Issue 2.1 — Twitter as broadcaster, Apple privacy and more
A look back, to learn what’s next. By Augur.
The tech world is naturally drawn to novelty. But too often, this makes it easy to lose perspective. How can we understand the importance of today’s events of today without considering those that came before?
Every seven days, we take a look at this week’s news in previous years to see what we can learn. Feedback to augur+lookback@augur.london
2015
Except, it never did. Instead, we got a series of basic emoji responses— and an interesting article that explained why.
Has *anything* gone smoothly for Apple Watch? Born with an unclear remit, hobbled by strange interface design, lacking apps.
However, having used WatchOS 3 for a while now, I do think it represents a promising fresh start.
2014
It’s clearer and clearer that Apple was laying the seeds for a “differential privacy” approach for a while now. Shrewd but many have mentioned that this may leave them at a disadvantage in the coming age of machine-learning power. No matter what their PR efforts to pretend otherwise say.
2013
Three years later and Twitter seems in even more trouble, not less.
Relevant in light of examples like Project Ara shutting down and Nest (a relatively mild effort) being such a mess.
But this must be the future of these companies — just look at Facebook’s ambition with drones, VR etc to see how they must diversify over coming decades.
See also “Did Google Shutdown ___ Yet?”
Foreshadowing of Apple Music…
Were these kinds of efforts at Twitter a way to suggest potential value and future avenues ahead of the IPO? Hard to see what else the point was.
2012
Interesting in light of Facebook’s recent controversy with censoring photos. These businesses are having to determine the outside limits of their editorial policy against things like this and how they curate stories in particularly interesting ways.
Opened in 2012.
Creating 100 jobs in 2013.
Claiming to bring 3000 jobs in 2014.
I feel like there are various examples of Amazon pursuing a narrative with these iterative press releases — see previous LookBack for example where they announce eBooks overtaking print for about 3x years in a row.
I know plenty of people (including us) are waiting for announcement of new MacBooks. Goes to show it’s nothing new.
A more innocent time.
Arguably, Facebook is now losing this to Snapchat.
2010
Tweet yesterday from City AM Tech Editor shows how these things go around in circles:
Six years later, it’s still a massive problem — abuse arguably more potent than ever.
For all the fuss about Facebook and privacy, Diaspora is the best demo that normal people really don’t want to change their behaviour. You could probably say Snapchat created the real dynamic that ‘preserves’ privacy in public perception.
1959
The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.
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