16 ms·

The Jason Bourne Aesthetic

205 points by akkartik 11y ago

noonespecial 11y ago
"The world is seven billion people swimming in a boiling froth of water, oil, guns, steel, race, sex, language, wisdom, secrets, hate, love, pain and TCP/IP." Yep. There's my quote of the week.
- bjt 11y ago
  Mine: > More to the point, this is why the soi-disant-designer snob ... comes across as such a douchebag. It’s not “minimalist” if you buy a new one every two years; it’s conspicuous consumption with chamfered edges.
  - fyolnish 11y ago
    Weren't we also buying a new laptop every 2 years back when they had removable batteries?
    - detaro 11y ago
      Some people certainly were, many didn't (or did and gave the old one to someone else to use for a while). I study CS and I think most people have had their laptops for 3 or 4 years now. (only exception-pattern I can think of were people who jumped at retina screens)
    - technomancy 11y ago
      I'm still rocking my 2009 Thinkpad after passing on my 2007 model (too heavy for my tastes) to my kids.
      - tinco 11y ago
        I'm still using my mid 2009 macbook. The battery is not that unremovable, it's just screwed in. I upgraded to 8gb ram and SSD as most have. Thanks to Apples move to super weak hardware you can't buy a new one that's better for the same price.
  - benihana 11y ago
    Ah, he found me out. I'm buying a new laptop every three years to impress strangers so they think I'm rich and are impressed with my status. Definitely not because my entire existence has happened in a time where the amount of transistors on a circuit doubling every 18 months was essentially considered a fact of nature.
    - mfoy_ 11y ago
      Just because the next model has twice the whatever doesn't mean you need to get it. The only reason people upgrade on such a nice, predictable cycle is because of planned obsolescence.
nulltype 11y ago
I'm not sure I buy the contrast between old computers and macbooks. The smallest replaceable part on a MacBook is the entire MacBook (excluding any wired or wireless peripherals), but the smallest in a normal computer might be the CPU. The CPU cannot be repaired except by replacing the entire thing. You can't repair a CPU or a MacBook, so it seems the the only real difference is how much it costs to replace the broken part. I like to think that as moores law ends and computers stop being obsolete we may get to a point where a computer could be passed down generations like a solid dining room table. In that case maybe it makes more sense to be able to repair it and people build them that way. Or maybe computers cost nothing and it's like bequeathing a pez dispenser.
- dijit 11y ago
  CPU's have been soldered to the motherboards of most laptops for an age now. Memory is beginning to be soldered to the motherboard too- I'm dubious as to how upgradable or modular the next generation will be.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    The “soldered to the motherboard” memory on a $400 computer today costs 10,000 times less than the same quantity of memory in 1995. What’s the point of making something repairable generations down the line when nobody is going to still want it because you’ll be able to buy 10 new ones that are each 100 times better for the same price. The only computer parts from <2000 that are still worth keeping around today are the keyboards, and maybe the laser printers.
    - miahi 11y ago
      The soldered memory also tends to cost the end-user double than exactly the same memory that is user-replaceable. Just because they can charge more for the "upgrade".
    - mycelium 11y ago
      I think this is basically true of software as well.
unexistance 11y ago
seems interesting, gonna save for later reading, BUT the hook for me, Bond/Bourne relation to the salaryman at their respective time... awesome stuff, so far :)
triangleman 11y ago
Can today's Thinkpads still hang with the best of them? (typed on a recently-upgraded late 2006 MBP)
- chr 11y ago
  triangle, how did you "upgrade" the MBP you mentioned? Once ram is at 3 gig and the hard drive is SSD, is there anything else to do?
  - triangleman 11y ago
    Isn't that good enough? SSD in particular is a huge speed boost.
- hyperion2010 11y ago
  I'm on my 3rd thinkpad. First one was a T30 that I got 12 years ago. I used it for 4 years and my mother for 4 years after that. I still have it and it still runs but it is now made out of parts from two T30s, the original, whose screen died, and another that had a bad hard drive. My T60p I used for 4 years and then my mother for 4 more years, it had to have its cpu fan replaced once about 6 years into its life, otherwise it is sitting here next to me in perfect working order. I'm 3 years into a first gen X1 Carbon, it runs perfectly. The only annoyance is that I can't get at the battery to replace it. I'd be a bit happier if it had a 2560x1440 screen since then there would really be no need for an upgrade ever again, but as it stands I expect to be able to use it for at least another 5 years. Build quality on the newer T series feels like shit to me, but I haven't spent enough time with them to be able to judge and they are so new we don't really have any data yet. edit: seeing the link to the potential retro thinkpad, that I would get without a second thought
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    I'm on the 3443CTO revision of the X1 Carbon. The "carbon" part of it is starting to fall apart, the palmrest creaks and I really should have bought it a week later when the i7 with 8GB of RAM was available - 4GB and an i5 feels restrictive (what a sad statement on current software optimisation) Oh, and you can only get ~6 hours of battery out of it with very particular settings and a specific power management driver in Windows 8. Otherwise it's 3-4 hours at best.
robochat42 11y ago
Well then we're all Bob Howard from the Laundry. The unassuming backroom guy who knows his way around a computer yet surprisingly can hold it together when confronted with gibbering Lovecraftian monsters from beyond the void. Has an iphone that can kill demons, the senior management are keen to push him up the ladder and has a wife who is clearly out of his league.
SignMeTheHELLUp 11y ago
This is the most pretentious article I remember reading in recent history but it seems the author has a few interesting points. Can anyone do a tl;dr in plain english?
- 21echoes 11y ago
  Design as crafty/minimalism/apple's aesthetic is irresponsible in that it refuses to acknowledge that things can break. Design which pays attention to the reality of a thing's environment and usage patterns, and which does not prompt conspicuous consumption of every brand new version after even the slightest failure of the old, is better.
  - arrrg 11y ago
    Nah, it’s just realistic about the extent to which most users will want to repair their devices …
    - technomancy 11y ago
      Well, let's call that out then--folks should be honest that they buy un-repairable hardware at least partly because they enjoy having an excuse to get the latest model two years down the line.
      - arrrg 11y ago
        I don’t think two years is the average life time of a current MacBook. I would guess maybe three, four years, maybe even longer. Most problems will crop up during the first year and be fixed on warranty. Mechanically the devices are very solid and will survive for many years. The biggest issue is the battery, really, and probably the power supply, both of which are costly (maybe 25% or so more than a replacement battery for another laptop, plus you have to bring in the MacBook to get it replaced, you can’t do it yourself), but can be replaced. Most people will just not do that, though, and live with diminished battery life and fraying power supply cables. I think you are stuck in your filter bubble if you think people want to buy a new one quickly. Many will live happily with a current MacBook for many years. A decade ago the situation was a bit different (and performance crummy), but nowadays the speed is there.
jevgeni 11y ago
I can see the point. My hobby is photography. I love my Nikon D5300 to bits, but after a year of usage two buttons are stuck and the eyecup needs replacing. And then there are people using twin reflex cameras from the 50s and they run like butter...
- leonroy 11y ago
  Having had one of these old cameras I can tell you they are not immune from the ravages of age! They do need a good service periodically!
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    Thank you for the advice. I kind of reckoned one would need to. I'm about to buy one and currently looking, if there are shops that do repairs, if need be.
- StavrosK 11y ago
  Could it be because your camera is now pretty much a whole photography studio in a compact package, and to make it as sturdy as those old cameras that had three moving parts it will need to cost twice as much?
  - jevgeni 11y ago
    Of course. I believe, it's because of the manufacturer's (and the consumers') changed priorities. I think when a product arrives at a certain level of quality, it's difficult to see a difference, unless you have very good knowledge of the subject matter. For example, I don't know how to tell the difference between the quality of Carl Zeiss Planar and Tessar lenses. Or when I would need to. But as a company you need to differentiate yourself. Hence, you go digital, then you introduce all kinds of gizmos, built-in HDR processing, retouching capabilities, etc., etc. You save on the build quality to be able to claim the pole position in the megapixel race. Understandable, but does not cover the whole market.
    - 11y ago
JulianMorrison 11y ago
This might be an interesting reply: https://www.fairphone.com/phone/ https://www.fairphone.com/phone/ - it's not exactly a clunky brick, and it's completely modular and user-serviceable (at the level of modules, anyhow). Apple didn't pare down the openness, they designed it out. They've been actively hostile to user servicing since the toaster mac (that you couldn't even open without a proprietary tool).
- rsync 11y ago
  Thanks very much for sharing this link - I had not heard of the fairphone before. Predictably huge at 5+ inches screen diagonal, but I guess that's to be expected these days.
joe563323 11y ago
Interesting and thought provoking comparison b/w James Bond and Jason Bourne.
- lemevi 11y ago
  It's mostly nonsense. You can invent comparisons like this, which are really just half-baked and not very convincing attempts at social science deconstruction, between any number of things and it may appear to be just as thought provoking. I am sure that the generation that watched James Bond in the 1960's trusted their employers more than action movie watchers of the last decade but Bourne stories are about government conspiracies and the first book was written even before Iran Contra deals were known and president Reagan took office.
  - devbug 11y ago
    There were no government conspiracies prior to Iran-Contra affair?
    - lemevi 11y ago
      No, not saying that. Pentagon Papers and Watergate come to mind.
ucaetano 11y ago
It is interesting to compare Bond with Smiley. While Bond is whom the salesman aspired to be, Smiley is whom he would actually become. The expense account is a reptile fund over drafted by senior management for spurious expenses, he travels, but to cold and boring places, usually on a budget and staying out of sight in cramped hotels and safe houses. Instead of sleeping with beautiful women, he spends most of his time working, and being cheated on by his detached wife. And when he actually makes it to the top, he just finds himself overburden with political machinations, stakeholder management, and longing for the time when he'd actually get something done.
- smcl 11y ago
  What is this? I googled the term and got a bunch of smiley pictures and a horror film released relatively recently. Edit: should have googled better, it's this smiley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smiley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smiley
- mturmon 11y ago
  Very perceptive. Introducing a third data point helps to clarify that there is more to the story of how we went from Bond to Bourne than just millennial job anxiety. There was quiet desperation back in the Bond era too.
  - ucaetano 11y ago
    Plenty of it, remember Pink Floyd's "Time" from TDSOTM: "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way"
- sago 11y ago
  I watched a fascinating interview with a former MI6 manager. This was probably about 10 years ago. The interviewer made some comment about the men she had to manage: the agents. She said, effectively 'men?'. The Grey Man principle is a good one, as far as it goes, except maybe the gender. Fictional spies are interesting reflections of social angst, but I think we're about ready now for a fictional Valerie Plame.
JohnBooty 11y ago
Understand that PCs were end-user fixable and upgradeable by accident. The intention was never for you, the person who bought your computer, to be able to pop a new CPU into your Compaq five years later. Standardized, modular parts were always all about the OEMs, who were all trying to build an industry by cloning the IBM PC. They could have a variety of manufacturers making various components and as long as everybody followed the standards, they could pick and choose parts to create SKUs for various needs and then sell them to you, the end-user. The fact that a twenty year-old me could spend a summer saving up for the parts to build a brand-new Pentium II computer and then spend an exciting weekend putting it all together was a side effect of all that. A side effect many of us enjoy, obviously. And a side effect that developed into a small industry of its own, with various companies (even Intel and AMD at times) targeting the "enthusiast builder" community. When you understand this, though, things like soldered-on memory and CPUs make sense. The reasons why your 1988 Compaq had standardized IDE drives and memory slots are utterly inapplicable to a 2015 MacBook. I hate the non-hackable place to which PC hardware is headed, but I don't get angry at it. Almost no other category of consumer good works in the modular way that we nerds wish that everything would. Aside from the fact that they run on the same gasoline you can't put Chevy stuff into a Ford; you can't even put Ford F-150 stuff into a Ford Fusion. Your toaster oven, your ceiling fan, and your lawn mower are the same way.
- ginko 11y ago
  >Almost no other category of consumer good works in the modular way that we nerds wish that everything would. One exception I can think of are bicycles.
  - jbl 11y ago
    Although, even bicycles (at least those designed for racing) are starting to become more and more proprietary. Try mixing and matching Shimano and Campagnolo shifters and derailleurs or using a seatpost from an aerodynamic frame in another one.
    - cujo 11y ago
benihana 11y ago
That was a lot of words to say Apple is wrong about design and I'm right and I wish someone would realize this and build something that suits me exactly.
- hawleyal 11y ago
  But it was written well and entertaining.
legulere 11y ago
Modularity has advantages (repairability, upgradability, switching out manufacturers) and also disadvantages (cost, design constraints). The way I'm seeing it technological advance is changing how big those are. I still remember how soldered on cpus were seen as a problem with laptops. I don't know anyone who ever upgraded their cpu (might be that it was more common earlier). Laptop batteries today are way better than what they used to be. They used to hold maybe 2 or 3 years before having unusable usage times. The development in RAM is stagnating. And of course Apple now is so big that they can just dictate proprietary connectors.
hawleyal 11y ago
Besides the point, but there are quite a few typos in this piece.
rsync 11y ago
I really, really miss the days when there was more than one manufacturer of computers. I think it was in 2002/2003 when I was last in the market for a non-apple device and there was a lot of interesting competition ... thinkpads, sony vaio, HP ... Dell had some great laptops ... there was actually a reason to scroll through gizmodo/engadget and look at new products coming out. Now there's only one.[1] I really do think that the macbook air is the final evolution of the laptop computer. Yes, I do wish I could pull the battery and yes I do miss PCMCIA and yes I cannot use a laptop with a single port[2] but the 13" MBA that I bought in late 2008 lasted 7 years of hard use and three battery swap-outs (done by apple, of course).[3] I don't really understand why other manufacturers can't make a MBA ... I'd like to see some minor competition along the very, very final bits of design latitude you can have in this thoroughly distilled form factor ... but for whatever reason Dell/HP/Sony/Lenovo refuse to just make their laptops out of metal for god's sake. I wonder if this is where we are going with high end cars ? I notice the exact same inability to function on the part of all the incumbent car manufacturers. It's how many years since the Prius came out and how many years since the Tesla roadster and Porsche just announced an all electric car and of course it's a concept car?[4] BMW has a brand new 7 series with the predictably lame hybrid option mated to some little lawnmower engine. Just concept cars and half-assed hybrids over and over again. Meanwhile, Tesla has a dual-motor, AWD supercar for sale. There used to be more than one maker of high end four door luxury cars ... [1] Well, actually there's two - apple for laptops/desktops and supermicro (god bless them) for anything that goes in a rack. [2] New macbook 12" with the single combined USB/power. [3] Actually it still works now, but I get a new 11" MBA. [4] http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/autos/porsche-debuts-first-electric-car-mission-e/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/autos/porsche-debuts-first-e...
- edison_carter 11y ago
  > I don't really understand why other manufacturers can't make a MBA... Lenovo's Carbon X1 is that machine for me. I carried an Air (running Debian) for a couple of years. I've since replaced it with a Carbon X1, and there's nothing I miss about the Air. The Carbon is simply fantastic.
  - 11y ago
mud_dauber 11y ago
I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
curiousjorge 11y ago
They took everything he had, and promised that if he gave himself up to the System, in return the System would take care of him. It turned out to be a lie. We’re all Jason Bourne now. I read this with a tongue in cheek but walked away with a profound sense of camaraderie and Tyler Durdene feels. This last few setences. WOW. As a Jason Bourne fan, I can now be him.
JSeymourATL 11y ago
> He can’t trust his employer, who demanded ultimate loyalty and gave nothing in return. Jason Bourne, Independent Contractor & Free Agent.

205 points by akkartik 11y ago

"The world is seven billion people swimming in a boiling froth of water, oil, guns, steel, race, sex, language, wisdom, secrets, hate, love, pain and TCP/IP." Yep. There's my quote of the week.

bjt 11y ago
Mine: > More to the point, this is why the soi-disant-designer snob ... comes across as such a douchebag. It’s not “minimalist” if you buy a new one every two years; it’s conspicuous consumption with chamfered edges.
- fyolnish 11y ago
  Weren't we also buying a new laptop every 2 years back when they had removable batteries?
  - detaro 11y ago
    Some people certainly were, many didn't (or did and gave the old one to someone else to use for a while). I study CS and I think most people have had their laptops for 3 or 4 years now. (only exception-pattern I can think of were people who jumped at retina screens)
  - technomancy 11y ago
    I'm still rocking my 2009 Thinkpad after passing on my 2007 model (too heavy for my tastes) to my kids.
    - tinco 11y ago
      I'm still using my mid 2009 macbook. The battery is not that unremovable, it's just screwed in. I upgraded to 8gb ram and SSD as most have. Thanks to Apples move to super weak hardware you can't buy a new one that's better for the same price.
- benihana 11y ago
  Ah, he found me out. I'm buying a new laptop every three years to impress strangers so they think I'm rich and are impressed with my status. Definitely not because my entire existence has happened in a time where the amount of transistors on a circuit doubling every 18 months was essentially considered a fact of nature.
  - mfoy_ 11y ago
    Just because the next model has twice the whatever doesn't mean you need to get it. The only reason people upgrade on such a nice, predictable cycle is because of planned obsolescence.

nulltype 11y ago

I'm not sure I buy the contrast between old computers and macbooks. The smallest replaceable part on a MacBook is the entire MacBook (excluding any wired or wireless peripherals), but the smallest in a normal computer might be the CPU. The CPU cannot be repaired except by replacing the entire thing. You can't repair a CPU or a MacBook, so it seems the the only real difference is how much it costs to replace the broken part. I like to think that as moores law ends and computers stop being obsolete we may get to a point where a computer could be passed down generations like a solid dining room table. In that case maybe it makes more sense to be able to repair it and people build them that way. Or maybe computers cost nothing and it's like bequeathing a pez dispenser.

dijit 11y ago
CPU's have been soldered to the motherboards of most laptops for an age now. Memory is beginning to be soldered to the motherboard too- I'm dubious as to how upgradable or modular the next generation will be.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  The “soldered to the motherboard” memory on a $400 computer today costs 10,000 times less than the same quantity of memory in 1995. What’s the point of making something repairable generations down the line when nobody is going to still want it because you’ll be able to buy 10 new ones that are each 100 times better for the same price. The only computer parts from <2000 that are still worth keeping around today are the keyboards, and maybe the laser printers.
  - miahi 11y ago
    The soldered memory also tends to cost the end-user double than exactly the same memory that is user-replaceable. Just because they can charge more for the "upgrade".
  - mycelium 11y ago
    I think this is basically true of software as well.

unexistance 11y ago

seems interesting, gonna save for later reading, BUT the hook for me, Bond/Bourne relation to the salaryman at their respective time... awesome stuff, so far :)

triangleman 11y ago

Can today's Thinkpads still hang with the best of them? (typed on a recently-upgraded late 2006 MBP)

chr 11y ago
triangle, how did you "upgrade" the MBP you mentioned? Once ram is at 3 gig and the hard drive is SSD, is there anything else to do?
- triangleman 11y ago
  Isn't that good enough? SSD in particular is a huge speed boost.
hyperion2010 11y ago
I'm on my 3rd thinkpad. First one was a T30 that I got 12 years ago. I used it for 4 years and my mother for 4 years after that. I still have it and it still runs but it is now made out of parts from two T30s, the original, whose screen died, and another that had a bad hard drive. My T60p I used for 4 years and then my mother for 4 more years, it had to have its cpu fan replaced once about 6 years into its life, otherwise it is sitting here next to me in perfect working order. I'm 3 years into a first gen X1 Carbon, it runs perfectly. The only annoyance is that I can't get at the battery to replace it. I'd be a bit happier if it had a 2560x1440 screen since then there would really be no need for an upgrade ever again, but as it stands I expect to be able to use it for at least another 5 years. Build quality on the newer T series feels like shit to me, but I haven't spent enough time with them to be able to judge and they are so new we don't really have any data yet. edit: seeing the link to the potential retro thinkpad, that I would get without a second thought
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  I'm on the 3443CTO revision of the X1 Carbon. The "carbon" part of it is starting to fall apart, the palmrest creaks and I really should have bought it a week later when the i7 with 8GB of RAM was available - 4GB and an i5 feels restrictive (what a sad statement on current software optimisation) Oh, and you can only get ~6 hours of battery out of it with very particular settings and a specific power management driver in Windows 8. Otherwise it's 3-4 hours at best.

robochat42 11y ago

Well then we're all Bob Howard from the Laundry. The unassuming backroom guy who knows his way around a computer yet surprisingly can hold it together when confronted with gibbering Lovecraftian monsters from beyond the void. Has an iphone that can kill demons, the senior management are keen to push him up the ladder and has a wife who is clearly out of his league.

SignMeTheHELLUp 11y ago

This is the most pretentious article I remember reading in recent history but it seems the author has a few interesting points. Can anyone do a tl;dr in plain english?

21echoes 11y ago
Design as crafty/minimalism/apple's aesthetic is irresponsible in that it refuses to acknowledge that things can break. Design which pays attention to the reality of a thing's environment and usage patterns, and which does not prompt conspicuous consumption of every brand new version after even the slightest failure of the old, is better.
- arrrg 11y ago
  Nah, it’s just realistic about the extent to which most users will want to repair their devices …
  - technomancy 11y ago
    Well, let's call that out then--folks should be honest that they buy un-repairable hardware at least partly because they enjoy having an excuse to get the latest model two years down the line.
    - arrrg 11y ago
      I don’t think two years is the average life time of a current MacBook. I would guess maybe three, four years, maybe even longer. Most problems will crop up during the first year and be fixed on warranty. Mechanically the devices are very solid and will survive for many years. The biggest issue is the battery, really, and probably the power supply, both of which are costly (maybe 25% or so more than a replacement battery for another laptop, plus you have to bring in the MacBook to get it replaced, you can’t do it yourself), but can be replaced. Most people will just not do that, though, and live with diminished battery life and fraying power supply cables. I think you are stuck in your filter bubble if you think people want to buy a new one quickly. Many will live happily with a current MacBook for many years. A decade ago the situation was a bit different (and performance crummy), but nowadays the speed is there.

jevgeni 11y ago

I can see the point. My hobby is photography. I love my Nikon D5300 to bits, but after a year of usage two buttons are stuck and the eyecup needs replacing. And then there are people using twin reflex cameras from the 50s and they run like butter...

leonroy 11y ago
Having had one of these old cameras I can tell you they are not immune from the ravages of age! They do need a good service periodically!
- jevgeni 11y ago
  Thank you for the advice. I kind of reckoned one would need to. I'm about to buy one and currently looking, if there are shops that do repairs, if need be.
StavrosK 11y ago
Could it be because your camera is now pretty much a whole photography studio in a compact package, and to make it as sturdy as those old cameras that had three moving parts it will need to cost twice as much?
- jevgeni 11y ago
  Of course. I believe, it's because of the manufacturer's (and the consumers') changed priorities. I think when a product arrives at a certain level of quality, it's difficult to see a difference, unless you have very good knowledge of the subject matter. For example, I don't know how to tell the difference between the quality of Carl Zeiss Planar and Tessar lenses. Or when I would need to. But as a company you need to differentiate yourself. Hence, you go digital, then you introduce all kinds of gizmos, built-in HDR processing, retouching capabilities, etc., etc. You save on the build quality to be able to claim the pole position in the megapixel race. Understandable, but does not cover the whole market.
  - 11y ago

JulianMorrison 11y ago

This might be an interesting reply: https://www.fairphone.com/phone/ https://www.fairphone.com/phone/ - it's not exactly a clunky brick, and it's completely modular and user-serviceable (at the level of modules, anyhow). Apple didn't pare down the openness, they designed it out. They've been actively hostile to user servicing since the toaster mac (that you couldn't even open without a proprietary tool).

rsync 11y ago
Thanks very much for sharing this link - I had not heard of the fairphone before. Predictably huge at 5+ inches screen diagonal, but I guess that's to be expected these days.

joe563323 11y ago

Interesting and thought provoking comparison b/w James Bond and Jason Bourne.

lemevi 11y ago
It's mostly nonsense. You can invent comparisons like this, which are really just half-baked and not very convincing attempts at social science deconstruction, between any number of things and it may appear to be just as thought provoking. I am sure that the generation that watched James Bond in the 1960's trusted their employers more than action movie watchers of the last decade but Bourne stories are about government conspiracies and the first book was written even before Iran Contra deals were known and president Reagan took office.
- devbug 11y ago
  There were no government conspiracies prior to Iran-Contra affair?
  - lemevi 11y ago
    No, not saying that. Pentagon Papers and Watergate come to mind.

ucaetano 11y ago

It is interesting to compare Bond with Smiley. While Bond is whom the salesman aspired to be, Smiley is whom he would actually become. The expense account is a reptile fund over drafted by senior management for spurious expenses, he travels, but to cold and boring places, usually on a budget and staying out of sight in cramped hotels and safe houses. Instead of sleeping with beautiful women, he spends most of his time working, and being cheated on by his detached wife. And when he actually makes it to the top, he just finds himself overburden with political machinations, stakeholder management, and longing for the time when he'd actually get something done.

smcl 11y ago
What is this? I googled the term and got a bunch of smiley pictures and a horror film released relatively recently. Edit: should have googled better, it's this smiley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smiley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Smiley
mturmon 11y ago
Very perceptive. Introducing a third data point helps to clarify that there is more to the story of how we went from Bond to Bourne than just millennial job anxiety. There was quiet desperation back in the Bond era too.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  Plenty of it, remember Pink Floyd's "Time" from TDSOTM: "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way"
sago 11y ago
I watched a fascinating interview with a former MI6 manager. This was probably about 10 years ago. The interviewer made some comment about the men she had to manage: the agents. She said, effectively 'men?'. The Grey Man principle is a good one, as far as it goes, except maybe the gender. Fictional spies are interesting reflections of social angst, but I think we're about ready now for a fictional Valerie Plame.

JohnBooty 11y ago

Understand that PCs were end-user fixable and upgradeable by accident. The intention was never for you, the person who bought your computer, to be able to pop a new CPU into your Compaq five years later. Standardized, modular parts were always all about the OEMs, who were all trying to build an industry by cloning the IBM PC. They could have a variety of manufacturers making various components and as long as everybody followed the standards, they could pick and choose parts to create SKUs for various needs and then sell them to you, the end-user. The fact that a twenty year-old me could spend a summer saving up for the parts to build a brand-new Pentium II computer and then spend an exciting weekend putting it all together was a side effect of all that. A side effect many of us enjoy, obviously. And a side effect that developed into a small industry of its own, with various companies (even Intel and AMD at times) targeting the "enthusiast builder" community. When you understand this, though, things like soldered-on memory and CPUs make sense. The reasons why your 1988 Compaq had standardized IDE drives and memory slots are utterly inapplicable to a 2015 MacBook. I hate the non-hackable place to which PC hardware is headed, but I don't get angry at it. Almost no other category of consumer good works in the modular way that we nerds wish that everything would. Aside from the fact that they run on the same gasoline you can't put Chevy stuff into a Ford; you can't even put Ford F-150 stuff into a Ford Fusion. Your toaster oven, your ceiling fan, and your lawn mower are the same way.

ginko 11y ago
>Almost no other category of consumer good works in the modular way that we nerds wish that everything would. One exception I can think of are bicycles.
- jbl 11y ago
  Although, even bicycles (at least those designed for racing) are starting to become more and more proprietary. Try mixing and matching Shimano and Campagnolo shifters and derailleurs or using a seatpost from an aerodynamic frame in another one.
  - cujo 11y ago

benihana 11y ago

That was a lot of words to say Apple is wrong about design and I'm right and I wish someone would realize this and build something that suits me exactly.

hawleyal 11y ago
But it was written well and entertaining.

legulere 11y ago

Modularity has advantages (repairability, upgradability, switching out manufacturers) and also disadvantages (cost, design constraints). The way I'm seeing it technological advance is changing how big those are. I still remember how soldered on cpus were seen as a problem with laptops. I don't know anyone who ever upgraded their cpu (might be that it was more common earlier). Laptop batteries today are way better than what they used to be. They used to hold maybe 2 or 3 years before having unusable usage times. The development in RAM is stagnating. And of course Apple now is so big that they can just dictate proprietary connectors.

hawleyal 11y ago

Besides the point, but there are quite a few typos in this piece.

rsync 11y ago

I really, really miss the days when there was more than one manufacturer of computers. I think it was in 2002/2003 when I was last in the market for a non-apple device and there was a lot of interesting competition ... thinkpads, sony vaio, HP ... Dell had some great laptops ... there was actually a reason to scroll through gizmodo/engadget and look at new products coming out. Now there's only one.[1] I really do think that the macbook air is the final evolution of the laptop computer. Yes, I do wish I could pull the battery and yes I do miss PCMCIA and yes I cannot use a laptop with a single port[2] but the 13" MBA that I bought in late 2008 lasted 7 years of hard use and three battery swap-outs (done by apple, of course).[3] I don't really understand why other manufacturers can't make a MBA ... I'd like to see some minor competition along the very, very final bits of design latitude you can have in this thoroughly distilled form factor ... but for whatever reason Dell/HP/Sony/Lenovo refuse to just make their laptops out of metal for god's sake. I wonder if this is where we are going with high end cars ? I notice the exact same inability to function on the part of all the incumbent car manufacturers. It's how many years since the Prius came out and how many years since the Tesla roadster and Porsche just announced an all electric car and of course it's a concept car?[4] BMW has a brand new 7 series with the predictably lame hybrid option mated to some little lawnmower engine. Just concept cars and half-assed hybrids over and over again. Meanwhile, Tesla has a dual-motor, AWD supercar for sale. There used to be more than one maker of high end four door luxury cars ... [1] Well, actually there's two - apple for laptops/desktops and supermicro (god bless them) for anything that goes in a rack. [2] New macbook 12" with the single combined USB/power. [3] Actually it still works now, but I get a new 11" MBA. [4] http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/autos/porsche-debuts-first-electric-car-mission-e/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/autos/porsche-debuts-first-e...

edison_carter 11y ago
> I don't really understand why other manufacturers can't make a MBA... Lenovo's Carbon X1 is that machine for me. I carried an Air (running Debian) for a couple of years. I've since replaced it with a Carbon X1, and there's nothing I miss about the Air. The Carbon is simply fantastic.
- 11y ago

mud_dauber 11y ago

I regret that I have but one upvote to give.

curiousjorge 11y ago

They took everything he had, and promised that if he gave himself up to the System, in return the System would take care of him. It turned out to be a lie. We’re all Jason Bourne now. I read this with a tongue in cheek but walked away with a profound sense of camaraderie and Tyler Durdene feels. This last few setences. WOW. As a Jason Bourne fan, I can now be him.

JSeymourATL 11y ago

> He can’t trust his employer, who demanded ultimate loyalty and gave nothing in return. Jason Bourne, Independent Contractor & Free Agent.