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We ignored what was going on. We played the fool so many times we became fools.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Guess who's to blame if we let Microsoft get away with its behavior?


Dec. 6, 1999

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©1999, Al Fasoldt

   Why should we care what Microsoft did right or wrong with Windows? What does it matter what Microsoft did or didn't do with Internet Explorer or Outlook Express or anything else? What's the point of criticizing Microsoft for the way it programmed Windows? Nothing's perfect. Why can't we just get on with things?
   Those are all legitimate questions. I've heard them all in one form or another, in letters and phone calls, by readers, by TV viewers, by radio-show listeners. My radio partner Gene Wolf and I have been asked these questions too many times to count. Sometimes they are not asked as questions would be; they are thrown out as statements. English doesn't have a punctuation mark that expresses questions like this, but if I use a little imagination you probably can understand the kind of "question" I mean: "Why don't you give Bill Gates a break!?" or "What did Microsoft ever do to you?!?"
   You might wonder if questions such as these are worth responding to. After all, they seem to be pure rhetoric. But they're important because they are perfect mirrors of public apathy. They show us how at least a few intelligent and senstive people can trade in their common sense for moral neutrality. They hear about something wrong and cover their ears. They see something wrong and cover their eyes. They know something wrong and cover their minds.
   We need to understand something important. Microsoft succeeded not because it was smart or because it knew how to be a bully. It is in fact an exceedingly dumb corporate entity, unable to see the Internet coming in 1995 and clueless about how people really used handheld PCs in 1999. As for its bully nature, Microsoft needed no brains to act so boorishly. What we need to understand is that Microsoft succeeded because people outside Microsoft who knew what was going on didn't move a muscle to stop it.
   People who knew that was happening were apathetic. When you see someone breaking into your neighbor's house, a phone call to the police is all you need to do. You don't have to be a hero by running out and collaring a crook. But you do have to DO something. If you don't do something, if you don't act when the morally correct thing to do is right in front of your nose, you're doing the wrong thing.
   Isn't that clear? There are times in a civilized society that require action by morally responsible individuals. In such times, if you don't do the right thing, you're doing the wrong thing.
   You might have heard this differently: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
   Why do we have to learn this over and over again, generation after generation? Why are simple lessons the hardest to learn?
   Those who looked the other way when Microsoft was bullying its way around the computer business weren't doing the rest of us a favor. The product of moral irresponsibility is moral apathy. When we refuse to act on Tuesday, we find it easier to ignore what is happening on Wednesday. When we look the other way in January, we find it easier to look the other way in March. We slip into the kind of moral No Man's Land my callers and letter-writers slid into.
   So that's why we have to stop looking the other way. What Microsoft does matters now because it didn't matter last month or last year or five years ago. We have some catching up to do.
   It's easy to blame someone else when things go wrong. It's a no-brainer to blame Microsoft for being such a bully. But we did this. We did this to ourselves. We ignored what was going on. We played the fool so many times we became fools.
   So we owe this to ourselves. We need to prove, to ourselves, that we're capable of getting through a day, a month, a year, without being fools.
   Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
   Perhaps the revelations of Microsoft's behavior will do nothing more than that. Maybe they will just force us to understand how easy it is to be fooled.
   That would be a victory in itself.