| [I found this writing in an old notepad of mine; I'll clean it up as time progresses.]
Every once in a while, I'll run into claims that software is technology. Either explicit as in "______ Technology", or implicit, such as a lot of "IT (Info Tech)" articles and conversations. Well, it's bullshit. All of it. Software is crystallized thought. Software enables technology. Technology is the canvas, brushes, and paint, software is the painting. Why? Technology is easily commoditized into discrete parts. Bits per Tin, Throughput, steps, number-of-processes, etc., are all easily counted, reported, and stacked up against one's competition and/or budgets. Software, being crystallized thought, is measured in functionality, and how well the software meets the desires of its users. Because technology is supposed to be commoditized and labor is supposed to be commoditized the "technology" label is slapped onto software to make it (and its development) more palatable for people and businesses who pay for software and its development. So, this "tech tag" exists for such reasons, half psychiatric, half political. The tech world itself, which seeks to present more inspiration than it provides, the consumers, which cannot grasp (or tolerate) the notion that software is intellectual in nature, and those who know better, whose make their careers by either minimizing damage or picking up the pieces, or salvaging other dead projects that result from the "Software is Technology" line of thought. |
| posted at: 06:46 | permanent link to this entry |
| And so, vacation has come to a close. I return to the office in the next few hours, to take stock of what has occurred, catch up on anything that failed over the holidays, and find out what new assignments I'm up for in '08. |
| posted at: 02:49 | permanent link to this entry |
| If this wasn't Georgia, and these weren't Republican/Libertarian types, I'd say this Peach Pundit post was a case of someone trolling their own site. But this is, and they are, so I have to file this under the "Flying Bullshit" tag.
I mean, really. The "poor and middle class people" (i.e., all those folks who are leveraged to the gills) are somehow disadvantaged as compared to "free market" scenarios where those same people would be stuck with "empty pit{s} or algae swamp{s}" in the first place. Or, that the blessed "property values" are now lower, vs. those in the Free Market Bizarro-World, where the hypothetical Water Market would prevent such "improvements" from occurring in the first place. (Whatever you do, you can't hire $3k of dirt and grass to fill in the pool. That just won't do, no sir). This is exactly the type of article that shows the "free market" set as a bunch of selfish pigs. Maybe that's Erick's point, hence possibility of site-trolling. And as far as I'm concerned, this restriction should have been put in place last summer. |
| posted at: 02:44 | permanent link to this entry |
Today's topic for discussion is:
| Buy! Buy! Buy! |
| posted at: 02:43 | permanent link to this entry |