Agreed, one of those metaphors that reveals rather than corrects ignorance (Judaism a "rules-deficient stripped down heresy"???). Stick to your own turf, analogy-maker: the Jedi, the mystic cult led by the captain of Deep Space 9 (didn't watch that show much, memory is vague), the quasi-platonic Tantrism of the X Files, etc., etc. --- there is religion enough in geek culture to work with. The I Ching (Taoism) is written in binary code, ain't it?

Perhaps an apocryphal story, but it goes that Leibniz was introduced to the I Ching (Yijing) oracle by a Catholic missionary friend who had gotten it translated into Latin (must have been strange). Anyway, the story goes that Leibniz instantly recognized the binary system in the 64 hexagrams and 8 trigrams. The I Ching is somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 yrs. old in the format and ordering it still has today.

Youtube (along with large HD displays) will always keep the desktop viable. TV/video in general will -- small may be cool and convenient, but big still has panache. And don't forget the demographics: those retiring baby boomers will continue to demand ease of use and visibility.

It's the advertising screwed them -- I know when I saw the ads for the thing and the Maxwell Smart scene, I thought, "f*&$k the watch, I want the shoe!" So you might say Samsung shot themselves in the foot with their own ad.

agreed insofar as this is a horse that's already out of the barn. It's very often required to be printed to be employed -- I remember having to be printed when starting a gig for American Express in NYC; to get into the building we had to put a finger over a scanner. This was post-9/11 at the WFC (a block west of the WTC site); but I hear it's become fairly widespread over a decade.

Leave the wrist alone -- Let's focus on a different body part. How about a Smart-Truss? Who wouldn't want a 1.5 Ghz processor warming their junk? Cupertino, I expect a slice of the action for this idea....

Having written extensively on this perennially misunderstood yet profoundly influential genius, I can only add a vote of support along with a recommendation that the public also be given some teaching on the enduring meaning and influence of this man's music. For this is a composer who can be located in history but also rediscovered in contemporary culture. Beethoven and Chopin are the first modernists of the keyboard: as a young man I constantly heard Chopin's voice and his revolutionary technical inventions in the pop/rock of my era -- in Emerson, Wakeman, Simon, Joel, Manzarek, Wright -- and in the jazz of Zawinul, Tyner, and Evans. The phrasing, fingerings, use of dissonance and legato, the focus on loose, small-scale forms and structures...an entire year of coursework could be devoted to such a study.

What we'd love to see is some commentary on this from Eben Alexander, the neurosurgeon of recent NDE fame.

Settle down kids, this product is almost certainly designed primarily for a demographic that is the elephant in the room of western culture. Here in America we call them Baby Boomers; you may look down your nose and merely say, "ugh, the OLD." They will go away, children, but not as fast as you or our youth-obsessed culture may like. Be that as it may, aging eyes and fingers need devices that accommodate them and their compromised functionality. And thanks to 401k's and Social Security, their little plastic cards are just as or more valuable and profitable than those held by Gen-x, y, or z. Currently, Madison Ave. continues to treat us as Gen-ZZZ -- they sell us sleeping pills and Depends. Perhaps Samsung will bow to that culture and call these the "GetOffMyLawn Phones".

Oh, I did worse than that! I tried to prop up an entire cosmology with the same metaphor.

My new project methodology is to be called Fragile. Called it, now everyone jump on board and pay me.

My response to all this was written a month ago, so I wouldn't call it a "replacement," just a statement of principles that could form part of a fresh foundation. What I focus on in that piece is probably what's really driving the complaints of these psychologists -- that Big Pharma is being allowed to shape the biomedical model to fatten its own purse rather than support any forward movement toward mental health in western society.

It's a start, and something I was merely hoping for when I wrote this:

When it comes to mental health, our science is at an infantile or at best adolescent level of development. Next month, it brings us a new bible of pathology — the DSM-V, which will tell us again how many ways we can be sick, yet with no guide as to what mental health actually is or how it might be strengthened. That, it appears, must become a common effort — crowdsourced, if you will. One of the founding documents of our nation insists that government allow us the “unalienable right” to seek happiness; but no state or institution can actually deliver it.