While I'll be mentioning Apple below, I suspect thousands of bloggers are disgorging on the announcement that Apple computers will run the Windows operating system, so I won't wade into that mess. Instead, I'd just like to note a Lee Gomes column in today's WSJ discussing Apple's 30th birthday (can you trust a company over 30?). He suggests Apple started this whole notion you see in the tech world that technology has a moral component, and that your technology adoption choices can somehow reflect your moral compass. We see moral language in the IP debate, in net neutrality, in the open-source movement, the list goes on. Here's a passage from Gomes' column:

The most distilled expression of this idea was the company's famous Super Bowl commercial the year the Macintosh was introduced. Because of the new machine, said the commercial, 1984 wouldn't be like "1984." It featured a trim blonde jogger smashing a giant screen on which Big Brother was addressing his proletarians. The ad never made clear how bit-mapped screens and an icon-based user interface would help the world escape an Orwellian nightmare, or why Big Brother (IBM, back then) wouldn't just co-opt them, as ultimately happened.

Less well-remembered, but even more self-righteous, was the Apple Super Bowl commercial the following year, called "Lemmings." It showed an endless line of blindfolded office workers humming, "Off to work we go," and following each other over a cliff. Only when the announcer mentions the impending arrival of Macintosh Office, whatever that was, does one of the workers take off his blindfold and escape the fate of the others.

Watching the commercial today -- it's easy to find through any search engine -- it's hard to believe it wasn't being played for laughs. It wasn't. At the time, Apple was dead serious.

Thus did Apple help invent the technological crusade -- our technology empowers, theirs subjugates -- that became the pattern for others. Apple vs. IBM morphed into Apple vs. Microsoft, which spawned all manner of tributaries, with Linux vs. commercial software and bloggers vs. non-bloggers among the most noteworthy.

Now, of course, the worm has turned. In France, Apple has become the predatory monopolist, at least according to the egalité-minded French parliamentarians trying to enact a law that will force the company to open up its music technology, iPod and iTunes, to competitors. And IBM is playing the social virtue card by championing Linux in its fight with Microsoft.

It's hard to have a reasoned debate when your opponent believes the debate is a moral one and he/she has the moral high ground. Markets don't concern themselves with morality. My mom had a 1980's IBM PC, I owned an original Apple Macintosh; I had in my opinion a far superior machine, but I think my mom could reasonably dispute any claim I might make that Mac ownership made me a more moral person.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 1:35 PM | Free Culture Movement

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