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« on: November 30, 2007, 04:20 AM »
People have lower standards nowdays. We expect less from our fellow members in society, our teachers, our government and are willing to accept more and more mediocrity, infringement of our rights, and are not supposed to judge others or have any expectations beyond the minimal because its not politically correct, is discriminatory, whatever.
Why should we expect anything different from our software. I see this trend across all facets of human endeavour - technology in areas such as cars, computing, consumer gadgets, political discourse, philosophy, morals and ethics in society. More and more it seems we are willing to settle for less.
Ok, I'm feeling extremely cynical, had a crappy week at work, can't sleep and am browsing geek msg boards at 2am so I'm not exactly contributing to the betterment of the human race and am probably not making too much sense.
But I truly do believe that a lot of great ideas, by the time they come to fruition, are a pale shadow of what their visionaries intended. Call it pandering to the lowest common denominator, dumbed down, getting distorted by marketing and management, its all the same.
True excellence is rare and even more rarely recognized and appreciated by the masses and mass media. Its easier to survive by not standing out and taking a risk, whether you are a software corporation trying to appease a customer base of billions of corporate clients who abhor change (like Microsoft has to do with each Windows release) or trying to go through airport security.
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