Apple's Steve Wozniak: 'We've lost a lot of control' - CNN

Wozniak: Past rebels, future programmersApple co-founder Steve Wozniak has hesitations about a tech-dominated societyWozniak carries five to 10 cell phones but expresses frustrations with unreliable productsHe has hand-picked several artifacts for an upcoming exhibit at the Computer History Museum

Mountain View, California (CNN) -- The world has mostly caught on to Steve Wozniak's vision of having a computer in every home. But this digital lifestyle can sometimes turn rotten, he said last week.

Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs and designed, programmed and built some of the world's first personal computers, laments the byproducts of a culture that's always connected to electronics.

Leading a tour through an exhibit of computer artifacts -- including giant supercomputers and Atari game systems -- that opens next month at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Wozniak paused to criticize the stranglehold technology has on our lives.

"We're dependent on it," he said at the museum, which holds one of the world's largest collections of vintage computers and sits about six blocks from Google's headquarters. "And eventually, we are going to have it doing every task we can in the world, so we can sit back and relax."

Wozniak's musings have undertones of science-fiction, drawing parallels between the internet and robots bent on taking over humanity.

"All of a sudden, we've lost a lot of control," he said. "We can't turn off our internet; we can't turn off our smartphones; we can't turn off our computers."

"You used to ask a smart person a question. Now, who do you ask? It starts with g-o, and it's not God," he quipped.

Earlier that day, Wozniak said the biggest obstacle with the growing prevalence of technology is that our personal devices are unreliable.

"Little things that work one day; they don't work the next day," he said enthusiastically, waving his hands. "I think it's much harder today than ever before to basically know that something you have ... is going to work tomorrow."

Reciting an all-too-common living-room frustration, Wozniak told a story about the countless hours he spent trying to troubleshoot his media player, called Slingbox.

"There is no solution," Wozniak said of tech troubles. "Everything has a computer in it nowadays; everything with a computer is going to fail. The solution is: kill the people who invented these things," he said with a smile.

Joking aside, by that logic, Wozniak should be target No. 1 on that hit list. He developed the Apple I, a hobbyist computer, and its more mainstream successors. His work jump-started the personal computer revolution.

As it happens, the museum exhibit is called "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing." Wozniak, one of 52 fellows at the museum, was asked to hand-pick eight items on display.

"It's transformed our lives," Computer History Museum CEO John Hollar said of the personal computer. "It's transformed our cultures."

Wozniak, 60, the computer whiz whose Apple shares easily sustain his Segway-riding lifestyle, retired from full-time employment at Apple in 1987. But "the Woz" has remained in the spotlight, thanks to a turn as a "Dancing with the Stars" contestant in 2009 and a much-publicized relationship with comedian Kathy Griffin.

Last month, he appeared in London for the auction of a rare Apple I computer that sold for $213,000. One was also on display at the Computer History Museum.

During Wozniak's short-lived run on "Dancing with the Stars," gossip bloggers noted his short, portly frame and compared him to a teddy bear. In person, he comes off as kind, humble and patient -- although one of the few things that test his patience, it seems, is computers.

Despite his frustrations with gadgetry, Wozniak is still a gearhead. He says he carries five to 10 cell phones around with him at a given time. Sometimes he'll set up half a dozen of them, along with standalone GPS units, on his car's windshield, all navigating him to the same spot.

On Thursday, he had three: two iPhones (including an elusive white model that has yet to be sold in stores) and another running Google's Android operating system.

He is a voracious news consumer whose days are engrossed in "thousands of tech headlines." And Wozniak recently made headlines of his own.

In one, he compared Android to Microsoft's Windows and said that Google's system would eventually dominate the smartphone market. He echoed this sentiment to CNN.

"Apple likes to sit and control the whole user experience better, and it's a tradeoff," Wozniak said. "The Android platform might have the greater market share, but individually as a company, I'm sure Apple will probably wind up on top in mobile phones."

Wozniak also created some blogosphere buzz when he was quoted as saying Apple had acquired language-software maker Nuance, a tip that turned out to be incorrect. Last week, he made repeated mention to the similar company that Apple actually did buy, called Siri.

Wozniak appears most excited about these types of software, which interpret what you're saying and translate that into actions readable by computers.

"Eventually, we might just be wearing our computers like a watch and speaking to them," he said. (He's already there; he wears a touch-screen iPod Nano with a band around his wrist.) "Every step of the way, things get less in our way. It's less like the technology is there. It's more like our thoughts go directly into the actions that we want."

That's the ideal future, he said.

Technology romanticism aside, Wozniak says his favorite device is a laptop: the MacBook Pro.

His hesitations about the world's reliance on computers sometimes fade into fond memories of the early days of computing. The first Apple computer was a homebrew distributed for free.

"I didn't design this computer to make a lot of money," Wozniak said later when the tour stopped in front of the original Apple computer, a wooden and silicon contraption that's rough around the edges. "I wanted to accelerate the world's advancement in the social revolution that it would cause. So I gave away my designs for free.

"But eventually, Steve Jobs came and said, 'Why don't we build it for (consumers)?'" he continued. That was after his then-employer Hewlett-Packard "turned me down five times on the idea," he said.

Whether computers work all the time or not, the formula certainly worked to make Apple a wildly successful business. And it gives Wozniak time to observe the revolution he helped make.

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AT&T coverage woes: What's the problem? - USA Today

This week a Consumer Reports survey confirmed what many iPhone owners already knew --that carrier AT&T has some serious issues with its network. CR said AT&T's customer satisfaction was the "worst" of the top 4 carriers--Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T.

Why can't get AT&T get it together? And what can be done about it? For answers, we turned to Charles Golvin, who covers the wireless industry as a long-time analyst for Forrester Research.

Q: So what exactly is the problem with AT&T's coverage?

A: It's not a coverage issue, it's a capacity issue. It's having the towers in the right places, and bandwidth to support the traffic. In some markets, like New York and San Francisco, AT&T just hasn't caught up to the overall demand.

Q: Would it be any different if the iPhone was with another carrier?

A: If Verizon had the iPhone, it would have suffered a lot of the same challenges. With voice calls, carriers have 20 years of experience that helps them predict what usage on their networks would look like. They never had this kind of experience for data usage. People are using the network in very different ways.

Q: Android phones (such as the Droid series with Verizon) use a lot of data too, but we don't hear complaints about lost calls.

A: Verizon's network handles voice calls and data differently, so even if Droid phones use a lot of data it doesn't impact the network's ability to keep a voice call alive.

Q: What should AT&T do?

A: They are doing it. They are continuing to invest in new cell towers and expanding the capacity.

Q: Why haven't the complaints affected AT&T's subscriber counts? (In the 3rd quarter, AT&T noted a 2.6% increase in subscribers--for a total of 92.8 million.)

A: People want the iPhone and are willing to give up a lot in order to get it. The subscriber numbers haven't gone down; however, the iPhone is a big part of the numbers. Were it not for the iPhone, (subscriber churn) would be more visible.

Q: Will AT&T see much impact from the Consumer Reports piece?

A: Its impact will be small. Today, when consumers are considering a different wireless carrier, what Consumer Reports says is irrelevant to you. You rely on friends and family. Their recommendations carry more weight, because they can tell you how the service performs where you live.

EARLIER: Consumer Reports: AT&T the 'worst carrier'

By Jefferson Graham

See photos of: Apple, iPhone, AT&T

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Designing an enforceable climate law - ABC Online

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Dan Cass

The impending failure of the international climate conference at Cancun is the latest in a string of failures going back 20 years, to the negotiations that crafted the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

I was at the UN Conference that agreed to the UNFCCC. I was dismayed that the Convention and its subsidiary agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, would all be non-binding treaties. Any knowledge of international relations - or human nature - should tell us that a non-binding treaty on climate change is about as effective as a peace vigil in a bombing raid.

Let us contrast the climate treaty fiasco with that ancient, discredited treaty process which formed the beginnings of international public law.

The Vienna Peace Congress of 1814 was disparaged at the time but historians now agree that it set the tone and procedure for subsequent international law and prevented European wars from escalating into world wars, for 100 years. (In his PhD thesis, Henry Kissinger declared this the longest period of ‘peace’ that Europe has ever had.)

The goal of the Congress was to restore stability after the upheaval of the French Revolution. For war-torn Europe in the Age of Revolution, the order of things seemed as fragile as our future looks as we stand at the precipice of climate catastrophe.

Vienna’s agreements mediated two opposing principles. Balance of power was the principle that the Great Powers should enforce peaceful order by redrawing national borders so that no state was powerful enough to successfully wage war on its neighbours. Sovereign equality between states was the principle all other powers pleaded, hoping to influence consensus.

Contemporary wits called Vienna the ‘Dancing’ Congress, in reference to the frivolous socialising and official entertainments that went on in what was the cultural and geographical centre of old Europe, a decadent, cosmopolitan city of palaces, parks, mansions and salons.

In a blow against sovereign equality, the Congress never even met in the form we would recognise, of a plenary assembly of states. Formal negotiations were exclusive affairs hosted by Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister, in his apartment.

The bulk of diplomacy at Vienna took place at night, during social events. As Counte Auguste de La Garde-Chambonas observed, “A kingdom was cut into bits or enlarged at a ball... a constitution was planned during a hunt.”

The Festivals Committee kept delegates entertained with a roster of extravagant social events. There were operas in the city parks and artificial forests installed inside palaces. Delegations and various aristocratic hangers-on took day trips outside the city for vast hunts. Ludwig van Beethoven gave a concert. Schönbrunn Palace Zoo showed a collection of ‘New Holland’ (i.e. Australian) kangaroos.

The Central Committee was a self-selected group, the Great Powers that had defeated France in 1814: Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria. (Rather like the UN Security Council of Great Power allies who defeated Germany and Japan in 1945: USA, UK, China, France and Russia nee USSR).

As in our times, the Great Powers were variously disposed to appear fair and in accord with public values. The opinion of the public (and the excluded sovereigns in the salons of Vienna), was each state was equal, but eternal truth of international affairs is that some states are always more equal than others.

After months of debate, the Peace Congress had still not resolved the outcome of the last war and a new war broke out. Napoleon escaped from the island prison that the allies had banished him to after his first defeat. The allies made what historian David King calls the first ever declaration of war against an individual; ‘Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself outside all human relations and that, as the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world.’ Napoleon was soon defeated utterly, at the Battle of Waterloo.

As in Vienna in 1814, the UN climate treaty negotiations are dominated by Great Powers. The plenary meeting to ratify the text of the climate treaty (the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) was held during the Earth Summit (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. All the serious decisions had already been made, in a series of bilateral and multi-lateral caucuses between states and the PrepCons (Preparatory Conferences).

But unlike the treaties at Vienna, the climate treaty is non-binding. Vienna’s Final Act treaty (and its 11 subsidiary treaties) drew on the military dominance of the Great Powers to impose peace on France and quash the territorial ambitions of small states. As the ubiquitous Prince de Ligne said at Vienna, “Politics is the art of making war without killing anyone”.

The fatal compromise of the climate treaty is that subservient to free trade doctrine. Free-trade denies climate treaty states the right to impose legitimate economic sanctions on recalcitrant states. Good states may move ahead, imposing emissions standards on their own industries and citizens, but this gives bad states an immediate competitive advantage.

Consider what Vienna would have been like if it took the non-binding approach. Russia, Britain, Austria and Prussia would have decided that war was bad, laid down their arms and issued some strongly worded statements calling on France to follow their moral leadership.

In the 19th century the idea of an unenforceable Peace would have been discounted, as the diplomatic equivalent of group suicide. Placing all our international hopes on voluntary climate agreements such as the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Pledge is a planetary suicide pact. From this perspective, Japan is quite right to be tearing up hopes of an extension of the Kyoto Protocol at Cancun.

If we are to make peace with the climate we must first win the struggle against the carbon-industrial complex and its proxy wars (over climate science and renewable base-load electricity). We only deserve to win if we are prepared to enforce climate security through trade sanctions or ultimately force itself. We need a powerful international environment court to remove the social licence to pollute. The climate polluter who undermines clean technology is, for our era, ‘the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world’, to use the language of Vienna.

We can justify the clean technology revolution on the principles of climate responsibility and national energy security. This recognises that defeating fossil fuels is an existential, strategic necessity, of the same gravity as war and peace. We accept that violent nations cannot be trusted to make peace unless there is enforcement behind the rhetoric. We must accept that polluting nations cannot be trusted to invest in a clean economy unless they can be forced to do so.

All the clever people at Cancun should direct their energies towards a new era of treaty-making. When our diplomats are done with WikiLeaks, they should be put to work designing the carrots and sticks of a new, ecological order in international relations.

A coalition for climate protection will be able to take action without waiting endlessly for an impossible, 100 per cent consensus. Our best and brightest economists will be able to redesign trade law to fairly reward those inside and penalise those outside, in the most economically efficient way possible.

The benefits of the new paradigm will start to emerge immediately.

The clean technology allies will reward each other with the free flow of intellectual property, goods and services that are climate positive or neutral.

Economic wealth generated by a clean-tech boom will create employment and consolidate domestic political support.

Belligerent polluters can be punished with economic and cultural exclusion.

Developing nations inside the alliance will have the chance to go straight from energy scarcity to reliable renewable energy, without the costly detour of coal dependence.

Nothing short of this will generate momentum towards zero emissions in the OECD and low emissions in the developing world and China. An enforceable regime of climate law will, like 19th century treaties of Vienna, require an alliance based around at least some Great Powers. But staying with a non-binding treaty model means we are all unhappy and the planet is doomed. Good diplomacy is, as always, about taking what you can get.

Dan Cass was the Australian Conservation Foundation’s official observer at the Earth Summit (UNCED) in Rio in 1992. He is a lobbyist.

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