Quickthink

 Odysseus was proud to say that “I lived in the age of Achilles”. GigaOm would have us say the something similar about our “relationship” with Bill Gates. “I lived in the age of …. Bill”.

Truth be told, I never really liked Bill that much as a person. There was always a bit too much of the pihrana in him. But I agree with Giga that Gates and Jobs have pretty much defined the PC era. They are the titans of that era, and now Bill is stepping down as the driving force in Microsoft. Is the era over?

I hope so. The PC has been a strange beast. We were told it was magic. Well, it does some fun things. At the same time, I still wonder how the hell it fits into the rest of my real world life.

We love our computers, but they are jealous mistresses, distractions, never empowering as much as we might think they should. Is it time for the titan nerds who nurtured these beasts to step aside and the rest of us to re-assert our own priorities in the “digital era”.? Or has the digital era killed the idea of personality? That would indeed be the true revenge of the nerds that Bill predicted. Uggh! Help!

A revolutionary thought — perhaps Bill was not Achilles, but Circe, offering an odd digital potion. Or are we our own Achiles, waiting for the call to greatness … from our PC’s? By the way, mine has not yet called me to Troy.

And the image? A quick Google search for “Achilles” produced this re-take of Brad Pitt pretending he can fight as Achilles would. I first saw this image at “The Athenaeum Reading Room“, but apparently that site won’t allow remote linking. Interesting. So I found the same image elsewhere — Back on point.  We forget to our peril that the genius we admire in the story of Achilles came out of Homer’s commentary on his weaknesses when greatness was needed. Interesting phrase that “… when greatness was needed.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 8:46 am and is filed under People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.