As is my habit, I woke up this morning and reached for whatever new iPhone pr0n was available. Luckily for me, Apple had just thrown up a lengthy (20 mins) new “documentary”/feature propaganda (20 mins) featuring a friendly Apple designer/model/actor.
One thing that stood out for me, in between high contrast video of the phone merrily multi-tasking it’s way on to being the ultimate device ever, was the Google search demo. The guy, let’s call him Bob, opens up the iPhone and initiates a search by typing a few phrases into Safari’s search field, then hitting the “google” button. Very interesting.
Subversion, reappropriation and modification of key terms and phrases are some of the hallmarks of the current US administration’s communications and the previous two Republican campaigns and as they’ve proved, he who controls the language, controls the universe [sorry Frank Herbert!].
It seems awkward to talk about yahooing for something, but googling has become synonymous with searching for – and finding – information and that may be the subtle difference that means everything, especially as searching and finding heads mobile. This is all pure speculation, but I wonder if the iPhone will change the action button to “yahoo” if you switch to using their search? Time will tell. I’ll let you know on Friday.
I went to my second unconference yesterday – the geographically themed