Fuck my potential. What about my passion?
Jun. 16th, 2006 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsBill Gates announced last night that he is stepping down as Microsoft's chairman to pursue his other interest: directing the Gates Foundation, his philanthropic organization that has actually done some interesting and useful things along the way.
He made the announcement in front of a big cardboard state setting on which was written the current slogan of MS Business Solutions: "Your potential. Our passion." Reading the newspapers and actually watching the announcement, however, I realized just how deeply creeped out I am by Bill Gates, and I think I finally understood why.
Bill doesn't understand human beings. He views them as units in a production process, and his passion is to get you to do what he wants to the best of your ability. He really doesn't care what you want; indeed, his objective is to seduce you into doing what he wants. Part of his philanthropy is, I'm certain, rooted in humanitarian impulses, but they are to me unpleasant humanitarian impulses: this is not the humanitarianism of respect for your fellow human being, this is the dirgisme humanitarianism of seeing all of those intellectual resources, all those minds that could be doing something useful, instead scrabbling in the dirt for daily survival.
This is why Microsoft is the brutal beast that it is: if your passion is to write software that makes life more free, then it blunts MS's ability to channel your potential into their limited set of chosen outlets. We are the potential, the footsoldiers; Microsoft has the passion and gives the orders.
One newspaper today said of Gate's announcement, "Changing seats, but the mission stays the same: saving the world." That cape doesn't fit Bill very well, though.
I do hope the Gates Foundation does some philanthropic good; it has so far. I just fear that the cost of ongoing business with them is exactly like that of doing ongoing business with Microsoft, and unique organizations will someday find themselves vestigal organs stuck to the Foundation's side.
He made the announcement in front of a big cardboard state setting on which was written the current slogan of MS Business Solutions: "Your potential. Our passion." Reading the newspapers and actually watching the announcement, however, I realized just how deeply creeped out I am by Bill Gates, and I think I finally understood why.
Bill doesn't understand human beings. He views them as units in a production process, and his passion is to get you to do what he wants to the best of your ability. He really doesn't care what you want; indeed, his objective is to seduce you into doing what he wants. Part of his philanthropy is, I'm certain, rooted in humanitarian impulses, but they are to me unpleasant humanitarian impulses: this is not the humanitarianism of respect for your fellow human being, this is the dirgisme humanitarianism of seeing all of those intellectual resources, all those minds that could be doing something useful, instead scrabbling in the dirt for daily survival.
This is why Microsoft is the brutal beast that it is: if your passion is to write software that makes life more free, then it blunts MS's ability to channel your potential into their limited set of chosen outlets. We are the potential, the footsoldiers; Microsoft has the passion and gives the orders.
One newspaper today said of Gate's announcement, "Changing seats, but the mission stays the same: saving the world." That cape doesn't fit Bill very well, though.
I do hope the Gates Foundation does some philanthropic good; it has so far. I just fear that the cost of ongoing business with them is exactly like that of doing ongoing business with Microsoft, and unique organizations will someday find themselves vestigal organs stuck to the Foundation's side.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 09:35 pm (UTC)The chapter on Microsoft is (if I recall correctly) entitled, "Chairman Bill Leads The Happy Workers in Song."
Highly recommended. Ah, and here's someone's precis of it.