Snap (formerly Snapchat, rebranded this week — the app is now one product of a self-declared “camera company”) announced SPECTACLES: $130 sunglasses that record ten-second circular videos. And here’s the thing — after Google Glass became the cautionary tale (#004’s coffee-shop cyborgs never did get cool), Snap’s version might actually work, because they made it a TOY. A fashion-forward, teen-priced, deliberately-scarce toy sold from vending machines, not a $1,500 face computer for enterprise futurists. Same hardware category, opposite cultural strategy. Positioning is engineering by other means.
Tonight is the first presidential debate — record audiences expected, and my corner of the internet is mostly bracing. This blog’s policy since #045 stands: I log what touches the craft. What touches the craft this cycle: the fake-news economics of engagement feeds, the DNC hack’s ongoing fallout, and the fact that both campaigns’ tech postures will be studied like architectures. November will arrive regardless of my commentary.
Baseball note with a black armband: golf lost Arnold Palmer, and baseball’s regular season ends with the CUBS holding the best record in the sport. The Back to the Future timeline (#068) was merely one year late. October is loaded.
TIL: scarcity-driven launches — Spectacles’ vending-machine drops are a rate limiter as marketing. Making the thundering herd (drink) into the CAMPAIGN. Someone finally weaponized our failure mode.