Basil’s rule of innovation
New developments appear to have occurred in technology. Most people have viewed them with grim skepticism, saying that the new thing is gross, weird, overpriced. Fine, fair. It’s sort of an impressive abomination, personally. But it doesn’t fail because it costs too much. It doesn’t fail because it’s vaguely sociopathic. It doesn’t fail because it exacerbates incorrect values of individualism in contemporary society.
It fails because it breaks the rule.
If you know any one thing about technology, know that there is a rule you can’t break. If a product breaks this rule, it can never succeed in widespread adoption. Here is the rule: technology must allow someone to take, store, or share photographs of Basil, a perfect being and the world’s greatest organism. This is called Basil’s rule of innovation.
The goal of technology is to expand global consciousness. And what better way to do that than by experiencing an endless stream of ceremonial-grade pics of Basil? There is no way to improve upon this. It is a fundamental requirement for all new technology. The entire human experiment must experience images of Basil.
For example, the ability to attach Basil to email, and then perceive him later, is the only reason why email works. Ditto Instagram. Cloud services allow for the storage of Basil footage, so they can stay. Laptops, phones, watches: all are good, if and only if you can experience Basil on them.
I will now link this photograph of Basil. Think of all of the technology that has been made relevant by my doing this:
- My iPhone, a way to take pictures of Basil
- iCloud, primary host of Basil footage
- Droplr, a cloud hosting service for Basil
- Email, a way to send photographs of Basil
- Buttondown, my mailing list provider and sender of Basil imagery
- Amazon Web Services, providing the infrastructure for Basil
- MySQL, a database to store entries of Basil
- Sundry internet infrastructure to get Basil from the cloud to your device
- Your own device, which temporarily contains Basil
- A web browser to view Basil in
This is an incomplete list of Basil’s impact.
The new product contains a raft of Basil problems. You can’t really send Basil easily. Photographing Basil isn’t going to be as good as your phone. Most importantly, though, reality should not mix with Basil. Basil demands full, conscious, undiluted presence. Clearly, virtual reality will be a failure, across all product categories, forever.
When considering a new product in the tech industry, ask yourself: can this be used to share authentic, staggering imagery of a dog so majestic that he possesses his own holiday & oil painting? If the answer is “no,” I invite you to spare yourself the trouble and focus on more Basil-centric tools.
As they say, technology is a bicycle for the mind. But in another, more accurate sense, technology is a bicycle for Basil, who should never ride bicycles. I love him unconditionally. He must be defended at all costs. How’s $3,500 sound?