Jony Ive will be on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ today, Sunday 23 February 2025. Press reports quote him saying that he feels responsible for the ‘not so positive consequences’ of the iPhone, but that he is still proud of his work.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Sir Jony said: “I celebrate and am encouraged by the very positive contribution (of the iPhone), the empowerment, the liberty that is provided to so many people in so many ways.
“Just because the not so positive consequences, I mean they weren’t intended, but that doesn’t matter relative to how I feel responsible, and that weighs, and is a contributor to decisions that I have made since, and decisions that I’m making in the future.”
Listen on the BBC Sounds web page or app from 10.00 London time, and the programme will be archived there to listen again for the next 28 days {EDIT: it’s actually available for at least a year]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00289vf
Apart from hearing what he has to say about his work and about technology, it will also be interesting to hear which selection of records he would chose to have if he were marooned on a desert island.
EDIT: I’ve listened to the programme now. The first 25 minutes has interesting comments about the nature and philosophy of industrial design, how the design of any made object can be understood to reflect the intentions of the maker, the influence of his silversmith father and lots about his early life and training. Comments about joining Apple from around 27m 20s, relationship with Steve Jobs, working on the Apple Newton and the iMac. Why he left Apple and comments about the iPhone from 43m 20s, comments on his current work from 50m 40s. He does make the remarks quoted above and I was not at all surprised that the presenter, Lauren Laverne, didn’t press him on what he meant about the negative impacts he mentioned. In particular he expressed concern about the need for caution and personal discipline with the ubiquitous connectivity offered by smartphones and admitted that he struggles with that. I’d like to have heard a lot more about that, and there was nothing at all about privacy and data, but ultimately Desert Island Discs (which has been running more or less continuously since the 1940s) is not that kind of programme and never has been.
It still blows me away. I grew up with so much talk about government conspiracy theories and the crazy homeless guys would talk about government listening devices in tvs. Now people spend apporx 1k to spend approx 100 every month in order to have everything possible tracked about them and anything the sensors can’t pick up they gladly flesh out with personal pictures, texts, audio and video.
Come to our species when you want to ignore the possibly highly damaging* yet murky and uncertain in favor of prioritizing the certainty of immediate convenience today.
*must be informed to realize this basic tenet