algebraist's Journal: The Misperception

A contemporary ad for a telecommunications company says, in major part,

Business is about relationships. Technology is the easy part.

I say, "Bullshit."

Such is a huge misrepresentation of the nature of enterprise, and of reality, for that matter. New technology does not grow on trees. New technology is not about wrappers or presentation. New technology is hard to get, hard to win. New technology does not come without patience and investment in time. New technology is based largely upon science, and both are in large measure dependent upon luck, however educated.

The idea that cashing technology in demands the placation of gatekeepers, the involvement and appeasement of many who sit between an idea and financial success does not empower them. To the contrary, it shows them for the leeches and worthless wall-dressers they are, and, to the extent our culture praises them, however implicitly, the degree of its perversion.

What happened to the admiration for the Wright brothers, or George Westinghouse, or Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, or Thomas Edison, however single-minded on financial success he was, or for the strange but admirable genius of a Nikola Tesla?