Google, and what it knows about religion

I have never looked at the "10 things we know to be true" page that is a part of Google's philosophy. So when given this question asking me to name how one of these tenets would reshape how someone can look at religion I was kind of questioning how to do so.  But I have learned enough through my own looks into religion and my own religion (that is the religion I was raised as) to know what I would have liked to change. 

So back to this list, I look, and it hits me, number 1, just like that.  But I do the senior thing and look at the rest of the choices just so I have a good idea of the rest.  Number 1. 

So here is number one, of Google’s things we know to be true

Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently.

Since the beginning? Sounds like either the bible or a cheesy sci-fi story. But that first sentence can be so easy to convert into the language of God: Since the beginning, God focused on providing the best human experience possible.  Continuing it gets techy, and that language is somewhat hard to switch around but by the end I might be able to convert the whole thing.  But this is what is important to know about Google+Religion.  We have to focus on the user, and the rest will follow.  Now Eric Thomas aka the Hip Hop Preacher (PLEASE PLEASE have him come to Lawrence, He'd be amazing) in this clip and his YouTube channel emphasizes on YOU. What will it take for you to be successful, maybe it's not going on twitter 100 times a day, maybe it's you getting off your own phone.

Now this guy never mentions God, but that first story, I see God there.  God is there to push you, not to go to Africa or Haiti, but to be successful, however you define successful, and we have to tell God, I want to be successful more than I want to breathe. 

Now this is where I just didn't understand, I thought God was working for me. I'd pray and pray and pray, but I wouldn't get anywhere. And my parents would just "keep praying and if God wants you to have it, you'll get it" WRONG. If you want something you have to go get it, this is not saying God won't help you, because he could, a daunting task might not seem as daunting once you get past a certain point, and what would you say, "THANK GOD" but you have to want it. 

Now, I know it’s not just God that has to be looking to provide me the best me experience. It has to be me too.  I don't know how I feel about religion anymore, but I know how I feel about me, and I want... I NEED to be SUCCESSFUL.

iPad and individuality

I know, its been nothing but APPLE APPLE APPLE lately but let's admit it, apple changed our lives. Whether you think about it in the sense of the iphone, the apple 2, imac computers, macbooks, or the iPad. Apple has kept their promise to deliver the most personal devices possibly ever.  Now the iPad, obviously only comes in two colors, black and white. but the best part about it is the personal touches you can make to the on screen.  When we started talking about it in class, i started to notice that you really could get an idea about who the person was just by looking at the apps they have on their iPad.

for instance if you look on my ipad you know where i like to shop, because i have the amazon and Walmart apps.

and better yet, you can tell where i bank, what kind of games i'm into and what my hobbies might be, like working out, social media, religion, health, because there's an app for that.

but i want to talk about one app that really lets me put my personal touch onto my iPad, PIMP MY SCREEN. catchy name isn't it.

Now this app, lets your iPad have a little more class, and makes it look like book shelves or at least picture frames around your apps.  It comes with a ton of backgrounds and premade screen looks, but it also gives you the option to use your own pictures, whether they are of your family, friends, etc or things you've saved off the internet as long as they are in your photos you can use them for your background or lock screen.

In a world full of iPad users you can still be you, there's an app for that.

The best tablet since the commandments

Ok, seriously, if i told you that Steve Jobs went all anal-retentive on the iPad you'd believe me.... right? well he did. And thank God, or we might have not ever gotten the non-computer computer. So the iPad has been around for a while now, and life has settled back into the routine. except I no longer really need or want my smartphone.  In my backpack today, I had my laptop, my iPad and my smartphone in my pocket.  The impact that anyone of these has on the other is exactly what I aim to talk about.

When you turn to Chapter thirty-eight the title and subtitle make it pretty clear what the iPad was aimed at: PCs. Now, Personal computers as we all should know revolutionized the world in the beginnings of Apple.  So it is only fair that they make them obsolete... pysch. That's what Jobs wanted, he literally put up a question mark between an iphone and a laptop, isn't there something better to be in between these. His answer was the iPad. Now, just to be clear i love my ipad, and i loved my iphone, but now its just redundant.  If Job's goal was to replace my iphone with an ipad, he did a great job, i can go back to that flip phone I had back in 1999 (text and voice on that baby). But to think that there is an argument to be made that Jobs, didn't craft this gem to replace laptops, arguably the PC of this generation, with no physical keyboard, don't kid yourself. 

Now get this, i use my smartphone, less than ever before, but my computer sees about 70% of the same usage that it did before.  I love my laptop, yes bulky with its keyboard and mouse but its still practical for me to have it, writing, music, tv shows--on both netflix and the itunes store-- and yes even surfing the web and google earth. SUCK IT JOBS. 

Things that surprised me in this chapter: that they even thought about using an intel chip.... nope, the reasoning why they didn't go with the intel chip... not really, that Jobs.... no, stop it. 

For me iPad killed the iPhone more than video killed the radio star. 

iTunes

One of the best things that Jobs’ new beginning at apple created was the iTunes store.  The iTunes store is by far one of the great inventions as it allows individuals to select partial parts of albums down to the smallest available part, an individual song for only 99 cents (currently 1.29 USD per song).  I would like to talk about this in two parts; first what this meant to consumers and secondly how this concept relates to individualism.

First, I remember before the iTunes store, as most of my generation might, when you had to go buy an album as a whole, and if you wanted to buy a single song, it would cost you nearly a third of the album cost.   This made it very burdensome for those who only like one song, from a one hit wonder.  Furthermore, it was nearly impossible to find singles once CDs became the medium of choice. So when the masses were first introduced to the iTunes store, it literally blew people’s minds.  Music, videos, movies, TV shows, apps, podcasts all available in one easy package.  This coupled with iMac, iPod, and now iPads make holding thousands of songs in one place one of the most appealing things since the Apple that threw man out of Eden.

Secondly, it is my belief that the iTunes store represents the most essential individualistic belief. That every man can make up his own mind about what is and is not wanted by him.  Being able to choose is not only a right but much more than that. Steve Jobs understood that we need to be able to make our own choices.

the Tao of Jobs or iZEN

Steve Jobs has had to reinvent himself over and over again and each time he has been labeled an innovator.  I believe this had everything to do with Jobs being able to go into every new situation in the state of beginner’s mind.  The idea of beginner’s mind, which in the video metaphorizes as starting a job you have no clue how to do, can be seen in almost every part of Job’s career life.  Starting Apple, Jobs has no clue how to run a company, just the idea of what the product should be.  Then he gets kicked out of Apple, and goes on to start a film company.  How do you start a film company? I am not sure Jobs even knew how to do it, but he made it successful, a success that his rivals have been trying to recreate since Toy Story came out.  Then he goes back to Apple, which suffered in his absence and he again has to go into it with Beginner’s mind—how do I turn this around?  Do I think that Jobs had any idea how to turn around a company... no, no I do not.

Here, I’ll illustrate what I’m saying to you, in the Jobs biography, on 240, Jobs initially let Pixar run itself, only to find himself taking a role in the ideas it was churning out.  Now I am no computer programmer graphic artist or really anything close to either of that, but I can imagine how terrifying it would be to go from one side to the other. 

Lastly, I think no chapter illustrates my point better than Think Different. Really, what else can you say? Steve was back at Apple, the iCEO and he had to do something to bring Apple back. By using the ideas of Beginner’s mind, Jobs had to think differently.  Now I understand that the last sentence seems like complete bullshit, and it is.  That is until you explain it.  Beginner’s mind- knowing nothing about anything you are doing. This is a principle problem that the world has; we are all about replicating instead of innovating.  You cannot innovate by doing the same thing that everyone else is doing and expecting something better to come out, you have to THINK DIFFERENTly.  Jobs smashed the preconceived notions of what apple had become and essentially boiled it down to the basic idea of what he wanted apple to be, and said Go.

Steve Jobs

Reading Jobs' biography you gain a lot of insight into the world he created for himself.  And just as the world around us is shrinking with smartphones, tablets, laptops etc.  We have to look back to Atari and Jobs to see how it all started.  He started with a simple task, let me play pong at home, and he did it, the world payed hundreds of dollars for Atari systems just as we do now for the latest Apple products.  Steve Jobs' life has been about making things smaller, slimmer, faster, better.  but smaller had to come first. When Apple 1 came out it was a breakthrough, Apple 2 another breakthrough.  Think about how it is now that the Macbooks and iWhatevers are here, now we just want better.  But soon we'll be thinking about smaller, and the iHead will be the first chip we can plug into our head to sync our minds with the cloud and then we might be satisfied with not getting smaller.

Steve Jobs on Individualism

The idea of individualism is a concept that we are all supposed to say is this big life affirming concept.  And surely as I sit here it is.  Being an individual is not about being different than everyone else, but making your own choices on what to do, what not to do, and most importantly deciding for yourself who you want to be in this world.  If you watch his speech from Stanford's 2005 commencement you undoubtedly hear talk about innovation and creativity leading to success. The most important aspect of Steve Jobs is that he has plethora of copycats, in his company people follow his lead, use him as an example to determine their own lives and how to better their work, and in the world computer companies try to make things better than what he did, all at the same time coping his ideas. 

Of the things Jobs tells us in his speech we can start to gain inference into the way this man thought, I'd like to share a few example and my thoughts with you here.

Jobs starts off his speech by telling us that that day was the closest he'd ever gotten to a college graduation, because he had dropped out. 

Isn't that great, you all spent thousands of dollars to go to school, He dropped out and has made more money that you'll ever see in your lifetime! Now, I just made him sound like a prick, and that might not be a fair way to articulate what he actually said. A much nicer way to say it would be [as Jobs] "your graduation is the beginning of something amazing, your own life. My dropping out of college was something amazing, the start of mine."  This individual simply states he did what was best for him. Just as they are all doing what’s best for them.

Jobs tells us that his biological mother wanted him to go to college, a term required for her to sign the adoption papers, and he did go, but he also dropped out. Dropping out allowed him to free him from the rigorous classes that everyone was required to take, thus allowing him to make his own choices in the classes and subject matter that he applied himself to.  

To this point, I think many of us, in a liberal arts community such as Lawrence, can appreciate.  Any given major gives you dozens of classes to choose from, and also allows you to take classes in things you have no business taking, like an intro to government class, or a linguistics class, or... well you get the point.  And no one holds your hand, no administrator is harking that you have to take this class or that class, or trying to set you up for something that you don't express interest in.  I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been asked what I want to do AFTER Lawrence, before we begin to discuss what I want to do AT Lawrence.

Steve Jobs idea of Individualism, based on this speech, is all about finding what you want to do, what you love doing, and doing it the best way you can.  Even if that’s not what or how or where other people think you should be doing it.

Life-hacking

Technology has made our lives easier.  There's no denying that fact.  In my first two sentences I had two spelling errors and a slight dyslectic, another spelling error, moment.  But because I'm on a computer with spell check and delete keys and a mouse, I can edit my thoughts and words in a flash instead of having to start over for each mistake. Computers more than any other technology, in my opinion, have made our lives so different from those who preceded us.  And we've all heard it, how our parents, grandparents, etc. had to walk two miles to school, uphill both ways. And they didn't have computers, and some didn't have typewriters either, so you had to write everything by hand, blah blah blah.  The innovation of software and hardware that seems to be everywhere is amazing.  I didn't always have my own computer, so I remember the days of CD players and tape decks and the hassle in changing the songs until you found the one you wanted to listen to, but now, my music is stored by individual song title, artist, album or any other way I want to store it.  Talk about reorganizing my thoughts, play lists for every mood I'm in, one for workouts one for parties, one for relaxing.  Yeah, my life is a lot more gratifying than it was when I was 10 because of computers.