IBM monotheism

[Eric Rosenbloom]

>From a recent article by Thomas Frank

<http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0FQP/4519_130/69391563/p1/article.jhtml?term=%22Thomas+Frank%22>

"Business is the new religion; in an extraordinary historical reversal,
those who oppose it are arrogant elitists, frustrating the people's will.

"In 1998, a commercial for IBM's Lotus division danced across American
television screens to the tune of REM's Nietzschean anthem, "I Am
Superman". As throngs of humanity went about their business, a tiny
caption asked: "Who is everywhere?" In response, IBM identified itself
both with the people and with the name of God as revealed to Moses: the
words "I Am" scrawled roughly on a piece of cardboard and held aloft
from amid the madding crowd. The questions continued, running down the
list from omnipresence to omniscience and omnipotence -- "Who is
aware?", "Who is powerful?" -- while scenes of entrepreneurial
achievement pulsated by: an American business district, a Chinese
garment factory, a microchip assembly room, and the seat of divine
judgement itself, the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. "I
can do anything," sang a winsome computer voice."

Just a note about "monoculture" that I think speaks to the "evil" of IBM
and Disney and Miscrosoft and (yes!) state-sanctioned religion. They
aren't evil inherently. I don't feel conflicted participating in this
list over corporate-owned networks on computers (at home and work) that
keep Apple (barely) in their billions, or that IBM muscled in on Apple's
innovation (and then they leaped ahead by stealing ideas from Xerox) and
paid Microsoft for an operating system they bought cheap; and I've
enjoyed some recent Disney movies (Tigger and Dinosaur); and the week
after a drive on our department server failed, the manufacturer was
closed down, but looking inside it turned out to be an IBM disk, which
(thank God!) is still around; and this work that I do is for a Catholic
schoolbook publisher, whose ultimate goals I could not be more opposed to.

Anyway, it's the attitude, that urge, that psychosis to be the one, the
only, the arbiter and purveyor of all we are, do, and think that is evil
and must be opposed. Pynchon's ambivalence, seeing how compromised we
all are and how that is not really so bad, is not an excuse to let them
all off the hook. These monocultural entities, after all, have no
ambivalence about their purpose (money and power), so we have to
complicate their existence a bit, counter their simple-minded salvation.

Yours,
Eric R



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