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Sorry, Larry Page: Tech-Industry Viciousness Is Here To Stay
Nerval's Lobster writes "At this week's Google I/O in San Francisco, Google CEO Larry Page stood onstage and took unscripted questions from an auditorium of conference attendees. That's an unusual move for any chief executive, the sort of thing that risks giving their PR people a heart attack. But Page wasn't up there to offer insights into strategy or drop hints about upcoming products: he wanted to talk about how negativity in the tech industry stood in the way of innovation. 'Despite the faster change we have in the industry, we're still moving slow relative to the opportunities that we have,' he said. 'And some of that, I think, has to do with the negativity. Every story I read about Google, it's us versus some other company or some stupid thing.' Being negative, he added, is not how the tech industry makes progress. But minutes later, Page couldn't resist swiping at Oracle and Microsoft. And Google's battles are just one small element in the circular firing squad that comprises most of the tech industry: Apple versus Google versus Samsung versus Microsoft versus Oracle versus Salesforce versus lots of little startups. Those battles won't fade away anytime soon, because corporations have one goal: profit. And so long as other rivals' technological innovations or marketplace maneuvers stand in the way of that profit, the lawsuits and the CEO sniping will continue. The part of Page's talk that centered on peace and love played well to the audience at Google I/O; but it's easier to argue that the true mode of the tech industry, at its core, is Darwinian competition. Do you agree?"
It's not just that tech industry viciousness is here to stay -- it's also that Google is a pretty strong participant in it. Google's been pretty good at appropriating the language of open source when it suits them, and using EEE tactics once they have the upper hand.
It's time for Sarten-X's semi-weekly anti-media rant.
The reason the news stories you read about are always us-vs.-them is because you're reading news stories. It's not what's really going on. In a newspaper, the story about the big technology company donating millions of dolalrs in products and support to a third-world country takes a nice little corner on page 12. Meanwhile, the front-page big headline is a story about the company that sues another company for just as much.
People love controversy, and the media is happy to supply it. It doesn't matter how good your company is or what your corporate charter's stated mission is, you're still portrayed as a Big Evil Company that's out to greedily gather money and decimate your adversaries. On the off chance that you keep your dealings clean enough to not get sued (and don't sue others), you can bet that the media will invent an adversary for you, combining the markets of your closest competitors into a shady conspiracy, just for the sake of a story.
Sorry, Larry Page: News-media viciousness is here to stay.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Except it hasn't. There's a reason why empathy and altruism exist, and both have shown positive correlation with the ability of the species to survive.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There's a reason why empathy and altruism exist, and both have shown positive correlation with the ability of the species to survive.
Species exist on a spectrum between complete selfishness (everything for me) and complete altruism (everything for the group). Some species tend more towards one end or the other of the spectrum. However the success of a species typically depends on the circumstances and the balance between the two. Our success depends on the tension between the two. Sometimes a little selfishness is good for the species as well as the individual. It's actually beneficial to society that I earn a good living instead of immediately donating every penny to charity. However never donating a dime isn't ideal either. The balance is somewhere in between.
E.O. Wilson wrote about this dynamic recently. Interesting read if that sort of thing tickles your fancy.
This clap-trap is insightful? Wouldnt it be nice if we could evolve to a point where we dont feel the need to trample our peers to survive? At our level of intelligence, cooperation is FAR more productive then competition.
Good-bye
Evolutionary fitness of the United States is yet to be determined.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Ethical behavior is incompatible with the pursuit of profit. This is the essence of the old adage "Money is the root of all evil."
The actual quote:
"The love of money is the root of all evil."
This is an important distinction. When a man loves money more than personal morals and ethics, only then does his business become unethical.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
At least the Millenials care about their fellow humans. The amount of hatred of the poor, distrust of anyone with a different viewpoint, and lack of empathy from the older generations is frankly sickening to me. It's like a whole generation of sociopaths hell-bent on getting their share of the wealth and enjoying their own retirement with all their needs taken care of, and fuck everyone else.
No one likes to live with the parents. When you add up skyrocketing cost of rent, skyrocketing college bills (which we trusted older people to give good advice! What was the advice? "Go to college", great help that was), the practical requirement of owning a car to work due to larger and larger cuts on public transportation which adds yet ANOTHER loan, and a minimum wage with declining buying power because of inflationary policies created to tackle financial problems created by our parents and grandparents, I can't help but feel like the youth are actually very BRAVE, HARD WORKERS for tackling that problem and trying to make it work. Entry level jobs pay like shit, and demand waaay more than a 40 hr work week. I know, I have been interviewing and taking jobs lately.
More of our money is taken out for taxes. You know what the majority of my taxes are? Social security, medicare, to fund programs that the older generations didn't take seriously and let politicians raid. And so now, instead of having money to save for a home, ALL OF MY MONEY is going to pay loans that the older generations TOLD US WE HAD TO TAKE OUT (every parent, every educator, insisted we must go to college! even if expensive, it will get paid back easily!... without telling us that the laws on student loans were changed and it actually doesn't work that way anymore), and pay for the retirement of older people that BLEW THEIR OWN RETIREMENT (or at the least, invested poorly in the stock market and lost it all due to lack of financial oversight).
Now, I believe everyone should live comfortably, and I am perfectly happy to have my taxes go to pay for your retirement and health care (unless you are lucky enough to have pension -- which great, but understand that it pretty much does not exist anymore, the young will not get pensions or good retirement plans, companies are trying to give us the worst deal possible to pad their bottom line). What angers me is when I am trying my best to provide for my family and help my nation, people like you come along calling us self-centered fools that will destroy the country.
The country is circling the drain right now because of policies implemented 10,20,30 years ago. It was not the young, it was YOU AND YOUR GENERATION. Now shut up and help, or at least have the decency to admit that the policies of past generations have failed and it is time to move on, try new things, and get our country moving again.