I had a phone conversation with my good friend Jeff Angus yesterday; he had read my Windows as Potatoes screed from Friday night, and reminded me that we had a similar conversation about monocultures and technology five years ago. He also suggested that maybe Monsanto was a better metaphor for Microsoft.
Monsanto has created a defacto monoculture through genetic engineering that gives customer a product that not only is derived from a narrow gene line, but is also sterile (so they can't cross-breed it with something else and correct any of its problems on their own) and guarantees post-sales support will come only from their licensed agents, spraying with their chemicals. Sure, it's easy to use, but as resistant strains of pests and weeds start to go after the vulnerabilities in the genetic/chemical firewall Monsanto has built, you're stuck waiting for their engineers and scientists to get a “patch” out in the next version of the product, which won't come out until next growing season at the earliest.
So is Windows the potato of the Internet age or the sorghum? Well, considering that Microsoft “eats its own dog food,” maybe it is more feed-quality than for human consumption.
[buzzword-compliant]
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I had a phone conversation with my good friend Jeff Angus yesterday; he had read my Windows as Potatoes screed from Friday night, and reminded me that we had a similar conversation about monocultures and technology five years ago. He also suggested that maybe Monsanto was a better metaphor for Microsoft.
Monsanto has created a defacto monoculture through genetic engineering that gives customer a product that not only is derived from a narrow gene line, but is also sterile (so they can't cross-breed it with something else and correct any of its problems on their own) and guarantees post-sales support will come only from their licensed agents, spraying with their chemicals. Sure, it's easy to use, but as resistant strains of pests and weeds start to go after the vulnerabilities in the genetic/chemical firewall Monsanto has built, you're stuck waiting for their engineers and scientists to get a “patch” out in the next version of the product, which won't come out until next growing season at the earliest.
So is Windows the potato of the Internet age or the sorghum? Well, considering that Microsoft “eats its own dog food,” maybe it is more feed-quality than for human consumption.
[buzzword-compliant]
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 29th, 2003 at 2:53 am and is filed under globals.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.