When Technology Becomes a Religion
Oratoire St-Jospeph in Montreal
Since the very beginning, technology has always brought about a fierce need, in many of us, to defend and protect our choices — our favorite tools. Be it Vi versus Emacs, open source versus closed source, Mac versus Windows or XBox versus Playstation, there’s no escaping it : visiting an online forum or starting a discussion with anyone just about guarantees that an argument will ensue. And you would think these would largely be done by teens, but even a discussion between a group of adults usually ends in an argument.
It’s a phenomenon I’ve never quite understood even if I will readily admit that I spent years doing exactly that. I used to think that anyone not using Linux was just plain wrong. These days, I still have preferences when it comes to my text editor of choice (Textmate and vi) or my OS of choice (OS X), but I’ve taken a decision long ago to stop arguing and just accept that at the end of day, it’s always about a personal preference and when it comes to personal preference, there really is no right or wrong answer.
The real question though, is why. Why do we feel the need to defend our choices that much? It’s especially funny when you consider people are defending giants like Apple, Microsoft or Sony and accusing the other of being evil, wrong or incapable of doing a good product. If there are anyone out there who don’t need help defending themselves, it’s companies like these with tens of thousands of employees and billions in revenue.
It’s too bad because what we’re losing is not just a possibility to have interesting discussions online (although that would be nice) but all these “wars” (among not companies or products but by the fans) really only serves one purpose : slowing doing innovation and confusing the less experienced who are often intimidated when asking a question online. Do a test: ask if you can play online on your XBox 360 and within a few responses you’ll have people suggesting a PS3 because it’s free. A few more posts after those and you’ll have a argument for several pages about which one is better.
My solution to all this? It really pained me when I realized what I had started doing, but I now almost never say again too negative about any piece of technology or company. There’s just no point to it. Some will applaud you, some will explain to you just how stupid you are.
It’s too bad we can’t agree to disagree. The Web would be such a better place.