Dear Uncle Steve: I Can Has Camera & MESHNet by 2015? Hold the Flash

Hello Uncle Stevie, it’s one of your unwashed little geek fans, Drunky. Longtime fan here, who just acquired an iPhone 3GS after 5 years with Symbian/Noke tech. What a caveman I’ve been.

As we both know, nothing really moves until the midpoint of an era — I’m kinda nonplussed about anything really happening in 2010. What I do know is that 2015 will be a very interesting time. Let me tell you why, and pray indulge me. Because you’ll finally usher us into the 21st century. How? Connectivity. High touch.

So what do I want for Christmas 2014? My iPhone 3GS, is a Model T, but still an old friend. My iPad (for want of a better name) is my workhorse, as I bop data between it and my old 3GS and a workstation, probably my clunky ol’ MBP. And I’m happy. Because you gave us 2 things in the intervening years: MeshNET and cameras in ALL of your devices.

First I have to go back to 2009: I have just acquired my Model T, and mod’d it just a bitsy because your car won’t go offroad. *cough* jailbreakah *cough* — yeah, I know you make our lives a bit tough, but that’s part of the challenge when you wanna go offroad. Or in this case, talk to cuties in Japan or China via Skype on 3G. As a jailbreaker and a dev wannabe, I know that we live a couple years in the future, unfettered by the whole public api thing. By folks who are making the future, sometimes even the same folks in your AppStore. We appreciate your benevolence, but I digress.

You and I both know that the proper “OS spectrum mix” is just the right combination of *.deb or *.pkg installers. Easy peasy. So get to the point, Drunky!

My point is this: The telcos are NEVER GONNA GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER. ATT whines about bandwidth and wants to clip their POTS because like every other ISP, they’re massively oversubscribed. Their POTS system can’t even reach out of most towns to where the olds (which is what you’re becoming, me too) even LIVE. They quibble with Verizon over cell tower leases and whine when the truth hurts. In short, even after becoming regional Bells decades ago they never cleaned up their act. So fsck’em.

How? I humbly propose that Google & Apple go to the FCC and go halfsies on some spectrum. For what?

MESHNet. Make a Standard, call it Eleventy-Jillion02.11Z or something. Doesn’t matter, please AGREE with Google and get this into every Mac, iPod, iPhone, or Android phone’s hardware. And then (with Google) offer some benefit so that users will turn it on. There are other details & Model T technologies you could use— like p2p —to even the load, to use the Internet the way it used to be used.. to bring us forward. But seriously, out in the country, where we still have a sense of community, this is how you’re gonna wire us all together. Wirelessly. Not on 802.11xx or ATT’s vaporware ‘Wi-Max’. So please do this instead. Ol’ Negroponte and his OLPC was a great idea with sloppy execution. We both know you can do 1000x better.

If possible, make it as a fallback channel ONLY for Unix-based platforms. Justify it to the gub’ment that hackers need to be denied unsecured so-called ‘platforms’ like Windows and Flash. The net pretty much sees those two as cancer and routes around’em anyway. Can you dig it? Can yooooouuuu diiiiig it?

The next thing I would like to see is cameras EVERYWHERE. Not just on your Macs & iPhones. Everybody wants to share, some of us even want to be ‘Little Brother’. The big guys point cams at us, you bet we wanna point one back. So please, 1 cam on my iPod Touch, maybe 3-4MP? On my iPad 3MP is enough for the front, and 5MP out the back to share things with the fam. Both, of course, vid enabled and able to stream to the MeshNET. And, since you’ll make this look easy my parents will use these technologies like breathing. Like John Naisbitt used to say, high touch.

Finally, and this is kind of an aside, you’re just about done burying the software wannabes. You know, MSFT and ADBE. Please do not allow their crud on my Model T. Ah, let me indulge in my hate of the Jimmy Carter & Walter Mondale of the tech industry. A comedy / circle jerking duo that survives on software patents. Who have abused the words ‘platform’ & ‘ubiquity’ long enough. Why has the word ‘ubiquity’ come to mean ‘shitty browser plugin’ anyway? Now why is that? Oh, and then we have this:

To unnamed company 2
Like many people, I love you and I hate you. I love the products you make and I suppose I wish deep down, that you felt the same. Your arrogance has gotten you where you are today. But be careful, as many a great institution has let their arrogance be their downfall. Recognize who your allies are in this world, as you may one day need them.

[From The Flash Blog » New Year’s messages from theFlashBlog]

We’re not even 5 days into 2010 and Adobe’s getting uppity again and calling you ‘arrogant’. Even their faithful are starting to notice:

In other words, it's finally becoming the Microsoft it so desperately wanted to be for so long. The only problem is, it's becoming the Microsoft of ten years ago, not the Microsoft of today that's trying to change its image.

[From Aral Balkan · I’m not on Adobe’s Christmas card list anymore :)]

They certainly aren’t the same company they were 10 years ago, eh? The one that would actually work as an application partner to you and not try and end run around you to their new BFF, Microsoft? I refer to compiling *.ipa files from their shitty Flash “platform” that they can’t even secure, due to overpopulation of undercoding overseas droids & clones. Seriously, look at their job boards. It’s the Bhenchod Empire, not the DTP Old Republic anymore.

You might even know how I feel, but if not; you basically need to school that uppity little maderchad of Townsend Street the same way you did with that sniveling toady Gates. It bears saying again; I want the bar to be HIGH on your platform, I do not want the ‘can’t secure, ever’ descendants of VB & VBScript to even compile on my expensive and worth every penny iPhone.

It doesn’t matter. Let them make chrome and animated gif 3.0. Neither MSFT nor ADBE are making the future. You are. So please, carry on as only you can, and let them go the way of Hamsterdance & MIDI on web pages.

I remain just a little guy out in unwashed.land();

Mentok out.

[still a classic]

"Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives" (John Naisbitt)