Friday 7 November 2008

Ugh!

Now I have a nasty internal conflict: IBM is the vendor of Informix, which I love, but it's now also clearly aiming its sights at the deeply unpleasant world-wide corporatist state agenda that I see coming over the next decade:

There are two things recent events have shown us these past weeks: how small and interconnected our world is. And that change is unavoidable.

Once our economies have stabilized, we will need to heed the call for change and address the systemic inefficiencies in our world's infrastructures—the processes that underpin the way billions of people work and live—and make our planet smarter.
Tell me that these words don't make your blood chill. Especially when you look at one of the successes they laud and where they are going:

We have just scratched the surface. Right now, IBM is working with thousands of forward-thinking companies, governments, universities and institutions to make our smarter world a better place to live where...

* Smarter roadways reduce traffic

We helped Stockholm implement a road charging system that reduced traffic by 20% and emissions by 12%.


Ugh. I can't believe my beloved Informix is part of this disgusting quasi-fascist bullshit.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're not aware that IBM has some form in supporting totalitarianism then?

Obnoxio The Clown said...

Oh, yeah. I just can't believe they haven't learned the lesson. :o(

Pogo said...

We helped Stockholm implement a road charging system that reduced traffic by 20% and emissions by 12%.

Those figures are odd... Either they reduced traffic volume by 20% but caused more congestion for the other 80% and consequently they used more fuel; or, they succeeded in reducing the number of smaller and/or more fuel-efficient cars in the "smarter roadways" zone. Not exactly a triumph of common sense or egalitarianism IMHO.