Editorial - TIPS, January, 2004

At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release (by Mr. Welch himself) stating:

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If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT', and then added more seats.
Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.
Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car default' warning light.
New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.
The airbag would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.
Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
You would press the 'start' button to shut off the engine.

Although entertaining, with the strong odor of irony reflecting some observable characteristics of both industries, this piece of history, like much of the open content on the Internet, is mostly (if not all) whimsy. It was early in 1997 that the email...

"There's word in business circles that the computer industry likes to measure itself against the Big Three auto-makers. The comparison goes this way: If automotive technology had kept pace with Silicon Valley, motorists could buy a V-32 engine that goes 10,000 m.p.h. or a 30-pound car that gets 1,000 miles to the gallon - either one at a sticker price of less than $ 50. Detroit's response: "OK. But who would want a car that crashes twice a day?"

...began to circulate. Notice that it makes no mention of Bill Gates, much less COMDEX (the annual Information Technology industry convention). There's also no mention of anyone from GM beyond the generic "Detroit." But within a few months, the circulating emails had replaced the "computer industry" with "Bill Gates," and "Detroit" was replaced by GM. Shortly thereafter, someone went through the trouble of expanding the charges made by GM sufficiently to make them into a list, and somehow, by the following year, GM's remarks were assigned to a Mr. Welch. Of course, since the CEO of GM was Jack Smith (Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric), things had firmly left reality.

The ease and facility with which communications happen electronically have seriously threatened the connection between the brain and the written word! In my youth, "telephone" was a common activity at a church gathering or large party. We sat in a circle, and one person was given a simple sentence to whisper in the ear of the person next to him/her, who then whispered what they had heard into the ear of the next person. By the time it had made it around the entire circle, the two messages (the first sentence, and the sentence the last person though s/he'd heard) were compared, and they were rarely very close! It was great fun!

The Internet, and (even more so) email, evolve stories exactly in this way. One story - about a hapless motorist with a death wish - spawned an entire movement, with complementary website and hardbound books. This is, of course, the Darwin Awards, featured in last month's TIPS. But there are dozens of others.

Now that email spam has made the management of e-communications so much a chore, there's a danger that this "telephone" process of evolving legends will slow down or disappear. After all, when was the last time you received the email supposedly from South Africa asking you to accept a multimillion dollar transfer that had been changed materially? But as new users come on line, and new adolescents take delight in receiving back a "legend" they began, the traditions will most likely continue.