I think he's got a perfectly fine understanding of what 'culture' is. You just seem to misunderstand the fundamental fact that he is trying to point out...
It was the "engineer/science-type" humans that, in the early days, made the first step towards true human civilization by devising ways of moving from hunter/gatherer based survival to agricultural/domestication based survival. These early engineers/scientists devised/discovered clever inventions/techniques to farm crops and domesticate wild animals that created surpluses of food. This surplus of food allowed for rapid population growth and made it unnecessary to put in long, thoughtless, back-breaking hours everyday just to feed ourselves. It is this sedentary lifestyle that allows us as humans to be 'cultural'.
It'd be pretty hard to come up with new ideas, create art/music, uphold traditions and all that other cultural-type stuff when you're out stalking deer, picking berries, or bent over backwards aerating your soil for 15 hours a day everyday preparing for the upcoming winter season. This is the time and security he is referring to.
To clarify, I guess I was just trying to get the point across that Steve did in fact do away with buttons by physically eliminating the "neo-traditional" (for lack of a better word) ones from view in order to facilitate the typical minimalist Apple/Jobs design, and I guess, by your thought, replacing it with a single larger, smoother, more inconspicuous, non-protruding one, which I guess is necessarily more complex.
A button, traditionally, is an input mechanism that protrudes from a device (though they usually these days, except on a Treo), that when depressed, performs a specified function, like in the case of a phone, tells the device the user has selected to input a letter or number.
Steve Jobs did away with buttons by applying a "not-that-new" input mechanism, a touchscreen, to a device that traditionally made extensive use of buttons.
So I wouldn't say Jobs did away with buttons by making them more complex, but rather Jobs did away with buttons by actually doing away with buttons, and revolutionizing the way we input/manipulate data/information on/to our phones while at the same time providing a very aesthetically pleasing and well designed product.
Yes, phones from Treo and HTC have had touchscreens also, but how ugly/clunky looking were they? Very.
American class division doesn't rely on whether or not somebody uses Myspace vs. Facebook, but rather whether or not somebody has an internet connection at all to be able to login and maintain it on a daily basis.
Someone who does have an Internet connection is more likely to have the expendable income, or come from a family that has the expendable income, to shell out on a monthly basis in order to have access to the Internet.
Those who don't have an in-home connection these days are either on the low end of this "division", or is really old and refuse to embrace new technology.
Slashdot Mirror
...so I guess 60% of Playstation gamers don't read Slashdot or Digg.
I think he's got a perfectly fine understanding of what 'culture' is. You just seem to misunderstand the fundamental fact that he is trying to point out...
It was the "engineer/science-type" humans that, in the early days, made the first step towards true human civilization by devising ways of moving from hunter/gatherer based survival to agricultural/domestication based survival. These early engineers/scientists devised/discovered clever inventions/techniques to farm crops and domesticate wild animals that created surpluses of food. This surplus of food allowed for rapid population growth and made it unnecessary to put in long, thoughtless, back-breaking hours everyday just to feed ourselves. It is this sedentary lifestyle that allows us as humans to be 'cultural'.
It'd be pretty hard to come up with new ideas, create art/music, uphold traditions and all that other cultural-type stuff when you're out stalking deer, picking berries, or bent over backwards aerating your soil for 15 hours a day everyday preparing for the upcoming winter season. This is the time and security he is referring to.
Semantics. I couldn't agree more.
To clarify, I guess I was just trying to get the point across that Steve did in fact do away with buttons by physically eliminating the "neo-traditional" (for lack of a better word) ones from view in order to facilitate the typical minimalist Apple/Jobs design, and I guess, by your thought, replacing it with a single larger, smoother, more inconspicuous, non-protruding one, which I guess is necessarily more complex.
A button, traditionally, is an input mechanism that protrudes from a device (though they usually these days, except on a Treo), that when depressed, performs a specified function, like in the case of a phone, tells the device the user has selected to input a letter or number. Steve Jobs did away with buttons by applying a "not-that-new" input mechanism, a touchscreen, to a device that traditionally made extensive use of buttons. So I wouldn't say Jobs did away with buttons by making them more complex, but rather Jobs did away with buttons by actually doing away with buttons, and revolutionizing the way we input/manipulate data/information on/to our phones while at the same time providing a very aesthetically pleasing and well designed product. Yes, phones from Treo and HTC have had touchscreens also, but how ugly/clunky looking were they? Very.
American class division doesn't rely on whether or not somebody uses Myspace vs. Facebook, but rather whether or not somebody has an internet connection at all to be able to login and maintain it on a daily basis. Someone who does have an Internet connection is more likely to have the expendable income, or come from a family that has the expendable income, to shell out on a monthly basis in order to have access to the Internet. Those who don't have an in-home connection these days are either on the low end of this "division", or is really old and refuse to embrace new technology.