October 8th, 2009
It’s been quite a few years since I was a regular reader of Robert X. Cringely in print. I recall when he had a regular column in InfoWorld that it was always good fun. In 1996 he published a book which I purchased, “Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date” which offered a scattering of anecdotes about some of the dirty dealings in the desktop publishing startups of that era. I little titillation for a geek.
He now has a regular column called “Notes from the Field” in InfoWorld (online). And a blog. And a show on PBS. A recent InfoWorld entry is titled “Twitter is Dead.” The subtitle summarizes the content of the article: “Oh sure, it seems lively enough. But now that spammers and scammers have their hooks into Twitter, it’s doomed. And much of the blame lies with Twitter itself.”
As an ongoing victim of Twitter spam, I’m in some degree of agreement with Mr. Cringely. But he is by far more the provocateur than I.