Apple – the new Evil Empire
p2pnet view P2P:- Umberto Eco (right) is an “Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist”, says the Wikipedia. He wrote The Name of the Rose, “an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory”, says the post.
Hollydud tried, and failed, to make a hit movie out of the book with Sean Connery as the hero monk.
Now, “Eco once wrote a memorable essay arguing that the Apple Mac was a Catholic device, while the IBM PC was a Protestant one”, said John Naughton yesterday in the Guardian under the headline ‘Forget Google – it’s Apple that is turning into the evil empire’.
Turning? It turned long ago.
Naughton goes on >>>
His [Eco's] reasoning was that, like the Roman church, Apple offered a guaranteed route to salvation – the Apple Way – provided one stuck to it. PC users, on the other hand, had to take personal responsibility for working out their own routes to heaven.
Eco’s metaphor applies with a vengeance to the new generations of Apple iDevices, which are rigidly controlled appliances. You may think you own your lovely, shiny new iPhone or iPad, but in reality an invisible virtual string links it back to Apple HQ at One Infinite Loop, Cupertino.
You can’t install anything on it that hasn’t had the prior approval of Mr Jobs and his subordinates. And if you are foolish enough to break the rules and seek your own route to salvation, then you may find when you next try to sync it with iTunes that it has turned into an expensive, beautifully designed paperweight.
If that isn’t power, then I don’t know what is.
Eco was also cited in a p2pnet comment, in 2007, to a piece by Chris Ovenden entitled “Six reasons to boycott Apple”.
What did Eco have to say all those years ago?
“The following excerpts are from an English translation of Umberto Eco’s back-page column, La bustina di Minerva, in the Italian news weekly Espresso, September 30, 1994″, said the Modern World, continuing >>>
Friends, Italians, countrymen, I ask that a Committee for Public Health be set up, whose task would be to censor (by violent means, if necessary) discussion of the following topics in the Italian press. Each censored topic is followed by an alternative in brackets which is just as futile, but rich with the potential for polemic. Whether Joyce is boring (whether reading Thomas Mann gives one erections). Whether Heidegger is responsible for the crisis of the Left (whether Ariosto provoked the revocation of the Edict of Nantes). Whether semiotics has blurred the difference between Walt Disney and Dante (whether De Agostini does the right thing in putting Vimercate and the Sahara in the same atlas). Whether Italy boycotted quantum physics (whether France plots against the subjunctive). Whether new technologies kill books and cinemas (whether zeppelins made bicycles redundant). Whether computers kill inspiration (whether fountain pens are Protestant).
One can continue with: whether Moses was anti-semitic; whether Leon Bloy liked Calasso; whether Rousseau was responsible for the atomic bomb; whether Homer approved of investments in Treasury stocks; whether the Sacred Heart is monarchist or republican.
I asked above whether fountain pens were Protestant. Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It’s an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me.
The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.
DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.
You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It’s true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions: When it comes down to it, you can decide to ordain women and gays if you want to.
Naturally, the Catholicism and Protestantism of the two systems have nothing to do with the cultural and religious positions of their users. One may wonder whether, as time goes by, the use of one system rather than another leads to profound inner changes. Can you use DOS and be a Vande supporter? And more: Would Celine have written using Word, WordPerfect, or Wordstar? Would Descartes have programmed in Pascal?
And machine code, which lies beneath and decides the destiny of both systems (or environments, if you prefer)?
“Ah, that belongs to the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic”, says Eco in Modern World, adding, “The Jewish lobby, as always … ”
Guardian – Forget Google – it’s Apple that is turning into the evil empire, March 6, 2011
Chris Ovenden – Six reasons to boycott Apple, October 4, 2007
Modern World – The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS, 1994
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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March 7th, 2011 at 2:13 pm
This corporatism is going to enslave us all. We have to eradicate all the corporatists before this turn into a world wide civil war.
Let’s start with the banks, Wallstreet and the entertainment industry.
March 11th, 2011 at 5:27 am
the retarded thing is….. Apple computers ARE PC’s