Scully was only one of a number of marketing types that came into the
computer business. A good number came from the soft drink industry,
beginning with the fellow who ran Osborne. None of these suits ever
learnt to master the computer industry. They could understand sugar water
better than electronics.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by this; I suspect that this business migration
> connotes the usual condensing and bowdlerizing of information compelled by
> sales psychology. In his 1987 book "Odyssey: etc." former Apple Computer
> CEO John Sculley describes how, when he was the heir-apparent of the Pepsi
> empire, Steve Jobs spent months pursuing him with the zeal of a rock
> groupie though he protested that he knew nothing about computers (among
> other self-deprecating arguments).
> The bald reality was that The Two Steves had made a great product but had
> come to abruptly realize that sales is a science in itself that they knew
> nothing of. What they did know was that Sculley had waged "the cola wars"
> against Coke and thereby brought Pepsi back from the dead, so Sculley was
> their man.
> Jobs wrapped up his final pitch with a desperate question: "Do you want to
> spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to get
> a chance to change the world?" Surely among the greatest of one-liners
> in business history.
>
> Alas, the implication is that Jobs had no hope of pitching to the smarts
> of his potential customers because the product was too new, too complex
> and too expensive, so the impulse-buying that soft drink advertising
> panders to would have to serve instead: early corruption in the age of
> democratized knowledge-access.
> All more than a bit sad, really, but could a socialist society _ever_ have
> created the computer industry? We should not shrink from such a question,
> and I don't mean to pose it rhetorically.
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--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
