Heros
Where have all the heros gone? When I think back to my carefree days of childhood, I always had heros. The dictionary definition of a hero is “a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities”. It was naively easy to revere a famous astronaut, athlete or other celebrity as a child because you hadn’t had to deal with the world as an adult. And then, insidiously, the wisdom that comes with age starts to have its effect. You gradually become harder to impress, and you start to see you childhood heros for what they are: talented men and women who were in the right place at the right time.
Now, as I’ve pushed past 40 years old, it has become near impossible for me to assign the label “hero” to anyone. This is mostly because I’ve learned the world is a lot more about infinite shades of gray, rather than the crisp black & white view that hero worship tends to require. But it is also because my definition of a hero has evolved. Courage and noble qualities are still important, and all too lacking in our modern world, but a hero is someone who also makes a difference. And not just for today, but for tomorrow, or century from now. And to make it doubly tough, I think any living hero should be the kind of person you’d want to have a beer with.
When I hold up my yardstick to the currently living field of contenders, almost none measure up. The vast majority of modern athletes will be long forgotten in a decade and have no effect on the world. Sports isn’t about heros, it is about business. Astronauts are still cool, and most would probably be fun to have a beer with, but they’re just scientists doing their jobs. And modern “celebrities” fare even worse against the yardstick.
So who are the modern heros? Living men and women with courage, compassion, integrity and conviction, who are making a difference in the history books. And of course, they must still be down-to-earth enough that you’d slam back a pint with them any day. If we look back at the 20th century, I would put Teddy Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi on this list, but they don’t count for a modern hero survey since they would be hard to have a beer with.
I actually had to wrack my brain for quite a while to even come up with few names that might pass the hero test. And as that list evolved, I also added another quality to my heros: the quest for truth. I couldn’t admire anyone as a hero who wasn’t willing to pursue the truth, regardless of whether it was the popular or politically correct thing to do.
I ended up with only two names: Sebastião Salgado and Reza Deghati. Both are names most people have probably never heard of, but have probably seen their work. They are two of the top photojournalists in the world.
So how do I arrive at a pair of photojournalists for heros? If you take a look at the pictures either has produced, their courage and conviction are clear. Pick up one of their photo books some day and read the prose. You’ll understand their integrity and quest for the truth. And their work is timeless. Generations will stare in awe at their chronicle of cultures and human experience that most spoiled westerners want to conveniently forget exists.
So we’ve got the personality traits, the quest for truth and the making a difference part. Now what about the beer factor? I haven’t read anything about Sebastiao that would suggest I wouldn’t want to have a beer with him. As for Reza, I met him and his wife at a book signing in Paris in 2006. His humility and kindness were staggering. He actually spent 10 minutes talking with every person who’s book he signed.
These are the kind of people the world needs more of. I proudly claim both as my heros. Now who are yours?
C the Light
So I spent my Saturday morning in line with a bunch of other dorks, gleefully handing over a silly amount money for the latest from the temple of Apple — an iPad. I wanted an iPad for a “sofa computer”, something convenient for checking email and Twitter, or browsing the web, while sitting on the sofa with my daughter. I knew the limitations, and actually appreciate some of them (no Flash). But after using it now for a few days, I’ve come to respect the iPad for being much more.
First, the iPad makes for an awesome media player. The screen is bright, sharp and has vibrant colors. I will definitely be using it to catch up on movies and TV that I normally can’t dedicate the couch time to watch.
Social networking on it also rocks. Tweetdeck is awesome on the iPad, and mobile Safari does a pretty good job with web content, but has some flaws. The only glaring holes right now are missing Facebook and iChat applications. The former should be corrected pretty quickly, but on Apple can fix the latter.
One surprising area for me has been using the iPad as a media reader. The New York Times Editor’s Choice application really shows off the promise of the format, and I look forward to seeing their full application. iBooks is also suprisingly good. Being a gadget geek, I have a Kindle, and it is clear the iPad is going to crush it unless Amazon cuts the price in half. Reading books on the iPad is a better overall experience than on the Kindle.
The biggest surprise has been the iPad as an application platform. I’ve thought about developing for the iPhone, but found the screen too small to build the kind of applications I would be interesting in. The iPad is a near perfect form factor with enough screen real estate to build some exciting applications, enough so that I’ve actually dived in to learning the bastard language of the world: Objective-C. I’ve got some ideas in head already for applications, so that makes learning it a more goal-oriented task.
Now about Safari. I had originally thought I would just build mobile Safari applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. But Safari on the iPad is a bit quirky. I checked out the demo sites for ExtJS and JQuery UI on the iPad, and the widgets don’t render as well as they do on desktop Safari. Even JQuery Touch as a little bit off. The demos would flash a green background on transition that was annoying. Even the stuff I expected to be fine wasn’t. For example, the right scroll bar in the Word Press edit field for posts doesn’t render, making it difficult to add posts.
Safari on the iPad is good enough for the basic web tasks (Google, GMail, Slashdot), but it is not ready as an application platform. Native applications will be the way to go, and I think the iPad is going to lead to a lot of demand for Objective-C developers who will be writing tomorrow’s world changing applications.