Suits to Nerds: "Whoa!"

By Rick Horowitz

Billy Tech is ticked -- you don't have to be a computer genius to figure that out.

Even when he's happy, Billy Tech's voice has the whiny-boy edge, the high-strung hum. At the moment, Billy Tech isn't even close to happy. Can you blame him?

The suits are closing in.

Billy Tech is saying angry things -- angry and defensive and defiant things -- about the suits, those alien beings from that other Washington clear across the continent. He's saying these things in press conferences, and in interviews. He's taking out full-page ads in the newspapers, where he's using words like "emasculate." (Happy people don't use words like "emasculate.")

The suits, he says, are demanding that he allow perfect strangers to "emasculate" his baby, his Windows. That, or defile his baby with a rival's product. These things, he vows, he will not do.

Poor Billy Tech -- all those billions in his pocket, and he can't buy a little peace and quiet while he gathers up more billions. All he wants is to be left alone, left alone to run his spunky little behemoth on his leafy little campus.

Anyway, what's so wrong with what he's doing? A bit of innovation, some product integration, some cutthroat competition -- it's the way of the world. Perfectly proper. Perfectly legal. And all for the benefit of You the Consumer.

That's what it's all about, Billy Tech insists with every sentence he utters: making things better for You the Consumer. Can anyone doubt that he's done just that? Billy Tech's products let people do things they want to do -- not always as smoothly or as elegantly as other people's products do, but well enough, most of the time.

And if millions of people choose to ignore these other products, and flock instead to Billy Tech's products to help them navigate (or should we say "explore"?) each of life's little transactions? Well...

The people have spoken. (Drop a penny in the coin box.)

They've acted in their own best interests. (And another penny.)

They've weighed the pluses and minuses and made their decisions. (And another penny...) Isn't that what freedom's all about?

The suits don't see it quite that way. The suits see Billy Tech's thumb on the scale, and they want him to cut it out. Now.

Billy Tech deigns to differ. Let the suits get in our way, he warns, let the suits start to decide how we run our business, and it won't be bad just for consumers; it'll be bad for the whole economy. (It'll also be bad for Billy Tech's own little company, of course; sometimes he remembers to mention that, too.) That's how enormous Billy Tech's little company has grown: Rein him in, he can say, and you rain on the whole parade.

Which is exactly why the suits are doing what they're doing, because it's only going to get worse. If Billy Tech is already so central, so essential to the country's well-being that he can't be regulated, that he gets to make the rules, what happens a year or two from now, when even more of his competitors have had their air supply cut off and Billy Tech's shadow looms even larger over Life As We Know It?

Spare a moment's sympathy for Billy Tech, who's absolutely right: None of this would be happening if he weren't so good at what he does.

But root for the suits.

5/19/98