But then there are the other companies. These companies are decidedly not design companies. Maybe they are developer companies. Maybe they are sales companies. Or maybe they think they are design companies when they’re style companies, as Zeldman might say. Regardless: they are the ones, if they have the fortune of having good designers working for them, that have designers working extra hard to sell their ideas to folks to whom they don’t come naturally.

I’ve worked at more than one of these companies, ranging in size from less than ten to a few thousand. I’ve seen projects where design (visual design, interaction design, user experience design, etc.) went really well, projects where it went really badly, and projects that fell somewhere in the middle. I feel like I’ve learned one thing that holds true across all these companies, and all the departments within these companies. As I write it, it seems a bit obvious, but no one ever told me and I meet designers often that don’t know it any more than I did.

In a non-design company, good design happens to the extent that those who have authority over what gets shipped are involved from the beginning of the project.

I’ve been thinking through all my experiences and the ones I’ve witnessed, as an employee, a freelancer, and an observer of other folks, and I believe this is always true. It’s not always true in design companies, and this is because it doesn’t need to be. Design is already at the core of who they are, and it’s always going to be present when those overriding decisions are made.

But here’s what I mean, for the rest of the world. Consider a designer, or team of designers, building a large website. Maybe they do some formal usability testing, or some coffeeshop usability testing, or whatever. They know some stuff about their users. They go into a meeting with that data, and they present to everyone there what they know. To whatever extent the designers do a good job, the other folks learn about their users as well, and everyone is wiser. They propose what needs to be done differently. The project moves forward in a different way.

Maybe the designers work with some developers, some marketing people, some content people, and some sales people and a great thing is being produced. It will follow best practices, get the business goals across in a way that will match them with the goal of users, and everyone has the potential of being happy.

But consider an executive who sees this thing before it gets shipped. He or she hasn’t been in any of these meetings. He or she doesn’t know any of the information that has been shared, and doesn’t care enough about design to have a designer in the boardroom. He or she decides to change something significant, to the point that now it goes against half the usability test data and makes a feature look silly to folks outside the organization. No one stands up to him or her, because design doesn’t have room in the organization to do so.

Maybe it’s not an executive that makes the changes; maybe it’s a manager or a product owner or just someone who feels left out because he or she wasn’t in all the cool design meetings. This situation happens every day.

The reason it happens every day is that when someone has enough power to affect the results of what is being designed, he or she will want input into how it is designed. Whether this is appropriate, or beneficial to the company or the other folks on the team is all irrelevant.

That person needs to be involved at the beginning, or the quality will go down to the extent that he or she gets to make design decisions. That person needs to be sitting in front of the whiteboard with everyone else at the beginning, hearing the usability test data, learning about the best practices, and maybe most importantly, drawing silly stick figures and non-square boxes and squiggly lines on that whiteboard to get his or her points across. He or she needs to feel heard, and like his or her input is valuable.

Because it is valuable. I may sound like I just want those thoughts to get out there so the designers can move on, but that’s really not the case. These ideas are often very good, but they are not design ideas. They often get expressed as design ideas at the end of a project, and that’s the problem. They need to get expressed at the beginning, in the most visual form possible, so that the knowledge and principles that lie behind them can get out into the open, be translated into good design, and into the needs of the organization and the needs of the users.

And again, it’s to the extent that this happens that good design is able to happen. Otherwise, that good design the team is so happy about is just waiting to be overridden.

This is important to note, I think, because it has led me to specific conversations and projects with folks involved in the broader movement, and because most of the folks I’ve seen responding to all of this are either not specifically committed to nonviolence, and/or they don’t have specific relationships within the movement. Because the video is so geared toward being viral rather than comprehensive, people’s responses are understandably not all that comprehensive either.

Let me elaborate a little bit. It was 2008 when my wife and I were first fortunate to meet roadies from Invisible Children at the church we were involved with. We didn’t have many folks (even for our small community) in attendance the night they came, and because they had heard so much about our community they came just wanting to talk, rather than give a screening.¹ It was a fascinating evening I won’t forget, and after that a few of us we were able to take the roadies out to dinner.

I had known about the organization before this, but this was the first time it made a deep impact on me. I was just beginning to dream about ways that my skills and passions for web design could feed into, and be fed by, my skills and passions for ministry and activism and so on instead of just being separate things. The revelation that that was what these people were doing – the filmmakers specifically, of course, as they had been students at USC – but others who we met that night, as well. Artists and graphic designers and so on were finding ways to contribute those things in new ways.

In 2009 Invisible Children hosted The Rescue in 100 cities, an attempt to get folks to come, hang out together outside, write letters to representatives, make art, and get attention from media folks. I was able to help out a bit in Atlanta’s event, and through that I unexpectedly got to meet John Lewis, and hear his passionate words on how, yes, we should help keep children from fighting, but there should also be no wars for them to fight. But of course through all the planning and such I also got to meet other wonderful folks, hear their hearts, and be inspired by them.

In 2010, we were able to host some different roadies, and take them to dinner a few times. Two of them were Ugandans traveling around the country to tell their stories, both affected by the LRA’s violence in different ways, and both involved with Invisible Children in their country. We talked more about each other’s dreams, we heard their stories and heard about the issues in the Ugandan government, and so on.

Let me branch out a little bit from there. We’ve also been fortunate to meet/host in our apartment, Skype, or otherwise talk with lovely folks from Falling Whistles, Ember Arts, and others of the fascinating organizations that have been birthed out of or otherwise aligned with Invisible Children. I’ve also been fortunate to talk with many others from these organizations on Twitter alone.

I say all this to try to give a bit of context. I don’t live in Southern California (where many of these folks are based). I’ve never been to Africa. I don’t consider myself an activist. I’m a white, American male who tweets, reads, thinks, talks, designs, codes, buys stuff, and gives what time and money I have to things that I think fit with the heart of God for changing the world, and when I do those things I try to get to know the folks involved as much as I can. This means my perspective is indeed limited, just like everyone else’s, and thus I’m thankful for some of the other responses. I can’t (and don’t have the right to) speak to all of the issues people have raised, but I do feel like I can speak to some of them.

And here’s the thing. In the last four/five years of building these relationships and attending these events and watching these documentaries and whatever else, I’ve never heard a person say he or she wanted Joseph Kony killed. I’ve heard them talk about reconciliation, peace, justice, and share the stories of Ugandans who have learned about all of these things through the darkest of journeys.

I’ve seen them make shirts that said “We Love the LRA,” and have conversations about what that actually means. I’ve had conversations with folks wondering how to bring the principles of nonviolence shown to us by Gandhi and King into the lives of people who are not in any direct danger (read: Americans), but want to advocate for folks who are (whether Ugandans, Congolese, or others who they’ve grown to love).

On a deeper level, I’ve seen them go far beyond the issues of LRA-specific violence (which many of the critics don’t seem to realize). I’ve seen them talk about issues of colonialism and the specific role of Westerners in creating current and past situations in Uganda and the Congo, especially.² Some of them have talked about the White Man’s Burden, and their experiences with other organizations that “forgot about people.” Many of them have talked directly and often about coming alongside the folks of Uganda and the Congo, working together for mutual liberation, and they’ve really sought ways to do that. This has happened in their African programs, as well as the American ones and the ones that bring people in between the places.

None of my experiences (or those of anyone else) imply that there are not issues with Invisible Children, the Kony2012 campaign, and the organizations in their spheres of influence. I don’t doubt that there are issues (there always are, of course), but I don’t think the negative issues are necessarily the same ones that people have been talking about since the video was released. I don’t believe their issues are issues of resisting nonviolence. In this video and everywhere else, they consistently say that they don’t want Kony killed; they want him captured and sent to the ICC – this is on top of all the conversations they regularly have about nonviolence, peace, and broad definitions of justice. I also don’t believe they are issues of the white savior complex. No one there implies that the Ugandans are the sad ones being saved by the rich white people’s good ideas, and they all know that these issues (which are decades old, and often have roots in issues that are much older) might not be there at all without rich white people anyway.

Because of this, part of me thinks that the video has hurt the impressions that the intellectuals, development folks, and others who have never talked about Invisible Children before might otherwise have of the organization. It’s true that there isn’t much a full spectrum of history and such in the video (they admit this), and it’s true that the video doesn’t talk as much about many of the most beautiful parts of the organization’s existence, other than getting the attention of the United States government to try to capture Kony. One could certainly argue that this is a bad thing. But on the flip side, 70 million people have watched the video in less than five days, and a nearly unprecedented mainstream conversation about justice in Africa is taking place. Some of these people who have watched the video will go deeper, and once such an awareness starts it can change a person’s life. From my perspective, I can’t say that’s a bad thing.

1. This was Revolution Atlanta, an alternative community with a solid group of 20 or so, but an influence much bigger than that.
2. The LRA, for example, is not involved in the ongoing violence that creates materials for the electronics we buy. Thus, Invisible Children has not dealt directly with it. But Falling Whistles, an organization aligned quite closely, is dedicated entirely to peace in that situation and does not deal directly with the LRA.

I used that phone until November of 2011, when I was able to get upgrade pricing on an iPhone, and I haven’t looked back. I want to share my experiences and thoughts from this time before I forget the good and bad things about Android, as there are too few designers who have significant experience on Android. That isn’t to say that those who use Android temporarily (John Gruber, for example, or many of the folks he quotes) and then go back to iOS are not helpful, but it’s at least something of a different thing when you do it for so long.

The hardware

This, then, is the Incredible. You can see it’s certainly not a bad design, from a hardware perspective. It’s obviously borrowing a lot from that version of the iPhone (but who isn’t?), and it does have quirks that separate the two.

A big one is the presence of hardware buttons. Android seems to be gradually moving away from these, as they just don’t fit well with the long-term development of a mobile operating system. But when the Incredible was released, there were still lots of Android phones that had physical keyboards. So there’s that, and I knew this was a better alternative than any of those.

Aside from that, when I compare it with the current iPhone, the 4s, it feels very toy-like. More fragile, less well-made. This is possibly an unfair comparison, as I didn’t spend a lot of time handling anyone’s iPhone that had a comparable age, but I do think it’s worth mentioning.

But again, overall it wasn’t particularly disappointing while I was using it.

The battery

The battery on this phone deserves posts dedicated to itself. It is truly unimaginable how bad it is. I was only able to use the default battery that came with the phone for a few weeks. It would be completely drained before the end of an eight-hour workday, starting right after I had charged it overnight. This was without running WiFi, Bluetooth, leaving the GPS on, or doing significant work with it while I was at work. Maybe I’d make a couple of calls, send or receive a few texts, open up an app or two. Not heavy usage, is the point.

So because that battery was so bad, I bought a battery upgrade for $50. It made the phone a lot bulkier, as it was thicker and required a different back for the phone, but I was willing to deal with that. With the same restrictions on WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and the same typical usage throughout a day, I was usually able to get through most of the evening – the battery would end up dying around 10 or 11 pm.

But note that again: I had to keep the GPS off if I wasn’t using it to navigate somewhere specific. I had to keep WiFi off. I had to keep Bluetooth off.

Since I’ve had the iPhone 4s, I have yet to turn off the GPS, Bluetooth, or WiFi. I use the GPS functionality much more often (I’ll talk more about this further down), I use WiFi constantly when it’s available, and I use more apps at random throughout the day. As it now stands, at 10pm after a day of at least normal usage, I still have 25% of my battery left.¹

The Incredible’s battery life is so bad that it’s disgusting that it was allowed to leave testing.

The operating system

It’s rather difficult to evaluate Android on its own merits and demerits because any handset maker or carrier is allowed to, and clearly feels the need to, customize the system in any way they see fit. They fill it with apps that can’t be deleted, they customize the user interface, and so on. So this is an attempt to look at the system the way it is on the Incredible.

I’ll say this: I really like the layout of the keys on HTC’s custom keyboard. I like the way special characters (from the dot to the @ symbol and many others) are accessible by holding down a key on the main screen. It’s better, I think, than Apple’s method of going to the next page to get those items.

And of course, Android (especially when the Incredible was released) had a far better notification system than the iPhone did. It’s still better, I think, but not like it was (people have showed me the previous system).

That’s where the benefits end. The presence of Flash? Useless, annoying, and a battery killer. The other customizations from HTC? Sum them up by observing that on the default home screen, there were two clocks. Why does anyone need two clocks taking up screen space at the same time? Just because one is big and bubbly doesn’t mean it has a right to exist.

But the biggest issue I ran into were bugs. Genuine, documented-but-never-fixed-because-there-were-almost-never-updates, bugs. For example, my Incredible had an SD card in it, and it had internal storage as well. I never so much as filled up the internal storage, much less the SD card, but constantly the phone was alerting me that it was full and I wouldn’t be able to add any apps, get updates from existing apps, etc. without deleting things.

At first, this would happen every month or so, then every week or so, then every day or so, then every hour or so. Finally, I would get frustrated and delete all the data held by any app on the phone. Contacts, email, social apps, whatever. All data gone. Then I’d have peace for a month or so, after which it would start again, and then before long every hour it would be “full” again.²

Again, it’s disgusting that any company would let a device pass out of testing with a bug like that, especially knowing it would be next to impossible to fix any bugs due to Android’s insane carrier and device fragmentation.

I don’t know if this bug is as common, but I also had constant GPS issues. I spent some time in Minneapolis in August, for example. Until the day I deactivated the phone in November, the Weather and Calendar apps thought I was still there, and occasionally the Maps app did too. This was after clearing data a few times, restarting several times, and wasting time wondering why my directions were so off. This also showed itself in apps like Foursquare, but I didn’t realize this until I switched.

I’ve yet to run into a bug on the iPhone. That’s not significant yet, of course, but what is significant is that I’ve already gotten more operating system updates since I bought the iPhone than I did in the entire time I used my Incredible.

Applications

The stereotype, of course, is that the iPhone has better apps than Android. For the most part this is true, but I want to give credit where credit is due and look at the exceptions.

Google Apps

Google apps, as you’d expect, are really good on Android. The Gmail app shines, and is (I think) better than any mail app I’ve used on the iPhone so far. The Google Reader app is very good (though there are apps that far outshine it on the iPhone – Flipboard especially). Google Maps is very good, and Google’s Navigation app is even better (and, of course, not available for iPhone).

But for me, that’s pretty much it. I thought I’d miss Google’s apps when I switched to the iPhone, but the only one I miss is Gmail (but when the Gmail app for iPhone gets multiple account support, I’ll be happy). Flipboard is amazing to the point that I don’t ever use Google Reader on the iPhone. And Google’s Navigation app is, for me, overcome by Waze.³

Non-Google Apps

Now, there were some nice other apps on Android, but the thing is this: all of them are as nice or better on the iPhone. Things like Mint, Facebook, Twitter (and the myriad of other Twitter apps – each one beats anything available on Android), Foursquare (maybe due to the GPS issues I mentioned earlier), Scoutmmob, NPR, WordPress, etc. are far better in every way on the iPhone than they are on Android. Then there are the countless apps that are available only on the iPhone, and this is where the stereotype is most true. The iPhone just has better apps, and it has more better apps.

Many folks think, of course, that this is because developers like iOS better. I think this is true. I also think it’s true that very few, if any, designers have any inclination to work on Android apps, and thus they all end up getting created by developers. Case in point is a crazy brilliant little app that only runs on Android called Tasker. When I first bought it, it was $6, but it seemed so great that I didn’t have an issue with that.

In essence, it allows you to automate almost anything the phone can do. The phone can turn on WiFi when you reach a certain location, turn it off when you leave, turn on the GPS when you open certain apps, turn it off when you close them, silence itself at bedtime, turn the sound back on in the morning, and any number of other things. It truly can do almost anything you can imagine.

But here’s the thing: you basically have to be a programmer to do things with it, or to read its documentation. This is because it was created by a Java developer. A brilliant Java developer, no doubt, but still a Java developer. Not a designer, and not a person who understands how users think.

And that’s the essence of Android apps, from my perspective. If they aren’t matched or outmatched by equivalents on the iPhone, they just aren’t designed well for people to use them, even if they have amazing functionality. I’ve long been clear that design isn’t about making things pretty, but it is about letting people do what they need to do.

Overall

So the overall experience I had with Android is terrible when compared with the experience Android users could and should get, or when compared with the one that iPhone users get. The reason for this is that Google isn’t interested in the attention to overall quality first, and specific details second, that Apple is. They seem to be taking tiny steps in that direction with some of their devices, but everything I’ve seen of their current models suggests that even now, the two companies could not be more different in the ways they approach their systems.

As a designer, then, I couldn’t recommend an Android phone of any kind to anyone, unless it was for device testing, development, or other professional use.

1. And again, this is the iPhone 4s. The one that most people say has worse battery life than the previous version, and the one on which Apple says it has been working out battery life bugs.
2. Most people I know who had Incredibles also had this issue. But not all of them, and that’s maddening, but it was a documented bug that Google, HTC, and/or Verizon chose never to do anything about. It’s still happening to my friends that have Incredibles today.
3. This lovely free app not only does turn-by-turn navigation like Gooogle’s Navigation app, but it also changes directions for you based on public traffic data, road conditions data, and the social data it gathers from its other users to give you a faster drive to wherever it is you are going. I haven’t missed Google’s app since I installed this one, and it regularly saves me time, even on a daily drive like my commute to work.

If you make stuff for websites, take the survey. It’s an important part of what you do.

The really interesting thing to me about this is the unique opportunity it gives us, as web designers or UX designers or whatever, to be the connection between people and fields that typically don’t understand each other at all. Let me elaborate.

One of the stereotypes about technology people – whether they are hardware people, tech support people, engineers or programmers, or whatever – is that they can’t communicate well with non-technical people. This stereotype isn’t always true, of course, but it often is true. Sometimes this is because they genuinely don’t know how to express the concepts they’re discussing in non-technical ways, and sometimes it’s a more ideological attempt to keep people from challenging their established positions (and it often works, because those they’re communicating with don’t have the language resources with which to challenge).

Designers usually don’t fall into this specific stereotype (we have our own issues, of course). Sometimes this is because designers are not that technical, but as we’ve learned from Zeldman and others, good web designers write code, and they understand programming as well. They understand what web servers and databases and programming languages are capable of doing, and some degree of how to do that stuff, because that’s how their designs get accomplished.

Good web designers also understand user experience design. Whether they are UX designers themselves or not (I don’t want to get into the battle over titles) is irrelevant – all good web designers know how user experience affects their work, and how their work affects user experience. They know what it means for something to be intuitive, and what their role is in that.

It’s the combination of these things – an understanding of technical stuff and an understanding of user experience – that gives us as designers the opportunity I’m speaking of, and it’s the opportunity to be the connection between technical people and non-technical people. To the extent that we do this, the stuff we all make together gets better, and that’s a beautiful thing that happens too infrequently. But it’s also true that to the extent we do this, we become better designers.

Building better stuff

Designers who are able to be a bridge between technical and non-technical people will always be an enhancement to web projects, beyond the obvious stuff that we do as part of designing things. We are able to translate what is actually being said by each group in meaningful ways.

When this happens, technical people understand why it is that the non-technical people want or do not want something, and non-technical people understand why it is that the technical people want or do not want something. Understanding that, on both sides, makes it easier to say “No” when it’s necessary, instead of getting bogged down in jargon, on both sides, that obscures whether or not something is actually good for a project.

When it doesn’t happen, technical people feel attacked, or like no one understands what it really takes to accomplish something. This leads to unrealistic stuff that gets done badly. Equally important, non-technical people feel stupid. If you’ve ever been part of these conversations, you’ve heard someone ask you to “explain it to me like I’m stupid.” But that’s not really what they want. What they really want is for you to explain it in their own language, or in a language that makes sense to them, and designers are uniquely qualified to do this.

Granted, it can be difficult for a designer to get into this space. Often it’s hard for technical people to really trust a designer, but it is possible, especially when designers really do understand what the technical issues are and what they mean. Designers can be the people who make those translations make sense, and they can do it in a way that doesn’t make anyone feel stupid or attacked. It’s worth it; it makes better stuff.

Becoming better designers

It’s also true that designers who are able to function in this role will, in an overall sense, become better designers.

The reason for this is that the skills we use in these roles are the skills we use when we actually design things. One role creates, and inspires, the other role.

Most businesses have their own language. They have their own acronyms, their own internal structures of things, and their own ways of understanding whatever it is that they do. Developing this language is natural, and it can help make it possible for people to function within large organizations. But the problem is that these languages don’t make any sense. They themselves are not natural, and people don’t understand them without being stuck in the organizations.

So, most of the time when we’re designing something, we’re not designing it for the people within our organizations who already understand that language. This makes most design projects fairly complex, even if they otherwise wouldn’t be, because we have to avoid making people feel stupid. They’re not stupid, in all likelihood; they just need to hear stuff in their own language, or one that they understand.

But again, it gives us as designers the unique opportunity to communicate between people who understand the language of that business and people who just want to buy something, or use something, or get something done.

To do this, we need to understand what languages it is that the organization uses, and why it uses them. It’s hard work to do this. But we also have to understand what languages it is that users understand, and this gives us the chance to get to know them.

Doing these things is worth it. It makes better stuff, and it makes better designers.

Now, we’ve been through the endings of churches that we loved before. In the past, they’ve been terrible endings. They’ve been over serious theological issues, or serious personal issues, or a combination of those things. We have been hurt, or we’ve seen people that we loved be hurt, or we’ve felt we couldn’t continue in the directions that things were going.

But Neighbors Abbey, at least for us and as far as we know for others, didn’t end like this. No one appears to be bitter. No one appears to feel like his or her face was kicked in. It seems like we all view it as a lovely season that has ended. A death has occurred. It needs to be mourned, but the beautiful thing for me is that there is much to be mourned and much to be celebrated.

Some context: Neighbors Abbey was an Emergent community. One of a few that have existed in Atlanta. For most of its existence it met in houses in Southwest Atlanta, though toward the end it rented a small space at a nonprofit in that part of the city. That part of the city has been long forgotten, and has its issues with sex and drug trafficking, violence, and so on. But many in our community live there and love there, engaging in various acts of justice, and it has always helped us to be involved there as we could, even though we live in a different part of the city.

Anyway, we had a celebratory service last Sunday. We were asked to think about things we could remember, things we could grieve, and things we could imagine for the future. I felt kind of numb during that time. Not really sure what to think.

But then, we did our weekly communion. We’ve always done communion as a weekly thing. It helped create a community that was centered around sharing a table (communion, followed by a meal) with each other and with Jesus, and it was fantastic. But often, and last Sunday was like this, we sang a simple song as we did it. It goes like this:

Love, love, love, love, love (repeat)
I will show you a more excellent way (repeat, and then harmonize with the first line)
I’m just a noise; I’m a lost cymbal. I gain nothing if I do not have love. (sing once, then harmonize with the first two lines)

So there it is. Three verses, with folks singing them in harmony. It was a great way to mark things on a weekly basis.

But last Sunday, as we sang it for the last time as Neighbors Abbey, I was overcome. I don’t cry much. When I do, it normally is the Spirit of God doing something. And this was one of those times. I was no longer numb. No longer was it hard to think of what to mark from this season of our lives.

Neighbors Abbey had love.

From the beginning to the end, through all of the transitions, possible transitions, dreams we attempted and things we failed to do, we had love. The love of God was there, and our community loved one another and any who came to join us. And that’s a deep, abiding, and beautiful something to be remembered and celebrated.

Many of these ways have made life better for many people. People have learned to believe that it is possible to make a difference in the world, that the dreams are worth following and the risks are worth taking, and this has led to businesses and organizations that have revolutionized activism or art or both, to name a few, just as Apple has revolutionized the industries it engaged. The extent to which the world would be a less beautiful place without Steve Jobs and the Apple he created is impossible to measure, and that needs to be celebrated and continued.

But there’s also a weird tension between the beautiful things the company has done and created, and its own entanglement in issues of systemic injustice. From the time Apple’s designs leave Cupertino and need to be produced for us to buy, they have created, sustained, contributed to, benefited from, or failed to stop systems that oppress the people who make instead of buy their products.

The constant violence over minerals for phones and computers in the Congo, and the sweatshop-like conditions of factories like Foxconn in China, the environmentally damaging and unsustainable ways that these products get disposed, and the consumerism and materialism that they do, regardless of their intention, fuel – all these things entangle Apple in systemic injustice.

I don’t mention these few examples to pretend as though it’s a new issue. Capitalism, when it produces good things, almost always has this tension. It almost always has a dark underside (whether it produces good things or not), and it is in the interest of maintaining the status quo that these things are easy to hide.

I also don’t mention these things to pretend Apple is the only, or even one of the worst, offenders. This is what makes it so difficult – everyone in the electronics industry has the same issues. They all make products with bloody minerals from the Congo, and they all have stuff made at Foxconn or similar places. They are all decades behind in thinking about sustainability, whether environmental or personal.

Many people who buy these products don’t know anything at all about their supply chains. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything if they did, but maybe it would, and this is why it is important to tell these stories (to that end, start with Phone Story, Free2Work, and SlaveFree, to name a few).

Further, many of these companies have people who are thinking about these issues. Designers and engineers and marketing people all can, and would have to, contribute if they are to be resolved. Apple has many of the best of all of these. But so will users and potential users.

Most of us who talk about these issues, whether we are users or creators or both, are hypocritical when we do it. Whether it’s because we don’t know about alternatives, or because there aren’t alternatives yet, we are complicit in systems that oppress people. Confessing our complicity is necessary, but it doesn’t have to end there.

We can tell the stories and dream the dreams that people tell us are impossible, both about the products we use and the systems that create and contain them. Capitalism has always had these and other issues, and socialism had its own as well. But we don’t have to see that as the last word.

We live in the tension here. And it’s perhaps exemplified most by the fact that Steve Jobs, as much as any other in recent history, can teach us how to tell big stories and dream big dreams.