I wonder how people associated with Microsoft and IBM deal with the morality issues surrounding them. What they are doing is clearly evil and detrimental to innovation.
Bill Gates receives a lot of credit for his humanitarian work; but at least part of that wealth seems ill-gotten. In my mind, real heroes are people like Torvalds and Stallman; relatively unknown but the impact of their contributions might have already superseded what Gates has been able to accomplish.
Microsoft sang a very different tune in 1991. In a memo to his senior executives, Bill Gates wrote, “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.” Mr. Gates worried that “some large company will patent some obvious thing” and use the patent to “take as much of our profits as they want.”
That actually sounds logical to me, like Obama taking money from companies despite opposing the Citizen's United verdict. The rules are the same for all, and people take advantage of the rules.
It is also similar to Google warning about the patent issues with H.264 while pushing WebM and then later (through Motorola) asking for exorbitant licensing fees for H.264 patents, from Microsoft and Google. They got fined over the FRAND abuse by the courts.
What about when the players made the rules you hate? The patent system was never intended to be used like this; it has been transformed into this by the very players you are telling us not to hate.
like Obama taking money from companies despite opposing the Citizen's United verdict
It's still illegal for corporations and unions to give money to political candidates' campaigns, or coordinate their own spending with those campaigns. They are free to give money to advocacy groups to run ads with a political message, or run their own ads, but that's not the same thing.
Not respond to the tidal wave of advertising against him? Inevitably lose the election? Turn the election into a demonstration of what happens if you don't let money rule politics? Let the monied interests run rampant with the subsequent elected majority?
> the impact of their contributions might have already superseded what Gates has been able to accomplish
Oh come on. In the long run, the ideas of Free Software are hugely important. But for now, Gates is actually helping people not die through philanthropy on a level which, as far as I know, Torvalds and Stallman are not even remotely capable of achieving.
Technology does help people immensely, perhaps in ways less measurable than philanthropy. Consider medical devices, weather forecasting, medical research - all these significantly leverage GNU/Linux.
For some Bill Gates associates with his infamous letter which can be considered the cornerstone of all the IP crookedness which comes out of Microsoft (like software patents racket and so on):
History rarely corrects this kind of story. Gates will be remembered as an innovator and as a great man of his time, who was altruistic enough to give away most of his fortune and dedicate his latest years to humanitarian causes. The chokehold Microsoft created in the 90s IT industry will be a footnote in History.
For a reference of this kind of History effect, compare the common man views of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. They shared the same period in History, and worked in the same field (the electricity boom). Edison was the astute businessman with shady tactics but also with public success. Tesla, a brilliant scientist, produced the still unchallenged fundamentals for electricity transmission and for AC electric motors. Which one is considered the epitome of innovation? The shady acute businessman.
To be honest, I feel that if History did that, it would be right. I've worked with people who've worked with people who've had Microsoft bully their businesses into submission. But even though it sounds trite, that's their first world problems. Gates is now focusing on third world problems. I'm comfortable with the stranglehold being a footnote so long as it is not completely glossed over.
This view is common. It is the tragedy of negative externalities. Since the damage that MS did to the industry in the 90s was widespread and not easily quantifiable, it is not easily identifiable and as such is not felt.
Do you really think History (as in the practice, not the story) will continue to follow the same rules post-internet as it did pre-internet?
Modeling the future path of that field on its past mechinations seems silly to me. Any sensible model of future history, I think, must be built on novel, untested understandings of the new physics of information, to have even an outside chance of predictive power.
IDK, I feel like this has shifted in the last generation. Nobody is shocked nowadays when you inform them that Columbus was a bad guy, and the same historical rethink in pop culture is happening with Edison.
Depends the value you put on potentially hundreds of millions of lives and what might be achieved by those people who otherwise wouldn't have survived.
Ultimately it's an apples and oranges comparison though and not especially useful.
That is fair. Open software could save many lives too (potentially more than the quoted hundreds of millions), but it is definitely a lot less clear or certain.
Also, wow! I knew malaria was a big deal, but I didn't realize it was that big.
I wonder how people working at Facebook and Google deal with the "morality issues" of peddling advertising to impressionable children and teenagers (while calling it "innovation") while consuming 10x as much resources per capita as people in China who actually build real tangible things?
NB: I don't want to give the impression that I think advertising is bad or anything. I think of it like porn: fine for adults, but not something I want my daughter exposed to until she can appreciate what it is.
> I don't want to give the impression that I think advertising is bad or anything. I think of it like porn: fine for adults, but not something I want my daughter exposed to until she can appreciate what it is.
That's an interesting comparison. One could argue that advertising is far worse than pornography, in the sense that pornography is usually being purposefully sought out when one is exposed to it, whereas advertising is often intrusive info-pollution, going out of its way to expose us to strongly-biased and/or manipulative rhetoric.
One of the best classes I had in college was "Reasoning and Critical Thinking", taught by the Philosophy department. A few friends and I took it to satisfy some degree requirement or other. Afterwards we reflected that wasn't enough -- we felt that a passing grade should be required for graduation for every single student.
Why? Because it was inoculation against bogus argument. It covered basic logic, logical fallacies, and gave students a solid footing in resisting and debunking nonsense in argument, advertising, and other communication. Really an invaluable life skill.
If everybody were required to take that one particular class, the content would be so diluted that it'd lose its original intention. I think it's better for some to seek it out than for half of the freshman class taking it, failing, then complaining that it was the most worthless course ever.
My university required everybody take a philosophy course, and I can't remember anything from it because there was essentially nothing taught. The professor assigned the absolute bare minimum and expected the absolute bare minimum since he knew people took it for only one reason: they needed to.
Too bad no one learns a thing about arithmetic, because we're all required to take it.
Seriously, I don't actually give a flying fig about the feedback and evaluation mechanisms. I care about raising skill in this kind of thinking capability in as many people as possible. That is, taught with the cultural vigor we give to skills such as literacy. I also don't mean "some kind of random class with this label slapped on it". At the time, we very clearly meant the instruction quality that we had just experienced.
1. You could say that about any course... Statistics comes to mind.
2. The original justification was "everyone should learn basic reasoning". You just turned it into "kick out people who can't learn it, cause screw those guys".
Many people do take that opinion though. I've seen it reasoned, and felt it a little bit myself, that you should take any and every opportunity to say "kick people out who can't learn X" because that's what assures the value of the degree in the first place.
However, that gets into "what does a degree really mean" and plenty of other arguments, not something I'm interested in.
1. I don't believe that everyone needs to go to college.
2. I don't believe college is a day care where students should be coddled. If they can't pass a basic philosophy course, they have no business being in college. That's not to say they are worthless, just that college isn't right for them.
I think your understanding of advertising is rather shallow. Of course children's toys are targeted towards parents. The underlying message in most advertisements is, "buy this toy to make your kid happy and get them out of your hair for a few hours."
Sometimes, sometimes the kid sees the commercial and just annoys the hell out of their parent until they buy it; specially in Christmas because is socially expected.
This reminds me of an example in a book I read about advertising. Toy companies increase advertisement before Christmas but lower production rates so the big toys of the season sell out. The reasoning is that kids bother their parents to buy the toy and the parents promise they will but can't since its all sold out so they buy something else. The toy companies cut the ads a little before Xmas only to ramp it up again a month or so later at which point the kids complain that you promised and parents psycologically feel obligated to buy. The toy companies then get 2 purchases from you. They use your kids against you
I hear that complaint, but I think that my kids are growing up more savvy regarding the tricks of advertisers because they've been exposed to them at such a young age.
I would definitely distinguish it from porn in that heavy sexuality is way too able to psychologically scar someone at a young age -- but learning that the Barbie in the commercial isn't as much fun to play with as the girls in the ad made it seem isn't a bad thing.
heavy sexuality is way too able to psychologically scar someone at a young age
Evidence? Not sure what you mean by "heavy sexuality"... rape porn, sure, I'm inclined to agree, but anal sex, scat, orgies, etc. I'd need to see some proof. I saw all that when I was 8-9 years old, and anecdotally I have a healthy sex life now that is free of any destructive fetishes (or really any fetishes in general).
Agreed, even though I've lots of respect for BG's humanitarian work. Also, it is much much easier to do good when one has insane amounts of money, than one doesn't.
Today, almost every company thinks their first (and only?) responsibility is to their shareholders, and hence profit. That affects every decision they make, and they somehow come up with rationalizations for their behavior. Until this line of thinking changes, how can we expect anything nice to happen (nice for the common good, but terrible for short term profits)?
So you idolize people who create intangible things that don't make life any better for most people all over the world, but it's wrong for people to create intangible things that you don't approve of. I agree with your disapproval, just not your backwards hero worship.
And if you're going to lampoon anyone who uses "ill-gotten" wealth for philanthropy... I can't see how you'll ever be happy. People do or supervise things you consider "evil," then they turn around and work charitably, but no -- it's gotta be squeaky clean all the way down?
Contributions from people I idolize help some of the most important projects pushing humanity forward; like Wikipedia SpaceX/NASA/ISS and LHC. Their work supports the largest computers used in medical research and weather forcasting. Not to mention every internet service we use; and some like Twitter were invaluable tools in Tunisia and Egypt.
I don't know what your definition of 'intangible' is, but people I idolize are doing some tangible, visible work.
> And if you're going to lampoon anyone who uses "ill-gotten" wealth for philanthropy... I can't see how you'll ever be happy. People do or supervise things you consider "evil," then they turn around and work charitably, but no -- it's gotta be squeaky clean all the way down?
Good deeds don't erase past bad deeds. No amount of charity with a fortune you earned being bad makes you a good person or absolves you of past wrongs.
Yeah. Well, at least Facebook and Google try to innovate, and are quite successful at doing so. Microsoft, never mind IBM...these are old dying giants who will never budge in the name of innovation.
There is not (edit: much) about Facebook that deserves the label "innovative." It's an entertainment product designed to sell advertising, no different than the Superbowl or American Idol. That's totally fine, of course, the world needs entertainment and I like using Facebook to send pictures of my kid to her grandparents as much as the next guy. I also loved the first four or five seasons of American Idol (it's gone downhill) and have a Superbowl party every year.
I feel like some people in Silicon Valley have this weird investment in the word "innovative." They have this need to justify making tons of money while essentially working in the advertising business. So they label every little engineering advancement "innovation" utterly diluting the word. But why is that necessary? There is nothing wrong about working in the advertising industry, or making a bunch of money selling people entertainment.
But, comparing Facebook to IBM (or even Microsoft) is absolutely laughable. IBM is pushing the boundaries of semiconductor manufacturing, designing new CPUs, building artificial intelligence, etc.
Google does innovate (Glass, cars, etc), but they don't make any money doing so.
You may have some specific conditions for what you consider innovation, but Facebook is a service that dramatically changes how a significant percentage of humans spend their free time, and the implications are huge. Connecting with people, sharing information, etc. The fact that the business model is backed by advertising isn't relevant. By your definition I wonder if TV, film, or even the printing press is innovative.
American Idol was also innovative, and whatever group created the spectacle of the Superbowl and the NFL were also likely innovators. Just because it isn't hardcore technology doesn't mean it isn't innovative.
Inventing a new way to turn dog poop into coffee cups is, technically speaking, innovative. Thus, any discussion of innovativeness is not tremendously useful without also considering the value the invention brings to market.
Part of that is necessarily clever marketing, but some portion of Facebook's value has to be real, new tech that makes a lot of people's lives better. If you can't point to any single thing, maybe it's the packaging of a lot of single things that is innovative?
Every single engineering advancement is innovation. By definition[0].
The fact that you are ready to discount Facebook as non-innovatine tell about your personal bias. Even if they 100% advertising business it still requires lots of innovation. Including the task of capturing, analyzing and presenting the largest social graph to hundreds million people. And Facebook has significant open source contributions. Sure, it doesn't produce so many engineering advancements as Microsoft, but saying the comparison is laughable is simply wrong.
And of course, Google makes money innovating. AdWords and AdSense,arguably, are the most innovative ad platforms on the planet. You may dislike advertising all you want but don't change the meaning of words ('innovation') to rant about business models based on advertising.
[0]"Innovation is the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, inarticulated needs, or existing market needs." - Wikipedia
I'm perfectly happy to operate under a definition of "innovation" in which Facebook is considered innovative alongside Survivor and American Idol. But I don't think that was the operative definition of the person I was replying to, or the definition that is usually intended when talking about how patents are stifling innovation.
Props for using a Wikipedia cite. At least when I was in school, you couldn't cite an encyclopedia as a reference, and that was when they cost money and were written by scholars. So lets look at the patent doctrine [0].
The definition of an invention by the USPTO is not simply something new. In a nutshell, it needs to be novel (no prior art), non-obvious to someone skilled in the art, and not a simple combination of existing things. Making a new algo or something run and scale faster is not inherently an invention. Sadly, while a ban algorithms (mathematical forumulae) and the non-obvious requirement are in the patent doctrine, the courts have set precedents in the recent decades to allow the current software patents despite the classic interpretation that these things were not patentable.
Indeed folks are taking this current contorted patent doctrine and conflating "invention" with "innovation", bestowing on their innovative new WordPress theme the greatness of an actual patent. Sadly, much of the difficult stuff going on in the startups would not have been a patent in 1950. But if we want to focus on the "feel good" version of invention, where it's new to you, then there is a ton of "innovation" going on. FB might be scaling and have a ton of technology to do so, but the net result of being able to share cat videos faster than a decade ago isn't pushing civilization forward the same way the killer patents of the 20th century did.
I completely agree about Facebook. I thought by now
Facebook might morph into something really useful, but
no--there just another big, dumb company. A company who
felt Snapchat was worth 3 billion dollars. (Yes--I know
they played a part in the Arab Spring. I think even the
genius in the hoodie was surprised by what took place?).
That's a bitter sounding opinion. Sure, the things Facebook creates may not be what you consider innovative but it's pretty clear there are lots of people there creating new technology https://github.com/facebook?tab=repositories
> IBM...these are old dying giants who will never budge in the name of innovation.
> IBM has 12 research laboratories worldwide and, as of 2013, has held the record for most patents generated by a company for 20 consecutive years.[15] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[16] Notable inventions by IBM include the automated teller machine (ATM), the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, the magnetic stripe card, the relational database, the Universal Product Code (UPC), the financial swap, SABRE airline reservation system, DRAM, and Watson artificial intelligence.
Notable inventions by IBM include...[only one thing invented in the last forty years].
Your claim doesn't really argue against the description "old dying giants." The best response might be that IBM is still profitable, but you didn't include that.
I realize that Wikpedia is the source of all information in the world but IBM has created or contributed to a considerable number of interesting things more recent:
- Eclipse
- Dojo
- Apache Software Foundation (Apache WebServer, etc)
I don't really think IBM is an old dying giant, it's just lost its way a little focusing on short-term shareholder value. Ginni Rometty might not be the right person to lead IBM.
The depth sensing in the old Kinect was developed by PrimeSense. The New Kinect was probably developed from technology acquired with the purchases of 3DV and Canesta.
Some people look around the world and see the carpet being grabbed from beneath their feet, and the appeal of a roof and warm beds for your family is not easily ignored.
Most people don't have the luxury of sacrificing their lives for an ideology, and even fewer are willing to risk their family's lives.
Bill Gates receives a lot of credit for his humanitarian work; but at least part of that wealth seems ill-gotten. In my mind, real heroes are people like Torvalds and Stallman; relatively unknown but the impact of their contributions might have already superseded what Gates has been able to accomplish.