Corporate
America
has given
us life and has given us death.
The global economic structure is evolving at a
fantastic pace.
So fast that I believe children growing up will not be
able to identify their growing years as ‘do you remember
when’, because the social, political and economic fabric will
have changed five times before they are 25 years
old.
I have always believed that the recruiting
industry was an American innovation like the light bulb, but I
have to admit that I never really researched it. I suppose a more
astute historian can find the beginning of the profession
going back to Roman times or further. I also believe that
the genesis of the recruiting industry was fostered by the
invention of the American corporation. Then along came
‘Bell’ with his telephone.
Then came Alan Turing with his “Universal Turing
Machine”. Here is
an excerpt from the site of Andrew
Hodges:
“… So who invented
the computer?
There are many
different views on which aspects of the modern computer are
the most central or critical.
·
Some people think that it's the idea
of using electronics for calculating — in which case another
American pioneer, Atanasoff,
should be credited.
·
Other people say it's getting a
computer actually built and working. In that case it's either
the tiny prototype at Manchester , (See this
Scrapbook Page) or the EDSAC at
Cambridge,
England (1949),
that deserves greatest attention.
But
I would say that in 1945 Alan Turing alone grasped everything
that was to change computing completely after that date: above
all he understood the universality inherent in the
stored-program computer. He knew there could be just one
machine for all tasks. He did not do so as an isolated
dreamer, but as someone who knew about the practicability of
large-scale electronics, with hands-on experience. From
experience in code breaking and mathematics he was also
vividly aware of the scope of programs that could be run.
The idea of the
universal machine was foreign to the world of 1945. Even ten
years later, in 1956, the big chief of the electromagnetic
relay calculator at Harvard, Howard Aiken, could write:
If
it should turn out that the basic logics of a machine designed
for the numerical solution of differential equations coincide
with the logics of a machine intended to make bills for a
department store, I would regard this as the most amazing
coincidence that I have ever encountered.
But that is exactly
how it has turned out. It is amazing, although we now
have come to take it for granted. But it follows from the deep
principle that Alan Turing saw in 1936: the Universal Turing
Machine …”
Then came along Bill Gates and here we are
today. I’m
writing this article for the web to help promote our
recruiting software product, “Gopher for
recruiters”.
I cannot say that I am a die hard American patriot
who lives and breathes each day pontificating on the great
American ideals and principles of freedom. But I do love my
country and I am loyal to the core.
But lately, in the autumn of my years, I am being
haunted by recurring dreams and thoughts. Call it senility if
you will. I feel
like a Roman citizen, a Greek soldier or an Aztec engineer who
suddenly is aware that all things come to an end and new
things take their place, good or bad but forward they must
go. My way of
life as an American citizen is also in the autumn of its
years.
To my great surprise it is not the Hitlers of the
world that are bringing about our destruction. Lo and behold, we are
clones of the Romans! We destroyed ourselves with the greed
and corruption of the absolutely un-patriotic American
invention - the “American Corporation”. The same vehicle that
got us here has turned on its master and is devouring
us.
An American corporation is a single minded entity
whose only goal is profits. Oh you will hear the
PR and read about their great humanitarian contributions, but
if there are any contributions, it is only a strategy for
higher profits.
The American corporation is a mindless animal that
will drive itself and we Americans to extinction by exhausting
its own food supply to the point where the food can’t be
replenished. It
will then evolve into something else, to the good or to the
bad I do not know.
Finally, on to my point. I think almost
everyone will agree that the wellspring of computer software
was born in America and was
fueled from the American corporations’ drive for profits. A tremendous stride
forward for the world. People from all
countries, some without a roof over their heads and not
knowing where their next meal will come from but with a cell
phone in their hands.
But now the American corporation has turned on its
master. For
profit alone, it exports the work that creates the new fabric
of our world, computer software! A computer is nothing
but a lump of plastic and metal with software to bring it to
life. A cell
phone is nothing more than a tin can tied to a string without
the computer software burned into its memory chip.
The result of this exportation is not only the
loss of American jobs but the decay of our educational system.
We used to rank
the highest in percentage of population having higher
education. No
more, now it’s third at best. Today we can’t
even defend ourselves in a war without dependence on other
countries to supply materials and computer software. We are in a downward
spiral and the corporate monster has such a strangle hold on
our American political system that I think America can see
itself falling from a tall building but there is little to do
but wait for the impact.
So what should I do with this vision of doom and
gloom? Not
much. A little
defiance if you will for my own sanity and feeling of self
worth. I often
think of James
Fenimore Cooper’s book “The Last of the Mohicans”. Who will be the
American Hawkeye?
Our small privately held corporation will
never export the labor to create our recruiting
software products
. Our
customers will never make a support call and get routed to
another country and speak to someone who barely understands
English, who, like an android, is reading from a scripted
diagnostic language.
Complicated machinery like recruiting software must be
supported by people who have a feeling for the software and
what and why it is doing what it does. I think
recruiting software has to be supported by an organization
that has an extremely deep understanding of what the American
recruiting industry is all about.
I know I cannot make a speck of a difference to
the American path. But, at least I will go down fighting with
the satisfaction that I did my best to prevent the selling of
America. I am ashamed to have
laughed at Ross Perot and his big “whoosh” of American
technology and jobs. I do not buy products if I know the
support will come from an offshore person who is no more than
a robot speaking in poor English.
Corporate America has given
us life and has given us death. I look into
the
