Jony Ive will be on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ today, Sunday 23 February 2025. Press reports quote him saying that he feels responsible for the ‘not so positive consequences’ of the iPhone, but that he is still proud of his work.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Sir Jony said: “I celebrate and am encouraged by the very positive contribution (of the iPhone), the empowerment, the liberty that is provided to so many people in so many ways.
“Just because the not so positive consequences, I mean they weren’t intended, but that doesn’t matter relative to how I feel responsible, and that weighs, and is a contributor to decisions that I have made since, and decisions that I’m making in the future.”
Listen on the BBC Sounds web page or app from 10.00 London time, and the programme will be archived there to listen again for the next 28 days. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00289vf
Apart from hearing what he has to say about his work and about technology, it will also be interesting to hear which selection of records he would chose to have if he were marooned on a desert island.
I mean, a smartphone is a computer that people can afford and anyone can figure out how to use. Computers are definitely tools of empowerment and liberty. As a computer it’s a general purpose information tool, you can do nearly anything with it. For instance, you could look up information, communicate with people, take a class, design a website, run a business, do your taxes, keep a journal, borrow books, apply for a job, play games, sign forms, watch movies, read the news, write a book, check the weather, and literally thousands of other things. You might even say, whatever you want to do, there’s an app for that.
I don’t think calling smartphones a tool for empowerment and liberty isn’t really a stretch at all. Some people may not be old enough to remember when nobody had one, if that’s the case, then trust me, it was a different society then.
I am old enough to remember not have mobile phones (not even smartphones) or even having a desktop PC that wasn’t connected to the internet (although we did get dialup about 6 months after buying the PC, parents thought might as well do that).
I don’t deny the utility of a smartphone or PCs for that matter. My issue is with framing a techology device as a sort of metaphysical source of “liberty” and “empowerment”. Any tool can be used for bad or for good, it’s all up to us. There are pro/cons to digital hardware and services.
It’s like with industrialization, it clearly led to empowerment of wider society. Collapse of regressive feudal models, increased education among “commoners”, rise of democracy and so on. But all of this didn’t happen in a vacuum. It required global revolutionary movement that scared the oligarchs of the time into giving consessions to commoners (because at high level they realized things could have worked out really bad for them).
Then there is the propaganda line, an almost communist-like veneration around Ivey (even though in the global context it is most definitely not iOS devices that are having most impact) and some bullshit about Ivey caring.
“I care and shit about you plebs … ugh … yeah, the negative effects bother me … Not sure how something I was involved in can have negatives, but yeah I really care! See I am even saying I care on this random BBC musical program! That’s how much I care!”