"FWLS66" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

The bugs! The processor time! This wasn't optimized
programming, it was butter churning. The public would eat it
anyway, because we were a STANDARD.

"Then VOS came along. Two guys, some sort of salvage team,
they bring this thing to my doorstep. I test it out, and it
looks incredibly amazing. This, I thought, this is what will
turn the tide and get us back to doing stuff I'd be proud of.
The funnel was at the middle, then; I didn't have much room to
maneuver, since most of my power was going to the toadies. I
could, however, push VOS as the wave of the future.

"And it was, baby, it was.

"VOS rocked in ways mortal man couldn't comprehend. It
opened doors to man's creativity he'd never know about. Artists
loved it, once we could get it working in a less 'real' way.
Universities got on it, and some government sites strictly to
keep up with the times. Research centers did impressive junk
with it, cranking out formulas and machines they'd never be able
to design with flat screens. Some great, great stuff was
happening, and I thought maybe I could relax, assured that the
original vision of really righteous code wasn't lost forever.

"Who'd have known the almighty dollar would kill it in the
end?

"When the corps moved into VOSNet and started taking it over
credit by credit, all hell broke loose. The creativity was gone,
replaced by the repetitive nature of pop culture for sale. All
the good people, the wacky funsters, the hackers, the scientists,
they couldn't get anything done because prices for superior
access were steep. So everybody who could manage packed it off
for UberNet.

"Okay, I thought, as I sank into the funnel a little more,
maybe Uber would do it right. No, they were just as capitalistic
as the others. If you take a legion of punks and street refuse,
you can't expect them to produce anything worth a shit. 99% of
the junk coming out of Uber was just that, junk. Hacking became
a chore rather than a sport, with TOOLBOXES being sold to
wannabes. All the clever crackers were gone, bored. They gave
up. Everything was done in spades and they moved on.

"By this point, I was at the nozzle of the funnel. Trapped.
I had no power left, stripped of it by a board of directors who
was about to declare me legally insane and throw me in an asylum.
I couldn't help it! I was pissed off at everything I saw, these
lovely potentials screwed into something I hated. I had to act
out however I could, and they misinterpreted it as insanity.