When Thomas Edison created the light bulb, he presented the unfamiliar technology in familiar terms. He set the power of the electric bulb at 13W – almost the same as the gas lamp — even though it was capable of far higher brightness. He copied the gas lamp tradition of using light shades, even though these were superfluous — their original purpose was to stop the gas flame guttering in the wind. He even insisted that electricity cables were placed underground — like gas — rather than using pylons, like the telegraph.
Technology
How do you demonstrate the thinness of a MacBook? You could say it’s only 1.8cm thick. Or, if you’re Steve Jobs, you pull it out a manila envelope.
Myth of virality Millions of tweets & Yahoo news stories
Virality as we imagine it exceedingly rare if not impossible
Idea that handful of people can be responsible for widespread consumption not true
On the dating site OK Cupid, men are magically 2 inches taller than they are according to medical records.
In the early days of Spotify, users complained the shuffle feature wasn’t random: how could two songs from the same artist play back to back? In reality the issue was a misunderstanding of chance and not the technology, so Spotify made the feature less random to make it seem more random.
Spotify wrapped is surveillaince?