Now, technology may not be a byword for paradox, but it sure is a tier of buzzards that pines for potluck to corral beneath their claws. In the blogosphere, and those of the same ilk, Engadget, TechCrunch, TechnoBuffalo, and perhaps other spiffy contenders straddle on an off-color competition - that is as dicey as the Operation Odyssey Dawn, and as naught as Donald Trump’s yearning to run for the Oval Office. In a larger scale, there’s even a more toothsome strife that has teetered in the recent years. Apple, Microsoft, and Google had plowed their ways into a walk-in closet, and while their effusive clemency, and hospitality, for each other had been woven into a flatulent garment on display, their intrigues to budge themselves off from the competitive cycle had been extracted as a diminutive handkerchief, stashed away in the dark corners of a pocket. Let’s pry deeper into the backwoods. The emetic Steve Ballmer, always taking sadistic approaches, and cutthroat methods, at one point, made himself a gangplank that is directed to his own corporate grave. What has Microsoft done since Windows XP, other than walking on eggshells and acting like a gofer at a honky-tonk, and getting on a deep binge that triggers a cautery to sputter consummate destruction on its inside? Meanwhile, Steve Jobs has unhitched his long-sealed laughter and doubles over at Ballmer’s antics. Over at Mountain Valley, Larry Page, along with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin, are all-together swaddled with a nostrum that guarantees to instill that gusto, and machismo - that they are the best. But they aren’t. The spry of a feeling parlays into an unbalanced cause-effect, but still sound than ever than a fluke at Redmond. This is the current shape of the technological clime, plastered with bitter words and wilting brainchild. And while they blither like those punching the hours at the Fifth Circuit, we the customers are vegetating in front of the idiot box, and are salivating the idea of next innovative technologies that will end up in our living rooms. And there is one pattern that I will field to, and besiege with a flotilla of explanations (hopefully): paradox in technology.
Despite the public outlook that Apple, Google, and Microsoft have at last turned their rundown weapons down to the creek, and have them picked up by a barge, we know that’s not been the case. The competition has been as roughshod as the objectivity of David McAllister. But in recent years, what had seemed like a dead cert came through the piccolo of Billy Barty, both “gargantuan” figures. Microsoft began developing its Office Suite on Mac, Google Chrome on the fields of OS X and Windows have stockpiled a chamber of ballyhoo here and there like the government’s dissolute infatuation with a game of checkers with Gaddafi. Microsoft and Google have been rabidly active with publication of their applications on the App Store. It occurs to me that despite this intertwining camaraderie between the crossly ruffians, Apple has only gawked at its competitors and embraced their cooperations with unwonted hospitality. And yet it has shown no sign of contributing. Questions align as “why aren't there Apple certified applications on the Windows Market Place, and why has Apple not stretched beyond the levee of Gates-driven frontier other than iTunes, Safari, and a little caressing with Bootcamp?” Such questions are marked with a blitz of mysteries and paradox, and inquiries of Apple’s scrawny efforts on collaboration are left unlettered.
I could reel off, or should I say reek off, a longer argument of paradox on technological grounds, but then my arguments would be moulded by a humdrum repetition of similar stories, and motions. So here goes the “there’s one more thing” scenario. And this one’s about Engadget and Joshua Topolsky’s leave of absence. Surely, people are thinking Topolsky has left Engadget in an outhouse, and some have even altercated his irresponsibility and wild goose-chase. If you had time to read my article that is somewhat germane to élan vital, you’d see there that though Apple would be disemboweled of its cerebrum when Steve Jobs moves on, Apple would not wilt for long. Likewise, Josh formed the edifice and footwork on which Engadget has had the capacity to resolve into such a braced-up website. I credit him for running Engadget like a cult-film, not the usual slapdash words pouted out by Bush, and for all the contributions he had made to Engadget. Now the paradox here may be invisible to the eyes of the provincial. But it is that time moves on, and visionaries are disposed. What would happen to Engadget in 6 years? Would they be rotting like a parchment in a ramshackle alcove? Then again, the answers to these questions are reprieved at least for now. This paradox, and all these open questions thatched under the smirk of nebula, would only be answered when we get there, the unpredictable future.
Kieran Greene