we will probably use it more as a utility, where we interact with it for some specific task and then go back to whatever we were doing. Instead of finding yourself checking Instagram when you pulled out your phone to look at a notification, you’ll just glance at your wrist, respond to it if it’s important, and go back to whatever you were doing. Instead of holding your phone while following directions to walk somewhere in the city, you’ll just glance at a street name, distance and arrow on your wrist.

In this way, the watch would be even more of a utility than a computer, a trend started with the iPhone. You use it for a specific task, and then it’s gone. It would take much less attention to use and it wouldn’t take you out of the moment while using it, as the smartphone tends to do. As such, the watch could be much more human than the smartphone. What I mean is that rather than force us to conform to it, it would conform to us to a much greater extent. It would provide us whatever information we need without interrupting the moment much, and it would disappear the second it provides it. It would empower us while doing what we want, rather than dominate our attention.

The smartphone is an addiction all its own. It’s always in our pocket and can provide us with almost limitless distractions when we want it, and because it’s always there, it can nearly become muscle memory to pull it out and tap around when there’s even just a few seconds of downtime. The watch could technically serve the same function, but simply because there would be much more friction to use it as such (tapping around on a tiny screen will simply be much more of a pain to do), we probably won’t. And because of that friction, the watch could be much more of a tool—something we take out when we need it and put away when we don’t—than the smartphone, which is much more akin to a security blanket.

That, I think, is a good thing, an improvement on mobile devices. Moreover, it speaks to a question that I think is important now and will only grow more important in the future: since mobile computing undoubtedly affects how we live as human beings, how do we want to live, and what role should computing play? Smartphones have a very engaged role, but “glasses”—mobile computers with heads-up displays, like Google’s Glass project—would literally become an intermediary between the world around us and our perception of it, because we would see the world through the computer’s display. In that case, computing would not only be integral to our lives, but would be our window to, and a filter on top of, the world itself.

I find that idea troubling, which is why I find the watch so promising. Rather than be a part of how we see the world, computing would be something we interact with when we need information or something done, and then it would go away. Rather than fundamentally change how we envision the world and interact with it, it would instead leave us as we always have been, but much more effective.

That question is as much philosophical as it is technological, and different people will have different takes. There is certainly an argument to be made that our advancement as a species depends on more deeply integrating technology into ourselves. Perhaps that is the case, and perhaps going down that road will leave us better off as individuals and as a species, but it points to what I think we should all be discussing more, which is what role computing should take in the future and what role it should play in our lives.

All that from a watch that doesn’t even exist. Yet.

Driving down Beach, the night sky’s that funny black-orange color that it is at night here, the street lights and lamps and lighted signs and headlights and buildings combining into a perpetual dawn until the sun rises. Chulahoma comes on the radio, loud, as I roll down the empty road, a lot like we used to do back then. Happy. Good music, going to meet friends, the night; there’s nothing else to want.

And then a certain song comes on, one I used to like and understand in a disconnected sort of way, all in the head sort of thing.

I wake up and the phone is ringing, surprised, as it’s early. And that should be the perfect warning…

Now, suddenly, I get it. Now, suddenly, I’m not driving down Beach, I’m standing in my living room in the summer’s early afternoon, looking out the window at a beautiful sun-covered day, and my phone is ringing. It’s an old friend that I haven’t talked to in a few years just because that’s one of those things that happens as time moves on.

“Hello?” I ask.

“Kyle…” she says, her voice a little distant. “Kelly… died last night.”

“You really need a haircut,” she says, as we drive to a market for a couple last-minute things that our friend forgot for his little party. “You look like Einstein.”

She was right, of course. I did. She was right about a lot of things. Kelly had a way of cutting through the bullshit, the nice ways of phrasing things when we have something to tell friends, the stuff that hides what we really mean. She didn’t do that. I don’t think she could. Sometimes I couldn’t stand it, I would get so angry, because how could she say that? But she was often right, even if I didn’t see it, and I appreciated it all the same, because there was no pretense.

We argued about anything that could possibly be argued about. Music, politics, food, movies, it was all an argument. We were both hard-headed then, both were so sure we were right. That was our friendship, formed through countless weekends spent at debate tournaments, class, late nights at Denny’s, movies, shows, and long drives to nowhere. It worked, but at some point during high school, our hard heads had some disagreement or other and we didn’t talk through university.

Until two years ago, almost to the day. We began talking again, here and there, sometime not long before that car ride to Ralph’s.

I remember thinking when she said that, what? This can’t be, I just saw her a couple weeks ago, we were just texting yesterday, she can’t be. I fell into the couch not knowing what to do or to think, not knowing anything, my brain didn’t work. My brain hurt; it didn’t make any sense, it couldn’t process that someone who I could call up any time I wanted and talk about nothing in particular, whose voice and laugh I swear I could hear, was gone. Gone.

So I sat there, staring out at nothing. And then I called our close friends, one call then another and another, and told them what I had been told but couldn’t yet understand, that our friend—someone we met in the beginning of high school and my first memory of her is at a debate tournament and that she was really loud and laughed a lot, someone that was here just yesterday asking me whether she should upgrade to Mac OS X Lion and arguing why she shouldn’t because she always had to argue with me—wasn’t here anymore. And every time I said that word to them, that she had died last night, my heart felt like it was being crushed under the weight of a profound confusion and I was falling into a featureless abyss. It can’t be, it can’t be.

But it was. One second she was here, less than a month away from her twenty-second birthday and starting law school, just years away from marrying the person she loved so much. And the next she wasn’t.

That night, driving to Ralph’s, she talked me through a break-up I was going through, a very long relationship with someone I loved very much. And she did it over and over again with a patience I’ve never seen. That night, and over the next few months, she told me when I was being a fool and when I was doing the right thing, she gave me the courage I myself didn’t own, she helped me get through an incredibly painful part of my life. Over those months, our friendship came back stronger than it was back then, and I was so elated that we had fixed the stupid rift.

And then one day in July, that phone call came. I understood death before the day; but I didn’t, not really. I didn’t truly understand that one second they’re here, here, and then the next, they’re gone. They’re no where. They’re gone. No matter how far you drive or fly or dive into the earth’s seas or climb to its highest peaks, they aren’t anywhere. Gone. Gone.

She didn’t know it was coming. She didn’t plan for it, prepare for that day, like most people have the luxury of doing. She couldn’t have breakfast at her favorite place one last time, kiss her boyfriend, cook dinner with her mother, or say good-bye to the people she loved. She couldn’t do any of that, because gone is final. It defines what “final” means. It just is, and that’s how the world is. One day she was almost realizing everything she had worked her ass off for, but not the next day.
I learned the meaning of that terrible word that day. And I learned what it is to fear—terrified, as you fall asleep—that one day I might start to forget all of the things we did together and her voice and that laugh. That day, I learned what death is.

But I also learned a little more about life. People always say life is precious, or some other trite thing. Life isn’t precious. It’s an opportunity. An opportunity to do something truly great. A chance to make something of yourself, to make someone else’s life better in some way, to feel, to hurt, and to love—to share the time we have here with other people, one or many, to live. It’s a chance, and each of us has it, every day we’re here.
Kelly knew that, knew that more than I did. She lived. She took advantage of it. She would do those things that everyone else says they want to get around to doing some day but never do. She loved. She took a good but troubled person and made their life better, because she knew they were good. She was as good a friend as I’ve ever had. And she worked her ass off toward her dreams, dreams we talked about here and there on those long nights at tournaments and on those drives.

It’s a chance that each of us has, and it’s our choice. We can float through and relax. Or we can take it. We can live.

Netflix released the first season of “House of Cards” today:

On Friday, Netflix will release a drama expressly designed to be consumed in one sitting: “House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rather than introducing one episode a week, as distributors have done since the days of black-and-white TVs, all 13 episodes will be streamed at the same time. “Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the producer Beau Willimon said with a laugh.

“House of Cards,” of course, is Netflix’s original “television” show that stars Kevin Spacey and is produced by David Fincher.

I’ve been excited since hearing about this, so I can’t wait to start watching it, but what’s more interesting to me is how successful this could be. It’s Kevin Spacey and David Fincher together making a high quality, serial political thriller; if it were premiering on a cable channel (like, say, AMC), there’s no doubt it’d have a huge audience.

But it’s not. It’s Netflix’s show, and it’s only available there. It shows; rather than “broadcast” a new episode each week at a certain time on a certain day, all thirteen episodes of its first season became available today. If you’d like, you could sit down right now and watch the entire first season—on its first day. Or you can space it out. Whatever you want, just like we’ve all been watching TV series on Netflix that we missed when they originally aired. And because they are intending the show for people who will watch one episode after another, there are no recaps at the beginning of each episode, either.

There’s been a huge amount of discussion about “when” television will become like the web, where we can watch what we want when we want it and only pay for it, rather than a bundle of things we don’t want. Well, that’s going to be a while, if it happens at all, because television is built on expensive cable subscriptions with advertising and hundreds of channels. There probably will never be a day when, suddenly, you can pay for only Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Modern Family, or whatever you watch, and nothing else.

But Netflix is creating a new path for television-like content. If Netflix’s original productions are successful, then there will be a second way for television-like content to reach an audience. When someone’s thinking about creating a new show, they will be able to choose the traditional model (production studios, cable networks) or the streaming model. And if enough shows go the second route, cable won’t be the only place where all the content is.

At that point, the economics would shift. Cable subscriptions wouldn’t be the only viable way to make a successful show, and it wouldn’t be the place to go for good shows. Netflix could very well end up being a must-have for people who love good television. At that point, many people very well could cut the cord and go streaming-only for television. And once that happens, the traditional cable networks and production studios may have no choice but to offer their shows (or new shows) via streaming.

That’s the best approach, I think, to undermining the cable monopoly. People go to where the content is, so creating shows for the new medium, only available through it, and are must-watch shows is the best way to weaken cable’s grip. That’s what Netflix has the potential to do. But one step at a time; right now, what they have to do is make a show that’s so good, no one can ignore it.

Apple’s December quarter results weren’t bad; revenue grew by 18 percent, but net income was flat, due to a 30 percent rise in cost of sales. They didn’t blow the doors off like in past years, but it wasn’t a bad quarter by any stretch of the imagination. It’s easy to explain their increased cost of sales because they turned over a very large amount of their product lineup, resulting in higher costs—just as Apple’s executives did.

What’s concerning, though, is their guidance for next quarter. Apple said revenue should fall between $41-43 billion for the March quarter; year-over-year, that would only be 4.6-9.7 percent growth. Compared to Apple’s past five years, that’s positively anemic.

But should that be a surprise? With such explosive growth since 2007, and already dominating the markets they’re in, it’s difficult to continue it:

A big part of Apple’s challenge is that it is now so large that it seems unrealistic, mathematically, for the company to continue finding new pots of gold big enough to maintain its growth. In a recent research report, A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, calculated that were Apple to grow for the next five years at the same rate as the last five years, its revenue would be $1.2 trillion, or about the size of Australia’s gross domestic product.

Apple could enter TV and content more forcefully, and China is an incredible opportunity—but even then, it wouldn’t sustain the blistering growth rate they’ve been on indefinitely. I think we need to abandon the idea that Apple can (or should) sustain such high rates of growth in the future. Lower rates of growth should not be the concern—what should be is if Apple’s iPhone business begins to decline.¹

The iPhone is a huge, huge business. In the December quarter (first quarter of fiscal-year 2013), the iPhone generated $30.6 billion of revenue for Apple. $30.6 billion—more than 56 percent of Apple’s total revenue. Apple’s incredible success is on the back of the iPhone, full-stop. They can generate so much revenue because not only are they selling a ton of them, but they have an incredibly large margin on them. That’s why Apple’s share of the mobile phone industry’s profit is so high.

That’s good, but it’s also very dangerous. If the mobile phone market begins to decline, or worse, Apple’s ability to create fantastic products and sell people on them declines, Apple’s revenues will deflate like a popped balloon. As the iPhone goes, Apple goes, too.

So that’s what people should be focused on. There’s no reason to be worried right now; Apple’s products are quite good and they continue to do well. But Apple should do what it can to diversify its revenue stream away from the iPhone. Reducing the iPhone’s proportional contribution to revenue (and net income) will decrease risk for the company. As of now, most of Apple’s eggs are in that basket.

That means that continuing to create new brilliant products, and brutally cannibalize their own existing products, is the most integral part of Apple’s future. The typical response to the situation Apple finds itself in would be to milk as much money out of the iPhone cash-cow as possible and to sustain the business as long as possible, but that is exactly the wrong path for Apple to take. Going forward, Apple has to build such great new versions of the iPhone, or new devices that obviate its need for existing, that people have little choice but to purchase them. That’s the only way they’ll be able to stay out in front of the industry and to avoid the risk associated with one product accounting for more than half of revenue.

In other words, Apple has to continue being Apple—a company that’s all too willing to kill its own best-selling products, and is laser-focused on meeting people’s desires and needs. Apple made it look easy over the last decade, but it’s an incredibly hard thing to sustain.

1. This, of course, is problematic for Apple’s stock; tepid business growth means little stock growth, so its value should decline. That’s terrible for Apple’s investors and it’s not good for Apple’s employees or for its ability to hire new talent and retain existing talent at the company. It also would put more pressure on management, which could lead to rash decisions that harm the company. Steve Jobs may have been able to largely ignore unhappiness among investors and/or the board, but that is an exception. Tim Cook may not be able to do the same. [↩]

Over the last year, I have been thinking a lot about “wearable computing”—devices like the Nike Fuelband or Fitbit that monitor our activity and provide functionality without us directly interacting with them. These kinds of devices intrigued me because they are a new kind of computer with a purpose distinct from the PC or even the smartphone: they do things on their own, for us.

The phrase “wearable computing” bothered me, though, because it’s very limiting, and it doesn’t seem to capture what’s important about it. The defining characteristic is that they are computing devices which monitor and do things on their own for people, and there’s no reason that they have to be worn. They could be embedded in other objects, such as weight scales, exercise machines, bicycles and cars, and in many ways, this idea applies equally well to software as well.

While reading about the brain, I realized that a much better term for these devices is “unconscious computing.” Our unconscious does an incredible amount of things for us so we do not have to consciously take care of it. It keeps us stable while standing and walking, keeps our bodies’ internal processes in balance, handles breathing, and an overwhelming number of other tasks that, if we had to handle consciously, would completely cripple us. These tasks are handled unconsciously for us so we can focus on higher level tasks necessary for survival. Not only does it make our lives easier, but we simply couldn’t survive without it.

We should never have the same level of dependence on machines, but I think that should be the general goal for the future of computing: they should handle tasks for us so we don’t have to, to allow us to live more fulfilling and effective lives. Devices like the Nike Fuelband or Fitbit One should not be one more thing to distract us, to require more interaction and time spent configuring it, setting it, and turning the data it provides into useful information for us. Rather, they should quietly track a person’s activity and turn it into specific and useful information and recommendations. Even better, they should integrate with other devices and services (weight scales, exercise machines, cycling and food tracking applications) and provide more accurate, more useful information to the user. Instead of telling them how many steps they took each day, they should tell them to what extent they’re leading an active lifestyle or fulfilling the exercise plan they’ve set for themselves, and how they could do better. That could mean recommending an exercise plan, a new daily exercise (even better would be exercises specific to where they live, like a route people enjoy running at the beach or through their neighborhood), or even meals.

I use health as an example because there is incredible potential in it. There is a huge amount of data we create that could be tremendously useful in improving our lives, but it’s either destroyed (when we weigh ourselves on a dumb scale, exercise on a dumb exercise bike or stair-stepper, or go running or cycling without tracking it), stuck in a silo (various exercise applications), or not created at all.

That’s an incredible waste. Using a number of different independent devices and services to track it is no good either, though, because the information stays locked up, and because most of these devices and services require us to waste time interacting with them instead of doing what we are trying to do. I abhor messing around with a running or cycling application before doing those activities. Rather than riding to the beach or along a quiet road in the hills, I am using my phone. And worse, if I want to look at and analyze that exercise data, I have to pull up each individual application. Not only is all of this annoying, it’s a friction-point that means we are all less likely to do any of it, and therefore to get the benefits.

We need computing devices which quietly do these things for us—exercise bands, exercise machines, bicycles, heart monitors and scales—and connect to centralized services that compile this information into useful forms for us. These devices need to do all of this with as little interaction as necessary, so our activities are as natural as possible. Rather than fidget with an iPhone application, we just ride, and the bike (with an embedded GPS module, or a Bluetooth connection to an iPhone in the saddle bag) handles the data tracking and uploading for us, while whatever service we use (something like Fitbit’s service is an excellent start, with an API for adding and accessing a user’s data) handles the accumulation for us. All we have to do is live, and then make use of the information and recommendations.

Those are very specific ideas, but what I want to emphasize is that “unconscious computing” is a way of thinking about the purpose of computers. Currently, we still mostly think of a “computer” as something with a screen that you directly interact with through some kind of interface. They help do things for us, but for the most part, they only accomplish things insofar as we actively use them. I don’t think that’s what computing should be about. Rather, it—both hardware and software—should be designed to make things easier and make our lives better with as little direct interaction and work as necessary. For software, this means designing it (both the application or service’s intent and the interface) so it as closely fits the user’s desires and intentions as possible, so the user has to do as little as possible to get the desired result.

With the proliferation of powerful and cheap microprocessors and sensors for mobile devices, along with wireless technologies and the web, we have the potential to completely re-create what a computer is. Let’s do so in such a way that makes our lives better, and not just filled with more glowing screens.

The New York Times editors accuse Republicans of ignoring fiscal reality, but only manage ignore the reality themselves:

Congressional Republicans seem to think they are being flexible on taxes simply because a few of them have grudgingly admitted that some new revenues can be part of the current fiscal negotiations. We’re unimpressed.

No credit is due to a party that has suddenly accepted the obvious when it has no choice, particularly after two years of irresponsibly reducing the deficit only from the spending side. True flexibility means acknowledging that tax rates for the rich have to go up, and then negotiating how much and which ones. But, so far, Republicans have been just as closed to that reality as they have been for years, ignoring both the election results and the plain arithmetic of deficit reduction.

The Republicans have offered to raise taxes on people with higher incomes by capping deductions, a $727 billion tax increase over ten years, in return for serious entitlement reforms, which are the long-term drivers of our fiscal disaster.

To which the Times editors go on to say that, “fortunately,” President Obama is refusing to make any serious changes to entitlements.

Allowing the top marginal tax rate to return to return to 39.6 percent will not solve our fiscal problems. Let me repeat that: raising the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent will not raise enough revenue to solve our fiscal problem.

Here’s the problem: if we keep current tax and spending policies in place—that is, if we extend the Bush tax cuts, continue indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax to inflation, and hold Medicare payment rates constant, deficits and debt will shoot up into dangerous territory by 2020. Here’s how the CBO describes it (PDF):

…deficits would be much larger during the 2013–2022 period than in CBO’s baseline, averaging 4.9 percent of GDP rather than 1.1 percent. With deficits totaling nearly $10 trillion during that decade, debt held by the public would climb to 90 percent of GDP in 2022, the highest percentage since just after World War II. Thus, under that scenario, the United States would quickly head into fiscal territory unfamiliar to it and most other developed nations. Moreover, federal debt would continue to grow over the longer term, more than doubling relative to GDP between 2022 and 2037.

For comparison, the CBO says that between 1957 and 2008, debt ranged between 20-50 percent of GDP. So when debt shoots up to 90 percent of GDP, that’s kind of bad.

So what’s the reason for this? The reason is quite simple: tax revenues would stay near their historical average at 18.5 percent of GDP, but total spending would rise to 23.3 percent of GDP, well above the 21 percent average between 1972 and 2011. But here’s the really scary part: entitlement spending will account for 14 percent of GDP, or more than 75 percent of tax revenues.

So there’s no question, then, that we will need to bring our spending and revenues more in line. The CBO suggests that in 2020, if we reduce (but not eliminate—that would take $1 trillion of savings) our projected deficit by $750 billion, we could keep our deficit at a relatively small and healthy percentage of GDP and put our debt on a gentle, downward-sloping trajectory. In other words, doing so would go a long way toward fixing our fiscal troubles.

But how can we get those $750 billion of savings in 2020? If we extend Bush’s tax cuts for all but the wealthy (which is what Democrats propose), we would only get $110 billion, or 14.7 percent, of the necessary amount of deficit reduction.

So here’s the choice we have, and the choice that Democrats refuse to publicly acknowledge: we can maintain our entitlement programs as-is and not make significant changes, but not only will this mean locking in government spending as a percentage of GDP, and allowing it to rise in the decades ahead, well above historical levels, but it will also mean a dramatic increase in taxes on not only the wealthy, but the middle class, to pay for it.

Republicans themselves like to ignore this as well (what else is Romney’s claim that Obama slashed Medicare as a part of ACA?), but at least they are offering to increase tax revenues while also demanding (vague, ill-defined) reform to entitlements, the serious drivers of our fiscal troubles.

That’s the reality. The Times editors—and Democrats—are choosing to pretend that raising taxes on the wealthy is in and of itself fiscal responsibility. Senator Dick Durbin says that entitlement programs should not even be on the negotiation table for the fiscal cliff, and that they’ll get to entitlement reform next year. (“Trust me.”) President Obama is seeking $1.6 trillion of new revenue and offering just $340 billion of savings from entitlement spending. (Somehow, the President believes that 4.7 times as much revenue as reduction in spending is balanced.)

In reality, tax rates will likely need to rise on the wealthy to fix our collective fiscal disaster. And luckily, the GOP’s insistence that rates stay where they are seems to be softening. But what is truly dodging reality is the idea that we can escape altering our entitlement programs without dramatic changes to the size and scope of our federal government and taxes on the American people.

For the last few decades, we have struggled with how to employ manufacturing workers who lost their well-paid job with great benefits due to a globalized economy. When workers in another part of the world are willing to work for a fraction of what it costs to manufacture something in the United States, it’s obvious why companies move their manufacturing operations: it’s a significant cost advantage and, worse, if they don’t, their competitors will. This is only more true today. In January, Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher reported for the New York Times that for technology products especially, the labor cost itself is less important. What matters is that Asia—especially China—is the only place where every part of the supply chain exists in one region, that can manufacture quickly and at immense scale.

Manufacturing, too, is increasingly automated. The human’s role in actually putting things together is decreasing. Automation on large scale for identical products, like cars, has been a reality for decades. What’s happening now, though, is that smaller scale, small production runs are being automated as well. Rethink Robotics has created a robot called Baxter that can be “taught” how to do repeating tasks, and can work around humans. Rethink Robotics says Baxter can work for the equivalent of $4 an hour. Vanguard Plastics, a 30-person company in Connecticut, is using Baxter for menial tasks. Vanguard’s president, Chris Budnick, says that workers who did these jobs before are not being laid off, but are now assigned to “higher-level” tasks like training Baxter for each new production run.

Robots like Baxter are a work multiplier. Whereas before Vanguard required humans to do menial tasks, now they only need humans to train robots how to do something. But many more people are required to do the menial tasks than are required to train robots, so while no one may be losing their job now, they will need to find new productive tasks for them in the future—or eliminate their jobs. As robots like Baxter get better, too, manufactures will need even fewer employees to train them.

Other industries face very similar problems. Retail salespersons and cashiers, for example, account for nearly 6 percent of all jobs in the U.S., but are increasingly irrelevant. For many products, shopping online is more convenient and cheaper. Tower Records, Blockbuster and Borders all failed fundamentally because purchasing music, movies and books online is much better than paying more money for the privilege of driving to a store, hoping they have what you want and waiting in line. Even grocery stores are reducing their need for cashiers by employing self-checkout machines, which allow customers to scan and pay for items on their own and require only one employee to monitor several self-checkout machines.

Almost all of the jobs lost due to offshoring and automation have been low or semi-skilled kinds of jobs. Manufacturing jobs required training, but certainly did not require several years of specialty education and training to do. Retail sales and cashier positions require almost zero training. It would appear, then, that since offshoring and automation are eliminating low and semi-skilled jobs, we can re-orient our economy toward “knowledge work,” or work whose primary task is thinking. Examples of these kinds of jobs are software engineers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, managers and scientists. These kinds of jobs require a tremendous investment in education and training, and therefore seem not to fall prey to offshoring and automation.

In The Lights in the Tunnel, Martin Ford asks a very good question: “What is the likely economic impact of machines or computers that begin to catch up with—and maybe even surpass—the average person’s capability to do a typical job?” Or, more provocatively: If computers can already beat the best chess players in the world, isn’t it likely that they will also soon be able to perform many routine jobs?

Ford argues that not only is this true, as we’re seeing for manufacturing and retail jobs, but that it is also true for highly-skilled knowledge work jobs. Think about what a radiologist does. Much of what they do is read routine x-rays or CT and MRI scans to diagnose issues with patients. Since radiology is increasingly digital, and knowledge of what different conditions and diseases look like can be digitally represented and algorithmically identified, it’s likely that some of what human radiologists do today—the more routine, easy to identify cases—will be handled by computers instead. Doing so will dramatically decrease costs for hospitals because they will have to employ less doctors, which require large salaries, health insurance, vacation and sick days, and have to be hired and managed. Computers don’t.

The same, of course, is true for much of what general practice doctors do as well. Computers like IBM’s Watson could diagnose patients with routine things like the flu and provide a treatment as well. In fact, because Watson would have access to exponentially more medical research, journal articles, studies and patient history (and aggregate patient data), Watson may very well provide better diagnoses and treatments than the average human doctor.

Ford points out this is true for other fields, too, like law. He writes:

Currently there are jobs in the United States for many thousands of lawyers who rarely, if ever, go into a courtroom. These attorneys are employed in the areas of legal research and contracts. They work at law firms and spend much of their time in the library or accessing legal databases through their computers. They research case law, and write briefs which summarize relevant court cases and legal strategies from the past.… Can a computer do the lawyer’s job? (70-71)

Is there any reason to think that computers will never be able to do this kind of basic research and summarization? I don’t think so. What this suggests is that automation will challenge many kinds of knowledge work just as much as low and semi-skilled work. Indeed, companies will have even more reason to automate these kinds of jobs, because they are generally very well-paid jobs.

Manufacturing and retail job elimination, then, is just the first wave of many to come. The question, though, is not how to get those jobs back and protect the ones that still exist. That isn’t going to happen, is counter-productive and a waste of time. The question to ask is, when many of the jobs people depend on our automated, what kind of jobs will they do instead?

That question is, I think, the most important question to answer for the next few decades.

I have some ideas, but for now, I just want to ask the question and want you to think about it. How do we productively employ these people?