J O N A T H A N JK . C O M

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

This is a quoted from an article everyone should read, if only to be aware this actually happened. Titled in dramatic fashion: “Why Iceland Should Be in the News But is Not”. (It has been translated from an Italian radio show).  This articles reports on what has happened since the start of the 2008 financial collapse in Iceland and how the country has developed its own solution to the situation.

Big Media haven’t picked up the story about what has happened since, by the end of the article you could understand why.

There are a number of errors in the featured article, here is another explaining the issues that have been reported as incorrect.

Last week I read this Businessweek article about Scott Forstall, Senior VP of iOS software at Apple.

It’s clear Businessweek want a new ‘taskmaster’ at Apple. I think as we move forward in this Post-Jobs era, the media in general will look for one, more so than Apple will. (1)

The problem is there might not be one after Jobs but the businessweek article thinks it’s found one. I think the article is flawed from the beginning but it’s further questionable, when named and unnamed sources who use to work at Apple or around Forstall, take a slightly negative tone towards promoting him as a microcosm of Steve Jobs. The title doesn’t help with it’s use of the word ‘sorcerer’ instead of ‘wizard’.

The character analysis draws parallels to historic events in Apple’s history; Forstall is depicted as a political player and as somebody who creates friction between development teams, just like Jobs in his youth. It’s important to note, nobody still working at Apple or anybody who admires Forstall beyond mutual respect, has commentated on the story.

The political narrative; describing the tale of the iPhone’s creation, is tripped up with Tony Fadell’s statement, (an endnote added after the article was actually first published) the supposed opponent of Forstall’s in the article. Fadell contradicts what happened; attempting to set the record straight. I’m surprised the article still exists; there are two versions of the story, of course the truth lies somewhere in-between. The same goes for Businessweek’s writeup about Forstall, it sounds too convenient to be entirely true. I’m just wary of what is being conjured here again, in front of Apple. John Gruber has his own writeup here.

What I want to emphasise is the mis-presentation of Forstall as Steve Jobs’ successor. The media want their narratives to work on a personal level, their figurehead; for Forstall to become our new lens on Apple and who better than a supposed prodigy?

Everything from Apple before the iPhone 4S event was personally, unrealistically attributed to Steve Jobs; there is a tendency to forget there was an excellent team behind him. Last week we saw that team, new formation, equally divided, presenting where they were strongest. (2) Nobody took over to become the media darling, there was nobody to build up (until this Businessweek piece), there wasn’t a way to have a singular narrative attached to what Apple showcased. Actually, there were a few articles after the announcement but they were still related to Jobs.

I hope Apple continue to present themselves as a team; that’s a more accurate lens with which to view Apple, just as we witnessed at the iPhone 4S event. Forstall wasn’t in more visible than normal. Naturally the event felt different without Jobs but I was glad there was less ‘distortion’, more ‘reality’ with Apple’s keynote. This probably explains why there was a negative reaction by the media after the event; the media needed their showman, a polarising figure, a magician and of course the magic wand that would have been a redesigned iPhone.

The next event will be interesting, another team presentation would certainly skew the typical Apple narrative, there won’t be anything to attribute to one person. The only fair recourse would be to stop with the constant speculation and concentrate on the products or talk up the team.

The Willy Wonka Candy Company is still going to be faithful to its heritage when you have a crack team of Oompa-Loompas, trusted to run everything in Wonka’s absence. What’s important, is to write about the chocolate and how amazing it still tastes, not hyping up chocolate aficionados with who is going to be the new cheerleader, when the Oompa-Loompas don’t give a shit.

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(1) Is there a suggestion that Tim Cook isn’t capable? His quiet, cool demeanour might not be good for headlines. A lot of commentators see Tim Cook as solely an operations guy, that’s a slightly negative implication after following on from Jobs but how many ‘operation guys’ do you know, running around with a B.S. degree in industrial engineering?

(2) Have you noticed Jonathan Ive only does the product videos, he never presents on stage?

A followup article by Luminous Landscapes regarding the flaws present in Fuji’s camera of the moment. Luminous Landscapes received an email from a reader, he is largely negative about his shooting experience with the Fuji X100. It’s a continuation from Luminous landscapes previous review of the camera and the issues within the camera’s software.

Accompanying the email, and the discussion to hope Fuji is taking a knife to the software inside the camera (meaning, they will bring out a decent software update soon), there is also a short article about Moire and the AA filter.

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Do you want to pimp your Fuji X100? Have a look here for some tips. Interesting how users have added another viewfinder and somewhat meatier lens hoods. But hey, it looks like fun.

On a similar note, here is a discussion about the accessories x100 forum users are purchasing. Plenty of suggestions for furthering your enjoyment of this camera.

Or will you just want the Special Edition X100 Camera case and straps designed by Luigi Crescenzil?

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Are you still waiting for your Fuji X100 like me? Amazon have just sent out emails informing customers of the delay in shipping them. Bummer, but I was always hoping to get it at the end of April, anyway in the time between now and the end of the month I’m hopeful of a firmware update and raw support from Aperture.

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Another image from the Street Photography flickr group.

Photo by H.I.Tam

From Flick User H.I.Tam’s Flickr Stream.

I came across this article (link) in the Guardian today by British Photographer Martin Parr.  I particularly like this sentence:

Most family photo albums are a form of propaganda, where the family looks perfect and everyone is smiling: we try to create fabrications about who we are.

Family albums always hold the happiest moments, i’ve never seen a photo album chronicaling the painful moments as much as the happy ones, photo albums only hold the smiles, not so the sorrows.

My sister has all the family photos at the moment, when I visit her, I find more photographs from the first years of our lives in China than I do for the 20 or so years lived in England.  There is even a photo album for the photographs from that time spent in China for others to view, but not for the ones from England; they live in jumble in a plastic bag, a special task for something so mundane.

It’s only come to mind now having read Parr’s article as to why one set of photographs are kept in a more meaningful way than the others, even though they live in the same place in my sister’s house (the cupboard btw).

None of the family have taken the time to organise the later period of our lives.  Now I’ve realised why.

After leaving China, my parents split up, (myself and my sister being left in the care of my father) the cameras were nonexistent at our birthdays and other social events (because typically our mother operated the camera) or any pictures taken were by those who replaced her, the fiancee and our grandmother. They also didn’t take nearly as many pictures as she would have done.

Looking back into the thin paper slices from our past, our mother was still there, she wasn’t entirely missing, she had her own set of photographs that we’ve collected and mixed in with the others, from the times when we could visit her.

Besides my saying so, there isn’t any photographic evidence of the pain of a family breakup from the photo collection.  My parents broke up twice in fact, none of that was recorded by the camera in between the breakups. Those moments arguably are just as important as our birthdays, of course they wouldn’t be photographed but my point is our family album doesn’t accurately chronicle that part of our family history, the album is a lie on viewing it. The propaganda as Parr calls it.

Bagging all the photographs together I think was an unconscious act of hiding the breakups, both photo collections are together because we can go through the pile of imagery as though our parents were still married.  As it stands at the moment, that bag is full of propaganda, trying to cover for something that we as children wished never happened. Anybody outside the immediate family wouldn’t see the propaganda we’ve accidentally created. I say accidentally because it was an innocent act on our part and we do tend to narrate what doesn’t exist in our family history when they’re being looked at.

Should I wish to be 8 years old again documenting the tragic moments, allowing me to present a more truthful account of our family history? What would be documented when for the both of us, it wasn’t a painful time, I don’t even remember witnessing any heartbreak or emotional moments, there was just confusion.
All we knew, was that we wanted to have our parents back together. Just like all young children who didn’t understand the complicated world of adulthood, it seemed simple to wish our thoughts into reality, the repurposed shopping bag is an extension of that juvenile desire.

So while it isn’t a truthful account of what actually happened it’s better to think of the bag of propaganda as something we as children wanted during at time.