To Mill a Cockingbird

I cannot help it, and so I must apologize for my weakness in advance. I have a terrible weakness, a sin that appalls. I am a mocker, and a scoffer. The problem as I see it is that I don't mind being mocked, I cannot find it in me to mock God (which is foolish no matter how you look at it), but I have this indecent urge to mock some people.

It all has to do with blogging and other aspects of the information age which we are still negotiating. If this age were a blue ocean, some of us would be navigators, some would be commanders, some would be engineers, and some passengers. But there is this large number of people who attempt to sail the blue ocean while saying, 'Ships are dangerous. Signals from ship to ship are worse. Is that an oar or a semaphore flag?' and other such nonsense.

I've mentioned this in previous posts, and I'll mention it again. CEO of a certain service institution:

• "Apple is a failed company, why buy Apple?"
• "Apple, you don't know if it will still be around next year, we must get all students to buy tablet PCs!"
• "Blog is like a diary, why do you want to show your diary to everyone? If you have bad things to say, keep it to yourself! Right-minded people will never blog!"

One would think that the chagrin of being wrong repeatedly would send the offender down to the bilge. But this person is still pretending to be a blue ocean strategist. And he has accomplices too, people who say things like:

• "Blogging is evil!"
• "Your teachers know better than this Wikipedia nonsense!"
• "How can you believe what you read on the Internet and not what is in the newspapers?"

It is all very amusing.

I remember working in a place where if you used the Internet in your work, a few odd things happened. Firstly, you'd be given bonus points for 'IT Usage', which you had to report for every month. Secondly, people would blame you for any manifestation of 'Bad IT'. Thirdly, you would have to fight morons who would claim that showing a Word document on a projector was 'Good IT' while using MSN to communicate with students was 'Bad IT'.

At this point, most people born after 1980 (and some born before that) must be wondering if this is satire, unless they know whereof I am 'making mock'. No, sadly, it is all true. I remember that Word and PowerPoint were classified as 'IT Usage' and Excel and Outlook were not. Haha!

Guess what, dear readers? The SAME CREW is still sailing their ship out into the blue ocean. The SAME CREW that once told me, "It is a far better investment to cable up the whole place than to go wireless. Wireless is too risky an investment, the technology is untested." That was in 2000, many years after the invention of the radio.

How not to mock? And therefore, I have sinned.