Confronting
the 'Tech Innovation Deficit' is a nice bit of reporting by my
colleague David Needle, who is a good tech reporter. (We both work
for Internet.com.) David is the opposite of me; he leaves his own
personality entirely out of the story, and stays tightly focused on
the subject. I inject myself into everything I write, with foam and
waving hands and cuss words implied.
This story caught my attention like bright neon. Let's grab a
quote and get started. Judy Estrin, author, said:
"Estrin believes the causes of the financial crisis are
symptomatic of an issue that cuts across tech and other industries
throughout America. "The country overall has become increasingly
short-sighted," she said. "We don't think about long term
prosperity, but about short term greed and that's led to an
innovation deficit.""
I don't know about American business as a whole, but it sure
does describe some of the major players in tech, and the idea of
Microsoft sending people to a conference to wring their hands and
lament "Oh dear, the country is like all too greedy and
shortsighted, and what ever shall we do?" is so ludicrous I laughed
out loud. It's like alcoholics and gambling addicts ranting about
"the trouble with people is they have no self-control." It's like
serial killers complaining about how people are too violent and
bloodthirsty. It's like cats criticizing dogs for eating poop. Ok,
so maybe in cat culture there is a significant difference between
licking one's own behind and eating poop, but to me it's a pretty
meaningless distinction.
In another sterling example of diversion and lack of
self-awareness:
"Josephine Cheng, an IBM vice president and fellow at
its Almaden Research lab, suggested the problems in the U.S. were
partly because we have "too many MBAs and lawyers. We need to go
back and focus on basic science, technology and education and don't
[encourage] so many people" to become MBAs and
lawyers.""
While it's fun to pick on the MBA kids and lawyers, it's still
missing the point by a few orders of magnitude. Who hires all those
MBAs and lawyers? Why would any smart American kid want a tech
career with a big company? The tech industry has destroyed many of
the legal protections that US workers fought for decades to gain.
The perma-temp, the H-1B worker, doing away with time-and-a-half
for overtime, and outsourcing all proclaim "We don't value you at
all, and since slavery was outlawed we have been forced to invest
way too much time and energy into perverting labor laws, so you're
a double nuisance."
Other major disincentives are the lack of attractive upward
career paths for techies who don't want to be managers, and putting
technical decision-making and management in the hands of
non-technical managers.
Them Big Bad Lawyers
I tell ya, blaming the lawyers is a real giggle-inducer. Who hires
them? Who releases the hounds at the slightest provocation? Who
created this insane climate where nobody can say anything without
wondering when the polite fist inside the glove is going to land on
them? Who is responsible for the labyrinth of patents, copyrights,
EULAs, trademark laws, anti-free speech laws, DRM, anti-reverse
engineering, and all the other impediments to genuine creativity
and invention? It's not safe to invent and create openly, because
if you do it's like asking to be sued, or even worse, prosecuted
since these bozos have given us the enduring gift of criminalizing
what used to be civil matters, and creating whole new classes of
crimes that never used to exist, in the innovative new category of
"Whatever we don't like you to do is a crime". Thanks. Thanks a
lot.
It's Not "The Country"
None of these problems have anything to do with "This country's
going to heck in a handbasket, so it's the country's fault!" and
everything to do with the kind of world these titans of tech have
created for themselves. It's a swampy bureaucratic wasteland full
of legal minefields, and creepy little wild-eyed paranoid people
scuttling around clutching secrets to their chests and croaking
"Mine! Mine!"
Meanwhile, the example set by the FOSS world doesn't even exist
in their damp little realm. No paranoia, no non-disclosure
agreements, low barriers to entry, no secrets, and a small number
of lawyers. But a whole lot of creative ferment and open exchanges
of ideas, code, concepts, and all those other things that are
forbidden in the proprietary swamp.
Maybe I'm over-reacting and this particular meeting was just a
random bull session, not intended to actually accomplish anything,
but just a fun party. Though when I read this
I wonder if it isn't leading up to some kind of "Hey, we want to be
bailed out too!" deal:
"What is the role of government in stimulating
R&D?"
Mmkay. Sure. Dare I be so bold as to suggest if these giants of
tech would dismantle the barriers to creativity and invention that
they have spend decades and billions of dollars erecting, that
perhaps their perceived innovation problems would solve
themselves?
