Lunch on keynote day
It was a sombre Monday morning in San Francisco as the immedia team waited in line for the Apple keynote to start.
We had arrived over the weekend to find the country in grip of another gun tragedy and the news flowing out of Orlando was horrific.
Standing in this line was suddenly unsafe. As a South African we are fond of putting our country down for the levels of crime and violence we endure, but I have never had this kind of uneasy feeling back home.
That a madman with easy access to weapons of mass destruction, weapons of WAR, may just decide to open fire on this crowd.
After all, around us were 5 000 developers in an open space waiting for hours for the world’s most high profile gay business leader to open the keynote in a city preparing for its iconic gay pride parade.
The thought wouldn’t have entered my head if I hadn’t put on the television and watched the news.
We think we have tribal issues back home? The right wing hatred for so many things is so naked and open on Fox & Friends, it’s on another level. As outsiders it’s difficult to believe but then isn’t this the direction we are all heading in.
The destruction of trust in media and political leaders engendered by the internet and a crooked system of elites is what we are all going through. America is just further down the road and more accepting of hate speech from “normal” (white) people.
We are fond of putting ourselves down, but at least Penny Sparrow caused an outrage. Here the presidential candidate of a major party says equally offensive stuff by the minute.
It dawns on me that these are the values of a country that is defining our technology revolution particularly in what it means to be human.
Apple opened their keynote on a moment of silence for the #OrlandoShooting victims and closed with a 9 year old presenting a new tool to code apps on an iPad and the promise of “differential privacy” – a path to harnessing the power of data and patterns without needing to know anything about you.
I felt much better.
more coverage of our visit to WWDC http://wwdc.immedia.co.za
