What’s with the flame wars? As a human race we seem to be hard-wired into living in a state of binary. Good vs Evil. North vs South. Black vs White. iPhone vs BlackBerry. PHP vs ASP.NET. Java vs C++. Mac vs Windows. Israeli vs Palestinian. Russian vs American. East vs West. Ad tedium.
Bigger problem is it’s so easy to stir because the triggers and responses are so predictable. Which is why, I guess, it’s so tempting for anyone who’s bored and has the motivation to go “watch-what-happens-when-i-do-this”. Sometimes you don’t need an intentional agent though; things just happen by chance. When things do, the stuff that crawls out the woodwork never ceases to astound me…
Today was definitely a BlackBerry vs iPhone day. The BB service was out and just like that, all the “jokes” come tweeting out. Some even tried roping in the recently deceased to flesh out their attempts at humour like an amateur stand-up comedian high on bad drugs. Ugly.
Different technology, different software, different hardware- in fact different anything- exists for a reason. It’s just different. It does stuff differently. Not better, or worse necessarily (economics *should* weed out the bad over time). Just different. Some folk like iPhone, others Android. Others BlackBerry. Some don’t like any of the above. It doesn’t really matter. Each have their own purpose and fit their own- it’s why they all have *a* market share. Who really cares whose is bigger? It seems the classical jock envy pervades all facets of life and is gender-immune.
But if getting into a flame war, trolling or just stirring the pot is your thing, then so be it. I do think though, if we had to harness the collective creative energies of our generation (less the amateur stand-up comic wannabe’s maybe?) and directed it towards solving problems, rather than trying to trump each other on points, we would more than likely be half way to a half decent sustainable world.
But then again, going by what Batman said: “we’re defined by our actions”; I’m not sure it’s what we really want. Maybe being “in” with the #1 technology is more important…?