This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
I went to a conference for college newspaper editors at the University of Georgia in 2000. The goodie bag included a copy of a UGA professor’s book When MBAs Run the Newsroom. And prescient. Now they run everything and have no fucking clue what the business actually does.
Worse: they actively do not care. “I don’t know how to [insert business type here], but I know how to manage.” Like the former CEO of McDonald’s taking over (one of?) the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Who needs a PhD, MD, or knowledge of things like biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, etc., when you know how to uh… what was the goal again? Oh yes: “make number go up”.
I went to a conference for college newspaper editors at the University of Georgia in 2000. The goodie bag included a copy of a UGA professor’s book When MBAs Run the Newsroom. And prescient. Now they run everything and have no fucking clue what the business actually does.
Worse: they actively do not care. “I don’t know how to [insert business type here], but I know how to manage.” Like the former CEO of McDonald’s taking over (one of?) the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Who needs a PhD, MD, or knowledge of things like biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, etc., when you know how to uh… what was the goal again? Oh yes: “make number go up”.