How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow

Richard Koman writes "My interview with EFF's Cory Doctorow just went up on O'Reilly. The interview is largely about his book, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," but naturally veers towards discussing his view of Disney, programmers, and peer to peer. Then there's this: Doctorow: I think that Disney's art and technology kicks ass. But one thing you discover in the technology world, especially in free software, is that being a good programmer and being a good person are not necessarily correlated, or at least being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated."

Comments

HUH???

[moosesocks]

This is weird.... They talk of Disney as being cutting-edge.

While I know that disney is renowned for it's use of technology at their theme parks, I can't say that I've heard of any of it being cutting-edge. From what I've heard (and seen), Disney is still using 8-track tapes for the audio tracks of many of their (older) rides, as well as the for the control of animatronics, using the age old argument: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Pneumatic tubes are still used for transporting paperwork (and garbage, but that's another story).

Of course, on the newer stuff they build, they're using, they've turned to using CDs, DAT, and of course, computers. But I certainly think their views on outdated technology (from what I have heard in the bast) make a lot of sense.

Do animatronic robots really need to be controlled by 2ghz computers over a secure fiber-optic TCP/IP link? No. Disney still uses their old system which has worked for several decades, and uses the old technology on some of the new stuff they build.

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad.

I suppose this is where a lot of the conflict in the company originates from. They used to be a really great company, but as of late, I've taken to strongly disliking their marketing strategies and overall business model - WE DICTATE YOUR CULTURE, BUY OUR PRODUCTS.