(I want you to imagine, before you begin reading this post, that you are Steve Jobs – the creative genius behind Apple, Inc. And behind you, reading over your shoulder, are all the top Apple engineers and designers over the past few decades. And steam is coming out of their ears. OK, ready? Now read on…)
I just want to write this thank you note to The Universe for my iPhone 4. I LOVE THIS THING! What an exquisitely-designed communications and productivity tool! I love the interface, the incredible features, and the way that it just….works.
It amazes me greatly that The Universe has given me such a gift. How could an infinite array of impersonal nothingness know that an iPhone is just what I needed? It’s almost like you knew what I was like, Universe, and designed something special just for me. I know that sounds kinda crazy, since you don’t have a personality or brains or anything, but really – I owe you one.
When I think about all the code embedded in this device, I just marvel how it came about. All those millions of years of version 0.000001 iPhones, slowly emerging, calling one another, texting, learning how to build an app store from nothing, stumbling along sync’ing information in the swamps of long-ago eons, even devising an e-commerce model through natural selection. I wish I could go back in time and see how those early iTunes stores were free, and how that got selected out of the gene pool! You’re a genius, Universe. Well, OK, I didn’t really mean that. It just kinda seems that way sometimes. Because everyone knows that the iPhone simply evolved unplanned from the rotary phone, which was one random step of advancement above the Pony Express.
When I go to the iPhone museum, I see Radio Shack TRS-80s and Motorola Star-Tacs and old phonographs and daguerreotype photos and and I imagine all the transitional iPhone forms that came between them. I know we haven’t found any yet in the landfills, but we’ve got a few silicon chips and a couple of headphone jacks so I know that there were all kinds of iPhones that came before this one. I wish I could see them – imagine the iPhone that had the sextant in it before it evolved a GPS! I’m sure our digital archeologists will dig it up eventually, or at least Photoshop a facsimile.
Some late-coming usurper named Steve Jobs (along with his minions) is claiming to be the intelligence behind the iPhone, but the ultimate intelligence is the ability to come up with intelligence without having any intelligence. Why should we give an credit to a brilliant designer, when a combo of time + chance + the big U, explain it all so simply? I want to give credit where credit is due. You really nailed it, Universe. And the iPad and the MacBook Air ain’t so bad, either!
In conclusion, Mr (or Ms) U (why do I keep anthropomorphizing – sheesh!), I’d like to upload a carefully-edited creative video of thanks, but I don’t really know where to send it. I could send it to that Jobs fellow, but that might feed his delusion – imagine, someone claiming intelligent design for the iPhone 4! The next thing you know, they’ll be talking about DNA that way too!
Sincerely, A Progressive Admirer
