Luddites Always Lose

Trying to protect the status quo against a technologically superior alternative seems to me to be futile in the long-term, yet attempts are constantly being made. Some examples which spring to mind:

The RIAA and other businesses who feel (and are) threatened by the internet.
Prescriptivist grammarians (highly debatable, I know).
...others that I can't think of right now...
Ignoring BrainsAsaCheapCommodity.

The counter-point is that "In the long term we're all dead" (Keynes) and that people have developed some very effective techniques which can extend the short-term indefinitely. Unions have been able to keep existing workers protected for their life-time.

Examples of successful Ludditism:

Microsoft Windows (inferior to Mac, O/S2, Amiga, BSD, Linux etc.) Not to mention MS-DOS vs. DR-DOS!
VHS vs. Betamax (VHS successful due to better marketing and in spite of technical inferiority)
UNIX. Still here, but only until that timer dies a final death.
Emacs. What a kludge. Users refuse to join 21st Century.
Lisp. NuffSaid.

On the whole, I think this is too simplistic a concept to be useful, but I think having a page describing the concept is useful. -- AnAspirant

Remember, WorseIsBetter.

VHS vs Betamax (VHS successful due to better marketing and in spite of technical inferiority)

VHS won because Sony wanted manufacturers to pay for Beta licenses. Matsushita would let any manufacturer make a VHS deck for free.

Going CopyLeft (sort of) for the VHS license was still a marketing decision. What's surprising is that the lesson took (is taking?) so long to make it to other markets.

Undercutting the competition isn't a new strategy.

Some "new" stuff is fads, and some is progress, and some is a mix. There have been things like ExpertSystem?s that were the thing for a while. If you invested too much of your career in that, then you would have probably taken a big fall.

Timely example: I've seen paper and pen win vs PDA's more times than not, including for me.

The best thing is that you can put paper in your back pocket and are not out $50 - $500 if you accidently sit on it. Maybe when PDA's become as cheap as calculators those worries will be less.

This is all obviously a massive secret conspiracy led by the loggers and the paper mills to subvert the electronics industry. [You mean the LumberCartel]

See PersonalAnalogDevice for more on the paper-vs-PDA HolyWar.

Luddites should get credit for a win every time one of those computer projectors refuses to work but somebody had the sense to bring transparencies.

Do the Luddites also carry projector bulbs? For what projector? And how long do they have to wait for the bulb to cool down before they can handle it? Or did they think ahead to bring a plier type tool for handling the super-hot bulb?

Yes, it is possible to lose even with transparencies, but with the beamers, YouJustCantWin. Like they say at despair.com, "Quitters never win, winners never quit, but those who never win AND never quit are idiots."

[What boggles my mind is how people are willing to sit there and twiddle their thumbs while the keynote speaker and the conference chair press buttons and go begging for cables. Normally, if your demo doesn't go, you lose. Yet people will gladly suffer this indignity again and again.]

C.f. ConferenceQualityMetrics

What boggles my mind is how many seemingly otherwise competent speakers are helpless without visual aids. Especially those that merely repeat the words they are saying. I have this awful mental image of a PowerPoint Mass

Slide 3 Liturgy of the Word - First Reading - Psalm - Response: ..... - Verse1: ....

Now if the congregation will look at this next slide, it is now time to read the response in orange...

Mercy!

-- DavidBrantley

The local church that my wife goes to does this. Seriously. Sermons are delivered with Powerpoint slides.

Reminds me of this fabulous book: The Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of Indian Nations. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0871565099/qid%3D1052453195/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/103-4967931-8991809

Sometimes things are circular rather than "progressive". Mainframes were considered "outdated", but then suddenly big web servers became what mainframes used to be and were "in". "Mainframe" then was changed to mean an IBM/360 descendant rather than a big central machine because server vendors needed a catchier name. In other words the pendulum swings between thin clients and fat clients. Other possible pendulums may be data-centric software development versus code-centric, and [insert your favorite pendulum factor here]. The swinging happens mostly because vendors make money off of change rather than stability. If there is nothing new under the Sun....oops, I meant "sun", then promoting recycled ideas as new is the next best alternative for the vendors. -- top

CategoryRant