The Progressive has an interview with "social satirist" Lewis Black. Excerpt:
Q: You describe yourself as a socialist.Black: From the time I was kid, I saw the broader context of how we live here in the U.S. When I was twelve, I saw Edward R. Murrows Harvest of Shame and that was it. It led me to uncover the image versus the reality of how people live. I then learned to pronounce apartheid and saw the treatment of blacks here in this country as they struggled for civil rights. It made me question deeply and ask myself: How can people like migrant workers who are helping us eat not have a pot to piss in? I started learning about countries that have a share-the-wealth system and I said to myself, There is nothing wrong with that. This makes sense.
Capitalisms problem is that it has nothing to say about how to combat greed. For all the moralizing this country does, people dont get it: Theyre greedy. And its gotten worse in my lifetime. You dont even have to have socialism. I am talking about minimal things. Put money aside to fund playgrounds and high school football teams. Are you kidding me? The Grammy Awards has to make a plea to keep music in schools? I mean, what planet are we on? I guess I am asking another question in my work as well: What happened?
The latest online essay by Paul Graham, author of Hackers and Painters, is titled "Microsoft is Dead." A couple of excerpts:
A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite believe anyone would be frightened of them.
...
The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
