From the Editor’s Desk: Think (Premium)

Everyone remembers Apple's iconic "Think different" ad campaign, and many probably know that this phrase is grammatically incorrect. As a writer, that should bother me, but I always felt there was something purposefully sly happening there. Perhaps Apple was riffing on the old IBM slogan "THINK," given the adversarial history. Or maybe Jobs and company were aware that language is arbitrary and changes constantly, and that its unique alternative might become popular enough to be accepted as correct over time. Or less creatively, perhaps it was just about obtaining a trademark.

But I will posit a world in which each of those factors—and perhaps others I don't know about—could all be true. This is the type of nuanced thinking I feel is sometimes lost on those who are too technical. We tend to see the world in black and white, in ones and zeros. In struggling with this, I try to remind myself that not everything is mutually exclusive. The classic example being that Google can have the best search engine quality, but it can also be a predatory and anticompetitive service that needs to be regulated and changed accordingly. Both of these seemingly different takes on the same thing can be true. (That doesn't mean they are true.)

Thomas J. Watson, who invented the THINK slogan and turned it into a one-word sign before he led IBM in the early 20th century, didn't believe it needed any explanation. Then again, if it was obvious to everyone, the slogan and the resulting sign wouldn't even be necessary. And so he finally elaborated on it a bit. Not coincidentally, it's really about nuance.

"By THINK, I mean take everything into consideration," he said. "I refuse to make the sign more specific. If a man just sees THINK, he'll find out what I mean. We're not interested in a logic course."

To my mind, this is about focus, about not getting distracted by the unimportant. And think differently, or thinking differently if that still bothers you, isn't so much about being different just to be different. It's about opening your mind. It's about being different to be better. To bring this closer to our community, this was the rationale behind Windows Phone back in the day. These days, it's the rationale behind the Arc browser. In both cases, established products all looked and worked the same and potential innovation was never going to come from the established players. More often than not, only those on the outside, with nothing to protect or lose, can think differently. (Thinking differently doesn't always lead to success or change, of course.)

But because we live in a world that is nothing but distractions, it's harder than ever to focus. We've lost our ability to read long-form content, and our attention spans are almost vestigial at this point. The technological wonders that democratized content creation and distribution across the Internet have also led us down dark paths, the wrong choices for the right reasons. This is a modern exampl...