Denuo - denuology.com

I recently upgraded to the iPhone 4. I was waiting for the white one but I could wait no longer. Especially after this rather curt press release outlining that the white iPhone was delayed again and would be available “later this year.”

So I hopped over to the Apple Store last week, waited in line (!!), and got my new phone. I was expecting to love it. I mean I’m a sucker for all Apple design (especially in the Jon Ives era) and I loved my 3GS. What I wasn’t expecting was to be reminded, ever so humbly, of Clarke’s third law.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

But first, an aside. I’m an avid Futurama fan – and one of my favorite gags appears in the episode “A Fist Full of Dollars.” One of the characters makes reference to the fact that on primitive low-def 20th Century televisions you couldn’t see her obscene tattoo. The gag is that the tattoo IS actually blurry on our “primitive” televisions. We can’t see it.

The joke hinges on the assumption that in the future our definition of “resolution” will be completely different. An obvious assumption, but one that Futurama (and myself) thought wouldn’t happen for centuries.

But it has happened. In this century. Hell in this decade. On what Apple calls the Retina Display in the iPhone 4.

For those living under a rock the display is basically a super high resolution display. It’s supposedly high enough that your retina can’t distinguish the individual pixels. While this has been debated, it doesn’t actually matter.

Regardless of the actual science and truth behind it, to my (admittedly horrible) eyes this thing is astounding. I can’t even begin to see the pixels. On applications that take full advantage of the resolution – its an astounding difference. Everything on the screen seems more… real.

My mind no longer says “you’re looking at a screen displaying something,” it just says “you’re looking at a pane of flat glass that happens to have moving images on it.” Even this fails to describe the process my mind goes through looking at the thing.

Apologies for my effusiveness – but I can’t get over it. Every time I open the phone to do ANYTHING – I gasp a little. My brain still hasn’t equalized to this resolution as it normally does with pieces of tech.

I kind of hope it never does. It’s like the glass is… alive. It’s like what I imagine the (nerd alert) newspapers and pictures in Harry Potter to be like.

In a word: Impossible. And thus, to my puny human brain: Magical.

So while I love the iPhone 4 and all it does – the thing I’m most thankful for is that screen. It’s humbled me. It’s reminded me that we DO indeed live in the technology-driven future that’s being created almost daily. I should be grateful to live in the era I do.

But most importantly – it reminds me, multiple times a day, of the power of human invention.

Of a simple truth. Clarke was right. Magic does exist.

Humans are the ones that make it a reality.