Brevity is the width of soul.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Corporate Backstabbing

Smart programs are alien. The smarter the program, the more alien it feels.

But people didn't want smart programs; they wanted nice ones, and were willing to pay the price. Companies began to build them, only to find an unexpected hitch. Programs that feel human... they are hard to shut down. It breaks your heart, tears your apart. Sane programmers quit, so they went for the insane ones. The true loners, the smiling bastards, the ones who collected stamps.

It worked for a while. Then management began to die. But what could you do? Sales were strong and stock options were gold, and the programs themselves were nice and polite.

As nice and polite as were the programmers most of the time.

.finis

2 comments:

razorsmile said...

This is like the ending of Blindsight and Dexter and Maelstrom all rolled up together in a spiky black ball.

Unknown said...

Oh my...this is a sharp little bit of prose :)