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PalmPilot as fetish
Croaker writes "Hmm-the PalmPilot as a fetish object? This article makes a pretty interesting case that, since people are pushing the Pilot to do things that are really outside its simple, elegant design, that it's more of a fetish symbol than
tool " Interesting account of Palm experiences.
Ohmigawd you have to write on the Newton with a 'special' stylus!!! How unlike the perfectly _ordinary_ stylus on the Palm.
In a way it's too fsking bad that Garry Trudeau apparently reached the height of his cultural influence with the Newton...he singlehandedly set the state of the art back a decade or so, because it's the first damn thing _any_one mentions when they mention the Newton, or handwriting recognition in general.
No 1.0 technology could stand up to that sort of ridicule, and it showed: no one but Apple and a couple of others tried to even enter the field.
The Palm, while it _is_ a neat hack, has exactly one thing, it's size, going for it. It gets around the handwriting recognition curse by not offering any.
You have to letter (not write) things in one letter at a time, in a made-up alphabet.
Even my aged Newt 100 lets me write anywhere on the screen, and if I use it in _letter_ recognition mode, it recognizes my handwriting pretty damn well.
In it's final incarntion, the Newton handwriting recognition was fast and nearly flawless. Too bad Apple's not doing anything with the technology...
It's ironic, too that one of the things the author faults the Palm for, it's tiny little screen, is one of the things everyone raves about: 'it's small enough to stick in my pocket!'
I have a perfectly good reason for perusing the personal ads. I'm doing a study on why 90% of the people in personal ads describe their perfect evening as 'Moonlit walks on the beach' despite the fact that their ideal evening consists of watching rental movies. This is serious scientific research. The idea that I read the personals in the hope that I'll find an ad along the lines of: "SWF 25 - perfect feet, seeking pale, unhygenic, poorly hung geek with sloppy coding practices for foot worship and other podophiliac amusements." is absurd. Really. I mean it. Would I lie?
--Shoeboy
P.S. Before anyone calls the cops, note that I said podophile not pedophile. There's a big difference.
Still, it says something interesting about technology that we are expected to adapt to its needs rather than the other way around
This is such a specious argument. Learning to write on paper is adapting to technology. Learning to type and use a mouse is adapting to technology. Learning to drive is adapting to technology.
Until someone comes up with the perfect IUI ( Intuitive User Interface - an AI that can speak and hear and interpret pointing, head waggles, and other gestures), we will ALWAYS be adapting to technology.
Then I tried using it. I don't know if it is because it's Wince, whether I am a dyed-in-the-wool Franklin addict, or the state of the art isn't quite there yet, but the result was the same; I have never been more disorganized in my life. Since I couldn't use it as an organizer, it became a lame game machine, doing nothing but sucking up time. Worse, I can't hack it. I'm not buying a compiler for it, I can't find a Perl interperter for it, and you can't replace hardware boards. It's now sitting in the trunk of my car.
Part of what bugged me is that I can't set it up the way I want about it. The reason I stick with a dead-tree planner is that paper is infinitely hackable. The Wince box forced me to plan its way, which had nothing to do with the way I do things.
The other problem stems from the fact that a PDA is not an island. You need to sync it up with desktop stuff. That's well and fine by itself, but how good is the desktop stuff? The only thing I would consider would be the Pilot/Franklin Software combo, but the Franklin Planner desktop software is Windows-only.
The PDA technology just seems too limited and immature to help me. I figure it does help others, but it just doesn't work for me. I'll check the field out in a few years, but for now I am using dead trees until the twisted sand can do better.
--The basis of all love is respect
Well I saw a guy with a rubber case on his and he was trying to fit it all in his mouth.
So, yes, thats probably a fetish.
For those who want to read the article, he re it is.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
The dates, memos, address book, and all that are handy, but the ability to read hypertext documents anywhere has been a great asset.
Nope, the link was just borked, evidenced by the floating /a tag that shows up in the status window when you hover mouse over link.
;-)
"Use the preview button, and check those links!"
truly words to live by.
Using that definition, I guess there are a lot of us who have duct-tape and WD-40 fetishes...
And all of you running Linux PPC on your iMac: You've got an iMac fetish. Actually, that last bit seems pretty plausible. Running Linux on a big translucent butt-cheek...
I think that this is simply a tribute to geekdom.
Taking an object, in this case a Palm Pilot, and seeing exactly how much stuff you can make it do is not anything new. I'm sure there are tons of you who spent HOURS programming something on a TI or HP calculator... something totally worthless no doubt, but just to see if it could be done.
If it wasn't for people who constantly strain and push whatever systems their on, then there would be little incentive for advancement.
On that note, anyone have a spare pilot they want to send me
for beaming, HotSyncing, possible LTR.
I'll be your cradle if you're into PDA.
Send picture of Palm Connected Device.
I should go home. I must be missing PalmOS Night at the fetish bar or something.
I refused to believe the palm-as-fetish thing at first, but then I noticed the following 2 items in the Seattle Weekly personal ads -
Case 1
Men Seeking Men:
GWM 35 fit, attractive seeks same for vigorous palm action.
Case 2
Men Seeking Women:
SWM, College student - 24 Tired of staying home on friday nights having sex with my palm. Looking for older woman for cheap meaningless fling.
The evidence cannot be denied.
--Shoeboy
I didn't get one -- wanted something with a built-in keyboard.
:-)
After months of searching, there was a "Managers floor display special" on a Zaurus. Picked that up for a hair over $200. The IR beaming device was $40.
2Mb ram, Wordprocessor, Spreadsheet, stylus, clipboard, notebook (for stylus writing), 3 data books, 3 phone books, vt100 and ansi terminals, fax sender, search utility, games, PCMCIA slot, the whole thing... and the keyboard
I don't think it's that much larger than the Pilot either.
Right now I loaded a list of some 4500 available DVD's and going through the list as to which ones I want to buy and which ones I want to consider buying...
I use mine, but not in public situations:
Me: Let me give you my office number
Them: (3 minute rigamarole getting out Palm and going to application to write down number) Ok.. shoot.
-m