There are no nations, there are no peoples, there are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no third worlds, there is no West! …The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
Network 1976
One pleasant day last week I turned on my computer. A few minutes later, I clicked open Microsoft Outlook, the program I utilize for e-mails. It did not open, no, instead of Outlook an orange block for Microsoft Office appeared, did little graphic dances for a couple of minutes, then gave me a dreaded error message. Repeatedly.
I pay for Office 365—which comes with tech support. Supposedly.
Oh, they did call me back after the mandatory wait, but the technician (with a name 18 letters long), despite spending hours with remote access to my computer, could not get the computer to open Outlook. He decided I needed to buy a newer version of Windows, then happily connected me with Microsoft Sales.
That nice lady quickly conformed my subscription information and credit card number, then gave me the long key of capital letters and numbers to open the newer operating system. Then, she transferred me to another technician.
That did not go well. Besides having an decipherable accent from a subcontinent far, far away, he told me that I needed to back-up every files on my computer on an external hard drive since I would lose every thing as part of the upgrade. That didn’t sound right, so, I asked for a supervisor. After ten minutes on hold I got cut off.
I called back. The odds of getting through to Microsoft twice in one day stand a bit higher than winning Powerball, twice.
So, stuck with a computer without an operating system (the old one got uninstalled as part of the ‘fix’ by the first technician), I called the computer repair place I use.
They managed to get the new operating system installed and the original problem (caused by remnants of old code hiding in the registry) fixed. They only charged me for an hour’s labor, $130.00.
Add-in the cost of Windows 10 and I paid $269 to be able to use my files on my computer.
At Microsoft By The Numbers they brag that more than one billion devices use Windows 10: I wonder how many users got extorted, as I did, to buy that upgrade.
Alas, what choice do we have? Yes, there are other word processing products, spreadsheets and operating systems not owned by Microsoft. They’re about as common as Teslas in Knox County, Missouri. To exist in the common world, to trade information for business or pleasure you need to use the standard programs – which all come from Microsoft.
Most every home in a town is served by just one electric company, one gas company and one sewer system. Since those arrangements are monopolies, they are regulated so that users have some protection from exorbitant rates and decent service gets, kinda, guaranteed.
Isn’t Microsoft a monopoly? Can a child in the age of COVID attend school without Microsoft products? Shouldn’t Microsoft be regulated like the gas company?
Or, is Microsoft that “vast and ecumenical holding company” Network warned us about? By controlling information do they control the world?
Glenn