Helsingin Sanomat: Finnish software innovator Torvalds more interested in philosophy than business

“Silicon Valley is going through such a bad hangover
after the fall in stock prices, that the only thing that people are
looking at is the bottom of their toilet bowls”, says Linus
Torvalds, developer of the Linux computer operating system.
Torvalds was speaking in Helsinki on Wednesday at a seminar on the
information society.

Although he was supposed to give his assessment of what
technological developments looked like as seen from California’s
Silicon Valley, Torvalds focused instead on more abstract, at times
philosophical questions.

“Man himself is considerably more developed than all of the
tools that can be called technology”, Torvalds pondered.

Although he seems to be more interested in improving the lot of
mankind than in business, many in his audience would have wanted to
hear Torvalds’ views on more earthly matters – particularly on the
condition of Transmeta, the microprocessor manufacturer that
Torvalds works for.

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