Bruce Sterling in the Atlantic:

Self-Reliance 2008 – The Atlantic (November 2008)
The postmillennial version of a Leather­man is the Apple iPhone. Like all digital technologies, the iPhone has yet to achieve the hard-grained, Spartan elegancies of the steely Leatherman. It makes up for this with its cannibal appetite for other tools. Leathermans will disappear—I commonly give mine away—but iPhones devour other tools, digesting them into virtualized application services: phone, camera, e-mail, Web browser, text-messaging, music and video players, whole planet-girdling sets of urban Google maps, house keys, pedometer, TV remote, seismometer, Breathalyzer, alarm clock, video games, radio, bar-code scanner … the target list grows by the day.
(Via Beyond the Beyond)

There is a lot to like about the iPhone. The worst thing about it for me is how it feels in my hand. It’s slick, textureless and slippery. This is an improvement, when I am not using it. Some people will say that I should consider this or that iPhone cover, but I find that an object should feel right by itself. I mean, when you buy a hammer you don’t want to have to go out and buy a cover for the handle…