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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Meta-comment: I don't agree with everything in this post, but it made me think. It's a refreshing change from the echo-chamber posts that simply parrot whatever was last posted and either agree in breathless terms or disagree vociferously.

Suggestion to bloggers: When you read something that makes you excited or angry, resist the impulse to respond on the same terms. Ask yourself what important factor is being ignored in the current debate.

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As background: Charles Stross is a prolific science-fiction author. He's a smart guy with a lot of interesting things to say about the future of technology.

He's also an occasional contributor to HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross

He has written some great books about singularity like :

Singularity Sky : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky

Accelerando: (free ebook) http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.ht...

Not to mention this rather dark tale: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

He's a pithy writer, and he's probably right about Jobs' intentions. I do wish he'd drop that annoying British habit of referring to a company in the plural ("HP are ..."). It's distracting and flat-out bad grammar.

Relax. It's just a difference between British and American English. As for it being "distracting", it's not distracting if you're British. (And I expect it's no more distracting than certain features of American English are for British readers.)

We should campaign for female companies. Like ships, or countries used to be.

Thank you for explaining this.

Thanks, if I get back into fiction I'll look out for his work!

Well, there's his documentary on industry best practices, titled The Jennifer Morgue, featuring "software billionaire Ellis Billington".

(Possibly for legal reasons, it's billed as fiction ;-)

This would have to be the first time I've read a novel that includes communication with the dead and demons summoned via pentagram as a "documentary on industry best practices."

I thought such events only happened at Apple, and chiefly around leakers.

I know what you're trying to say, but if we are talking about software development, I have very little evidence that "communication with the dead and demons summoned via pentagram" are practices that are any less effective than techniques in widespread use such as attempting to specify the entire program in advance of development, attempting to remove defects during a "bug fix" phase at the end, or attempting to make up for schedule slips with forced overtime and canceling holidays.

;-)

You've obviously never been in the room when someone wants to "call in the consultants to wave a dead chicken over the database" on a floundering ERP project.

Oh gods, the horror, the horror.

He's definitely a smart guy and an excellent writer. Very insightful article.

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