Doug's Dynamic Drivel

Ouch

13 December, 2009 (13:17) | Business, Computer, Economics, Technology

I look at things like the iPhone and think, why? Why does anyone want something like that – it’s yet another example of what the computer age has wrought – something to suck up all your time, and worse keep you on a tether. The information age is burning people out at a young age – too much information to little processing capacity. Still that may just be my 60 yr old bones complaining about not being able to keep up. Still I get the message and can understand what Fake Steve Jobs is ranting on here in a “conversation” with Randall Stephenson of AT&T

While I’m ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.

And not just you. Look at Big Three automakers. Same deal. Lazy, fat, slow, stupid, from the top to the bottom — everyone focused on just getting what they can in the short run and who cares what kind of piece of shit product we’re putting out. Then somehow along the way the evil motherfuckers on Wall Street got involved and became everyone’s enabler, devoting all their energy and brainpower to breaking things up and parceling them out and selling them off in pieces and then putting them back together again, and it was all about taking all this great shit that our predecessors had built and “unlocking value” which really meant finding ways to leech out whatever bit of money they could get in the short run and let the future be damned. It was all just one big swindle, and the only kind of engineering that matters anymore is financial engineering.

And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it — and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.

because there he is dead on, it is the bean counters that have destroyed the economy, initiative, and work ethic in North America. All large companies at one time started out as small companies devoted to building value for their customers and in return for that value, earning value (profit) for themselves. They grew big largely by putting their customers needs first. Then the bean counters took over and for turned things upside down, their task was to first and foremost drive value to the company at, excuse the pun, any expense. They suck the “soul” out of every business they rule.

As for the iPhone and similar products, I have no use for the. I’m not on the road for business so I don’t even need my simple cell phone – use it maybe 3 or 4 times a month and then only to call Diane when I’m out at the store or exercising the dogs. I don’t want to be connected 24×7, I enjoy my “me” time, and our “our” time without interruptions. Maybe it;s living out here in the hinterlands that emphasizes that in m,e. but then maybe not as I moved away from the big city to get away from the hectic pace. Sorry Steve, I just don’t buy into this new reality, to me it is dehumanizing.

Give me a little link love would ya ;):