Linux Journal: Guest Editorial: World Domination

“World domination. It’s a powerful and faintly sinister phrase,
one you might imagine some B-movie mad scientist muttering as he
puts the finishing touches on some infernal machine amidst a
clutter of bubbling retorts and crackling Tesla coils. It is not a
phrase you would, offhand, associate with cuddly penguins.”

“When Linus says he aims at world domination, it seems as if
he wants you to laugh at the absurd image of a gaggle of scruffy
hackers overrunning the computing world like some invading
barbarian horde–but he’s also inviting you to join the horde.
Beneath the deadpan self-mockery is dead seriousness–and beneath
the dead seriousness, more deadpan self-mockery. And on and on, in
a spiraling regress so many layers deep that even Linus probably
doesn’t know where it ends, if it ends at all.”

“The way Linux hackers use the phrase “world domination” is
what science-fiction fans call a “ha-ha-only-serious”. Some
visions are so audacious, they can be expressed only as ironic
jokes, lest the speaker be accused of pomposity or megalomania. It
is in much the same spirit that I sometimes describe myself as
Linus’ Minister of Propaganda, as if I were some evil communist
bureaucrat in a campy remake of Orwell’s 1984.”

Complete
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