Letters: Nov. 14, 2005

A Look at What’s Next

Our reporting on Apple Computer’s innovative design process earned raves from the company’s devoted customers, while our stories on the new products and services on the technological horizon prompted others to wonder about the dangers as well as the pleasures of the world awaiting us

CEO Steve Jobs should be commended for Apple Computer’s superior work environment [Oct. 24], which embraces collaboration and control. Employees in different departments team up in a “simultaneous and organic” process to create amazing, innovative products. Apple has gone above and beyond its competitors in creative design. If more companies in today’s technological industries worked harder to create a quality product for the consumer, success would be based not on profits alone but on the more important goal of user satisfaction.

RACHEL SOMODI Kansas City, Mo.

As a 13-year-old, I can’t help noticing that all the kids on the school bus are talking about the iPod and when they’ll be able to get one. It’s one of the most popular electronic products on the market. Apple doesn’t rely on other companies to make hardware; it makes its own. Apple’s innovative process is what makes its products top quality and up to the minute. The iPod and iTunes turned the company around and made it a big hit. Apple is doing a fantastic job.

TAJRIAN FARHAD Orlando, Fla.

Since the new iPod is 30% thinner, people will have enough room in their pockets for a couple more credit cards to buy even more frivolous stuff.

NANCY AIMOLA Pacifica, Calif.

Those of us who have stuck with Apple for 20 years know what TIME seems compelled to tell the rest of America almost once a year: it’s an amazing company that makes great products. Apple has been declared dead more times than I can count, but it is better than most other U.S. companies. If only the rest of them could do as well as Apple. I use my iMac to make movies, access my AppleWorks cookbook, keep track of dates and addresses and listen to music as I recharge my iPod. What’s next?

CHRISTINE LOWE SLATER Northbridge, Mass.

“How Apple Does It” was a refreshing take on the company’s culture of technological transformation. There are not many great innovators still kicking around in the business world, but Steve Jobs and Apple are leading the way. With them in the forefront, it won’t be long before home theater becomes mainstream. I can’t wait.

FRANK KATCH Santa Barbara, Calif.

The Cool New World

Your article “Biochips For Everyone!”, on computer microchips that can be implanted in humans, set off alarm bells [Oct. 24]. While each chip contains a personal ID number that could be scanned like a bar code and provide needed medical data, there is a serious danger. The government or anyone smart enough to hack a security system could end up using biochips to track a person’s movements and activity. Should biochips become commonly used, people might then be forced to have them implanted. And if that happened, anyone without a biochip could not function in this society.

HANNAH MORONG Marblehead, Mass.

Your forum of experts identifying trends that are most likely to affect the future, “The Road Ahead,” was an absolutely enjoyable read. It was useful, entertaining and thoughtful. So much time is spent engaging in self-serving, narrow-minded posturing that purely intelligent thought and discussion are a lost art. Your panel offered a rare contribution of perspectives from people inclined to altruism rather than personal or political validation.

KEITH ERRECART Honolulu

In “Getting Inside Your Head,” you reported on scanning techniques that help determine how our brains work. You noted that corporate marketers could use neuroimaging technology to scan people’s brain functions as new products are tested. Philosophers and theologians should be alert to these innovative methods for looking inside how the mind works. Those who grapple with the interrelation of mind, soul and body must consider more seriously the implications of the latest information available in brain research.

HARVEY BOLLICH Lafayette, La.

An Honored Heritage

I was disappointed by Joel Stein’s supposedly humorous essay “What’s Next … with the Amish” [Oct. 24]. The piece had the potential to be informative and insightful about issues facing the Amish–particularly the use of new technology in the community. Stein, however, simply resorted to disrespectful “jokes.” Just as it is inappropriate to poke fun at any ethnic minority, it is distasteful to do so with the Amish.

EMILEY F.W. SHENK Pasadena, Calif.

I enjoyed reading about the Amish. I grew up in a similar religious denomination. We believed in living a simple life, without excess or ostentation, and in serving others. We were not a bunch of wacko fundamentalists, contrary to the way many Americans view people who are different from themselves and who don’t participate in single-minded consumerism. It was interesting to read about some of the issues the Amish are dealing with. I hope your article helps people see that the Amish face very real human issues in spite of living in relative insularity. I respect the Amish for being able to maintain their heritage.

REBECCA A. HYLTON Baton Rouge, La.

Suicide Recruiter

Your story on the Iraqi insurgent leader “Abu Qaqa al-Tamimi” (a pseudonym), who trains and equips suicide bombers [Oct. 24], provided another example of the dangerous weeds that grow in the pastures of religion. Killing Americans and his own people is what al-Tamimi does. He uses children and young people as his tools. The innocent are used to kill the innocent. This will be a long war. It will last until people put humanity ahead of fanatic religious beliefs that are offered up by the powerful few who want to control the many.

DORSE A. LANPHER Glendale, Calif.

As a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I believe that articles about the insurgents and how they train suicide bombers only fuel the terrorists’ desire to carry out destruction. Why not report on the good things the U.S. is achieving in Iraq and Afghanistan and what our families back home are sacrificing for the freedom of others?

SERGEANT ROBERT E. WILLIAMSON JR. U.S. ARMY RESERVE Hobart, Ind.

Suicide bombers escape the harsh reality of dealing with life in this world: hunger, death of loved ones, frustration and tears. They don’t see the carnage they cause or the grieving relatives of the victims. Instead, the bombers get a free ticket out of the world, leaving anguish behind them. How nice for them. But they are cowards. The heroes are those who stay and help others.

CALVIN SALE Klamath Falls, Ore.

Darkness on the Sunni Side

You noted that Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority, which makes up most of the anti-U.S. insurgency, needs to join in its country’s political process [Oct. 17]. But is it possible that the Sunni insurgents truly do not know what they are doing? Their unfortunate victims have left behind spouses, children and friends, and those survivors are the people with whom the insurgents will ultimately have to share a country. I doubt that the Shi’ites will ever associate with the Sunni killers as fellow citizens or do business with them. The Sunnis have engendered a legacy of hatred. Their future is bleak.

MARTIN H. GINGOLD Warminster, Pa.

Pluto Farewell?

“Meet The New Planets” discussed some of the recently discovered planetlike objects that are orbiting our sun [Oct. 24] and the difficulty astronomers are having in deciding what is a planet. How about defining a planet as an object that is massive enough to be squeezed into a spherical shape by gravity, does not orbit another such object and orbits the sun in the same plane as the eight objects that we considered planets before 1930? Then Pluto and others with tilted orbits could be called planetoids. There, that was easy.

EDWARD R. WAXMAN York, Pa.

For years schoolteachers have used a version of the mnemonic phrase “My Very Eager Mother Just Sent Us New Pajamas” to help kids learn the names of the nine planets in order of distance from the sun [Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto]. Now if Pluto loses its planetary status, I suppose we can get used to “My Very Eager Mother Just Sent Us Nothing.” Things just won’t be the same, though, without those pajamas.

BRIAN SPIWAK Dresher, Pa.

Death on the Wing

The less developed countries are very vulnerable to the avian-influenza pandemic that is expected to spread around the world [Oct. 17]. Those countries lack the means to fight the flu. There are millions of chickens in small areas like the island of Java in Indonesia. Should the flocks become infected and the bird-flu virus mutate and spread to human beings, it would put Indonesia’s 220 million people at risk.

DJALI AHIMSA Jakarta

A Quiet Revenge?

Everyone seems so alarmed by the outbreak of avian flu [Oct. 17]. Maybe it’s time we stopped and looked at the way we raise animals. Seven to nine chickens crammed into a cage the size of a microwave oven is a virus time bomb waiting to explode. Caged chickens stand in their own feces and are never able to stretch their wings. Many have been debeaked, and some have chronic pain and infections. We should ban the inhumane standards of factory farming. I believe that avian flu is the quiet revenge of those millions of chickens, ducks and geese we have tortured unmercifully before they reach our plates.

MARCELA DONATO Thornhill, Ont.

A bird-flu pandemic could be avoided if we stopped raising poultry for human consumption. Chickens could still be preserved for egg production through breeding in controlled laboratories. That would be a drastic step, but it is necessary for disease prevention. If governments do not wish to do that, they should concentrate the slaughter of poultry in a few (very few) regional slaughterhouses to reduce contact between chickens and humans. The time to act is now.

CASEY LIM Hong Kong

The Agony of Kashmir

More than 50,000 people died in the Kashmir earthquake [Oct. 24], hundreds of thousands are injured, a whole generation has disappeared, children are orphans, and villages are completely destroyed. But Pakistan’s citizens got together and responded to calls for help. Expatriate Pakistanis all over the world offered to adopt orphans. It was as if the whole country had suddenly changed from a self-interested, disunited nation into a cohesive force facing the disaster.

AGHA ALI MURTAZA Lahore, Pakistan

Many of those who survived the quake have been made homeless. More than 3 million poor will brave a harsh winter, trying to survive. Those people need assistance. Pakistan’s resources are grossly overtaxed. Help from the world’s wealthy communities in this hour of need would have an everlasting impact.

MEHMOOD AZIZ NAVIWALA Karachi