Before we can create we must, Nietzsche
thought, destroy. So he said he does philosophy
“with a hammer.” And it is just this
point which I think Apple gets, though its customers
don’t always like it. Apple, in a sense, does
computer engineering with a hammer. This will
take a great deal of explaining. Sit back and
make sure the boss isn’t around.

 

In the first part of this series
on nihilism, Apple and the Mac Web, I said that
there was a “nihilistic element” to
much that Apple does and much of the writing on
the Mac web. This is not the same as saying that
both are nihilistic, however. I finished by saying
that the nihilistic element I see at Apple is
qualitatively different than that on the Mac Web.
Today I look at apple nihilism.

 

But,
if you will allow me the indulgence, shall we
talk about some very interesting ideas first?
Okay . . .

 

Nihilism: The Elastic Idea

 

Though the term “nihilism”
was coined in Russia around 1845 the idea has
a long history. It was one of those things that
happens in the history of philosophy when someone
coins a term and suddenly, as if over night, we
see it every where. The Russian origins of the
term are rooted in proto-communism, the general
distrust and hatred of the Russian royals, and
the inequalities of the old way. Russia was still
caught in fiefdom as kingships all over Europe
were crumbling. These monarchies had to be replaced
with something (unless one was an anarchist).
This general uneasiness was spreading as movements
sprang up seeking to overthrow the old ways. They
were not pedestrian iconoclasts because they aimed
at specific targets. They did not seek destruction
for destruction’s sake. Destroying was a means
to these people and not an end. So they called
themselves “nihilists.” Not a very good
name for what they were trying to talk about really;
it is one of the great misnomers in the history
of thought. Pisarev, the one who coined the term,
said “What can be smashed ought to be smashed.”
I quoted this last time. The rest of the quote
is: “only what is left standing should remain.”
This “nihilism” as first used had little
to do with the philosophical variety we read about
today, the one connected to “postmodernism”
(whatever that is). The first so called “nihilists”
were out to smash the old age only to usher in
a new age. Thus, genetically, it was perceived
as an optimistic view; they saw themselves as
reformers not iconoclasts. (And thus the great
deal of confusion about what nihilism is.) The
concept has morphed into the problem of how one
finds meaning in a post-Christian-Enlightenment
culture, the Christian-Enlightenment culture being
the one they sought to destroy and replace.

 

The very word, “nihilism,”
grew in people’s minds. It was identified with
the belief in nothingness, and issues of living
in an absurd and meaningless universe followed.
It began to be viewed as less than a political
doctrine and much older than the 1840’s. People
asked again (Parmenides being the first), “What
does it mean to believe in nothing?” Consider
this statement by the late pop artist Andy Warhol:

A:
“. . . it doesn’t mean if you don’t believe
in nothing that it’s nothing. You have to
treat the nothing as if it were something.
Make something out of nothing.”

B:
“If you know life is nothing, then what
are you living for?”

A:
“For nothing.” (From: The Philosophy
of Andy Warhol by A. Warhol, 1975.)

“Make something out of nothing.”
It’s a motto. Making something out of nothing
and reforming a wayward society are hallmarks
of nihilism. Thus, as one philosopher says, “In
the history of thought . . . nihilism sometimes
appears as an intermediate stage in a philosophy
which wishes to deny the validity of all previous
systems of value as preliminary to substituting
a new one in their places.”

 

But be that as it may, if we smash
things it is only to rebuild a new world: Destruction
is a means to construction. And it is just this
point which I think Apple gets. Apple, in a sense,
does computer engineering with a hammer to replace
the old ways. It’s called reformation and is not
always looked kindly upon.

Apple’s Nihilism

 

The “1984” commercial
is sufficient to betray Apple’s constructive,
political, or active nihilism. But it is the last
few years with the introduction of the iMac where
Apple engineers use a hammer along with a calculator.
As I have said, over night they smashed the old
and replaced it with the new. And new is an understatement.
The iMac, even with its flaws, is an incredible
piece of technology. Form and function in perfect
harmony are seen in it. (I saw some of the iMac
commercials Sunday and I tell you, they really
make these things look nice. My applelust factor
rose significantly during that 30 seconds-worked
on me!)

 

Consider the iMac’s shape. Do you
think this is just a cool egg-shape they came
up with? You’d be wrong. No, the shape of the
iMac actually helps in its cooling and has helped
bring us to the place where computers (Apple’s
anyway) don’t need fans. The cooling of the iMac
is a function of its shape. It helps convection
or airflow, keeping the machine cool. Cool, eh?

 

And to show that Apple smashes things
consider these facts:

 

1. Suddenly USB
was in and serial was out.

2.
Suddenly SCSI was out and FireWire was in.

3.
Suddenly beige was out and fruity was in.

4.
Suddenly fruity was out and organic was in.

5.
Suddenly, the extended keyboard was out and
another was in; now that one is out and the
extended is back.

6.
Game Sprockets were in, now they are out (or
on their way we hear).

7.
Suddenly, the new Apple monitors won’t hook
up to old ones because the cables were consolidated;
now adapters are in.

8.
And who can forget: Suddenly the floppy was
out! Yahooooo! (and with VST FireWire pocket
drives who needs them?)

These are not simple, gradual changes-they
were smashings. It was as if Apple and Steve Jobs
had had enough and just took the hammer to these
things. There was little warning until it was
done. It was violent almost. I recall all the
complaining about losing floppy drives and SCSI.
But it quickly died down when we got our first
VST FireWire drive and Zip disk, and figured out
how to use e-mail creatively. It seems that smashing
works after all-as long as you replace it with
something new and good. Apple’s behavior is sometimes
downright Bolshevik! But at least they replace
things, showing that smashing is a means to an
end for Apple.

And what is the next big hammer
Apple has? You all know what I am going to say
don’t you? OS X. Talk about smashing with hammer-man!!
Think of all the things smashed in OS X like AppleTalk
and our beloved Apple Menu. And this is just the
tip of it. OS X takes the new and slams it down
on the table in front of us and forces us to eat.

 

If classical nihilism seeks to smash
the old ways of Christian civil society and Enlightenment
values to replace them with new ones, then as
Christian civil society and Enlightenment values
are to the classical nihilist so the old ways
of computer engineering and design are to Apple.
It is still 1984 in Steve’s mind. The classical
nihilist seeks a tranvaluation of value as he
tries to “make something out of nothing.”
Apple seeks a transvaluation of computer design
and engineering values. They seek a transcomputation
of computation the same way a classical nihilist
seeks a transvaluation of value. There are little
gradual, incremental changes, yet Steve has brought
a smashing attitude back to Apple.

 

What are these old ways they seek
to transcomputate? Conformity; monopoly; lackey
interface solutions; beige boxes; engineering
in the box; mediocrity. They smash bad interface
designs with bad programming conventions; bad
hardware that drops dead after a year is hammered
awat at; ugly hardware which does not inspire
are its target. Bill Gates is the contemporary
Russian monarch or French King who desperately
wants to hold on to his fiefdom. Steve Jobs is
trying to create something out of nothing, and
the nothing this time is the PC industry which
has shoddy standards and commercialized production
lines in which Dell computers have become a dime
a dozen. They needed to be smashed thinks Apple,
but the common man didn’t have the means-Apple
and Steve Jobs do, and now more than ever with
billions in the bank and new hardware and software
coming down the pipeline. It might not be guns
and plowshares, but in the business world it amounts
to the same thing. This is the point of thinking
different-think beyond the old ways and tranvaluate
them by creating new ways.

 

If in fact the new hardware and
OS X make for a new world is of course beyond
our knowing. And that is a problem isn’t it? When
we smash the old and replace it with the new,
the new will in turn become old again and need
smashing at some point. We can’t know if the new
created order will work better than the old one.
Communism didn’t work. I kind of feel like a great
experiment is being performed on me with Apple
sometimes, don’t you?

Next time we will examine Nihilism
on the Mac Web. There too we are seeing a battle
of the old ways and the new ways. But this time
it is issuing in anti- or reverse-nihilism. Until
then, have a nice day . . . and think about it.

David
Schultz