This essay by Dick Gabriel is cute, short (one page), and worth reading. Dick has a long history of thought-provoking good-news bad news jokes: this one’s about outsourcing and executive compensation.
By the way, Dick was great Lisp programmer at Stanford who founded a great Lisp company and sold it to his competitor to go work in computer science labs. Then he dropped out of tech at to get an MFA in poetry at a relatively advanced age. He writes, talks to anyone who will listen, and is a great curmudgeon. Reminds me a lot of John. Check out the photo. Better yet, check out his other writings at his Dreamsongs site.
Related Posts:
- by Harold July 24, 2023 Back at the end of June, Canada passed C-18, aka "The Online News Act," a law designed to make Google and Facebook negotiate with news…
- by Harold November 8, 2021 5G has been accused a lot of ridiculous things -- causing Covid, causing cancer, causing autism. This article provides a list of 9 separate conspiracy…
- by Harold March 15, 2022 It isn't the sultry Regency drama of Bridgerton, the action psycho-drama of Moon Knight, or even the, um, whatever the heck Human Resources is. But…
- by Harold August 29, 2023 In July, the Media and Democracy Project filed a Petition to Deny the license renewal of Fox29 (WTFX-TV) in Philadelphia. The Petition rests on a…
- by Harold October 14, 2022 Economist/NYT opinion writer Paul Krugman coined the term "Zombie idea" to describe an idea that, despite being repeatedly refuted with evidence, keeps coming back. Not…
- by Harold June 30, 2023 We have been debating, on and off, about the issues around artificial intelligence and AI governance for some time now. Here at Public Knowledge, we…
About Stearns
Howard Stearns works at High Fidelity, Inc., creating the metaverse.
Mr. Stearns has a quarter century experience in systems engineering, applications consulting, and management of advanced software technologies. He was the technical lead of University of Wisconsin's Croquet project, an ambitious project convened by computing pioneer Alan Kay to transform collaboration through 3D graphics and real-time, persistent shared spaces. The CAD integration products Mr. Stearns created for expert system pioneer ICAD set the market standard through IPO and acquisition by Oracle. The embedded systems he wrote helped transform the industrial diamond market. In the early 2000s, Mr. Stearns was named Technology Strategist for Curl, the only startup founded by WWW pioneer Tim Berners-Lee. An expert on programming languages and operating systems, Mr. Stearns created the Eclipse commercial Common Lisp programming implementation.
Mr. Stearns has two degrees from M.I.T., and has directed family businesses in early childhood education and publishing.
“Reminds me of John.”
I’m honored. Now if only I had been a great Lisp programmer and founded a company and sold it before going off to become a “writer.” That would have been a somewhat more rational plan.
As to the outsourcing idea: executive compensation is the great con game that gives the lie to that tired cant about capitalism and meritocracy.