How the Mighty Have Fallen

We've all witnessed the demise of giants.  The things we believe can never change always do and the world moves on.  That reality is what is truly invariable.

Most of us remember RadioShack.  It was a place where many of us went to get our technology fix, a safe haven from the monotony of the mundane, a constant that would always be there.  Many of our earlier issues discuss ways of defeating their annoying policy of wanting your contact info, even if you were only buying a couple of batteries.  Perhaps in that way they were ahead of their time since every transaction today seems to result in emails, SMS receipts, loyalty points, and surveys.  But ironically, they would eventually disappear because of the online world that they helped to bring about.

We can also remember the huge bookstore chains like Borders, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, and more.  Many of them drove the independent stores out of business with their discounted prices and larger inventory.  And then they fell victim to their own tactics, as Amazon started to dominate and undersell them at every turn.  Interestingly, we're starting to see a rise in independent bookstores once again.

Every bit of technology we've used over the decades at one point was the latest innovation, something that we couldn't have imagined ten years prior, something we almost certainly would have stopped using ten years in the future, if not much sooner.  While we see these developments in the world of high tech in a much more dramatic way, this is simply what happens with the passage of time.

It can feel like everything is falling apart and disappearing.  Hotels get torn down.  Magazine stands close forever.  The past becomes unrecognizable to those who didn't live through it and inevitably is judged as "primitive" or simply not as good as things are in the present.  We rob ourselves of the opportunity to share in these older experiences because it's easier to just dismiss them and imagine that we somehow got to where we are today without their involvement.  We forget that this ebb and flow has been happening for as long as humans have walked the Earth.  There really is nothing new here.

Empires can last a long time.  The Romans held onto theirs for over a thousand years.  The British once ruled half a billion people, at the time nearly a quarter of the world.  Today, the remnants of that empire represent a tiny fraction of that.  Rulers and dictators often appear to be invincible, but eventually they or their successors always fall, often to democratic forces.  But sadly, democracy itself is not immune to eventually falling to something (((far less representative))).  And the cycle goes on.

This all applies to the corporate world as well.  Many reading this can think back to the old Bell System in the United States, a single company divided into many parts that handled every aspect of telecommunications - from the hardware consumers were forced to rent to the telephone poles and wires in their neighborhoods to the switches in their central offices to the long distance equipment that connected the rest of the country.  This level of complete control was the envy of anyone who was obsessed with power.  It was a system literally too big to fail.  And yet, the Bell System was (((brought down in the courts))).  The ideal of competition made their continued existence an impossibility.

The breakup of the Bell System dominated our early issues in the mid-1980s.  We saw all kinds of new companies spring up - like MCI, Sprint, Allnet, and so many more.  We witnessed the divorce between local Bell companies (like New York Telephone and Pacific Northwest Bell) and their long distance partner (American Telephone and Telegraph).  New regional companies with names like NYNEX and Ameritech popped up and encompassed handfuls of the local companies.  These regional "Baby Bells" grew bigger and more powerful.  Some even began to merge.  Meanwhile, the new non-Bell competitors also found themselves growing, merging, and dominating.  The cycle continued.

The point is that the status quo may appear to be this monolithic entity that will always be around.  And yet, it's the one thing that is as sure to disappear as the sun is certain to set.  Apart from that being the natural order of things, it's also in our nature to push out that which has become too big, too powerful, too familiar... even too good.

Many times, it's the actions and abuses of those who have become too comfortable in their positions which lead to their demise.  But mostly it's due to our becoming tired of their continued dominance or even our own acceptance of them.

We enjoy reverence.  Whether it's the concept of a monarchy, a pop star who has the whole world in their hands, a trendy style of literature, or just agreeing on what's funny and what isn't - we love the shared experience that goes with all of that.  But we also love tearing down the powerful and the once popular.  It's partly a changing of our tastes, but also a need to remind ourselves that nothing is forever and that we have the power to enforce that.  Mass acceptance can turn into mass rejection and disgust when our values change and we experience another chapter of humanity's journey.  In fact, it most always will.

None of this should be particularly surprising.  As we said, this has been going on for a very long time.  But perhaps we can move to the state where we accept all of this and put it in perspective.

It's easy to look back a few decades and judge the people who lived then as less advanced and even inferior.  It gets really easy if you go back centuries - and some people even manage to be derisive to those from a mere few years ago.  But what's a true challenge is to imagine who you would be in a different period with different tools and levels of access to knowledge and information.  And if you truthfully conclude that you would probably not be much more enlightened than anyone else of the era you focus upon, can you honestly say you're more advanced?  And what of the future?  How might we be judged by those who no doubt will have access to so much more than we could ever even imagine?

It's not the size of the company or the power of the government or the data that we have access to that defines who we are.  It's what we do with what we have and how we treat those around us that ultimately makes that determination.

Of course, there are periods in history where societies appear to lose their collective minds and act in reprehensible ways en masse.  It's a mistake to think that any of us are completely immune to this or that any society doesn't have blood on its hands.  We see this every day to one degree or another, where we forget about compassion or fairness in the blinding light of a so-called greater good.  This is where technology can come into play to help spread information and enlighten the world.  But it too can be subverted and used for the exact opposite purpose - to spread hatred and misinformation.  The tools will change, but we are still the people we are.

We find it strangely comforting that these concepts are what we've all been struggling with, from the beginning of our existence across all cultures and continents.  From the most powerful of leaders to the most forgotten and impoverished, nobody truly understands humanity's purpose or future, and none of us get to see the answers in advance.

What we have, the good and the bad, is finite and will inevitably disappear and exist only in memories and writings.  There's nothing at all depressing about this, as having everything stay the same is the worst fate imaginable.  What we must remember is that with every change comes a new challenge and new sets of adventures and stories.  This has never not been the case and there's no reason to believe it ever won't be.  The true magic is that we never know what lies ahead.  But if we embrace that, rather than dread it, we'll have a much better time in our present and continue the adventure into a future of unknowns.

We've always tried to strike a balance here of remembering technology from the past while embracing technology of the future, all the while remaining its harshest critics and figuring out ways to test its limits.  We believe this embodies the true hacker spirit - and it's not a bad way to approach most any aspect of our society as well as our individual lives.