The Linux Extremist

This has been a fairly humourless week, full of pressure at work and the sombre anniversary of September 11th. On a brighter note, there was a good joke to finish it off from an unexpected source, namely, the British Conservative Party.

Apparently the Conservatives hired a design agency to give them a new logo, the goal of which was to portray growth and renewal, yet reliability. The result of this exercise was a tree. Supposedly it’s an oak tree, but it looks more like a few random brushstrokes. Lord Tebbit, a Conservative peer, said it looked like a sprig of broccoli. To me, it’s hilarious: it’s another example of rebranding gone mad.

Let’s consider the tree as a symbol: perhaps you too have been walking through a park on a summer’s day, with blue skies and soft breezes, and the grass almost glows in the afternoon sunlight. As you stroll along, thinking how lovely England is at this time of year, your eyes happen upon a tree swaying gently in the breeze. Your pleasant reverie is then broken when a mongrel dog belonging to a tattooed gentleman drinking a can of Carling Black Label stops for a moment and marks its territory on its trunk.

I am not alone, to be sure, in making this mental connection. Nor am I alone, I am certain, in thinking this amateur piece of pop culture frou frou more belongs to London sophisticates who appreciate modern art than to the country as a whole.

The whole travesty goes to prove a particular point, which my father taught me long ago. It was a lesson learned from his work: his job involved going to various international organisations, meeting with businessmen, technologists and bankers. Out of this experience, he said, that he had discovered that beyond the wall that separates the powerful and famous from the rest of us, one finds that those on the other side aren’t any smarter than we are. In fact, they’re often more ignorant because they’re removed from what real life is like.

The new Conservative logo is a prime example. Does anyone really think that picking what can generously be described as a “soft focus tree” for a symbol actually means that the Conservatives are more electable? People on the other side of the wall think it does; people on this side believe that it’s much more important to have clear, beneficial policies which help the nation prosper. But then again, those on the other side of the wall think that it was Labour rebranding itself as “New Labour” and adopting a more modern appearance and outlook that won it power; in reality, it was policies that promised not to return us to the days when the unions went on strike every five minutes and left the dead unburied, plus a chance for a change that were the actual reasons why they won the day.

As in politics, the pattern holds true in business and technology. The walls that companies build between themselves and the public blind them from what it is that people actually want and need. A good example is the new Microsoft Zune music player. Because it looks like an iPod, functions like an iPod, Microsoft’s management thinks they’re on to a winner; all they need to do is somehow make it “cooler”. However, Microsoft has missed a trick, as Apple has been thinking beyond the wall and about the future: for example, this week Apple revealed their “iTV” device, which is going to speed up convergence between computer and digital television technology.

Of course, the emergence of Linux and BSD variants is also due to this wall. When one can’t get what they want or need from the marketplace, there is a tendency to go make your own. Many users have done just that.

Still, the wall does serve a purpose; it provides entertainment, certainly. Watching the Conservatives and Microsoft scurry about trying to figure out what it is that we want and being clueless in what they deliver is highly amusing. In the case of Microsoft, it gives something to which aspire against. But it should also be empowering for the individual; it’s clear that politicians are neither smarter nor more logical than the average citizen, perhaps with that being abundantly clear, more “average citizens” will take the plunge into politics and restore representative government.

Furthermore, as it’s clear that Microsoft is not led by great geniuses; perhaps as a result, more developers from atypical backgrounds will want to get involved in Open Source; this is already happening. The author bios for the O’Reilly book, “Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason” indicated this: Dave Rolsky, for example, “has worked as a paperboy, supermarket bagger, temporary secretary, ear-training and music theory teaching assistant, and every so often a computer programmer, specializing in Perl.” And yes, the Perl / Mason combination is an excellent solution.

Perhaps it would seem peculiar to think about the last Pope when one is discussing stupidity and potential responses to it. However, I can’t help but think of Pope John Paul II. He once said, “Stupidity is also a gift from God, but one mustn’t misuse it.” By challenging the foibles of those on the other side of the wall, stupidity is used as an impetus for improvement, whether in politics, technology or society. The presence of leaders in any sphere that are not that smart, should compel us to strive towards greater intelligence. Perhaps that is what the Pope meant; if so, as seems certain, he has been one of the few on the other side of that wall to whom “not that smart” would be an terribly inappropriate description.

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