Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Scientology and Apple?

I take back every bad thing I ever said about Dan Lyons. As reported in Michael Cote's tweet from Lyons' EclipseCon keynote:


"If the church of scientology chose to go into the electronics industry, you know, they'd be Apple."


Frankly, I didn't know he had it in him. And then Lyons followed that up with this sidebar on a slide:


"Apple PR is like a Russian prison guard with a rifle on the ramparts."


Wow, I'm sad to have missed it! I never thought I'd be a kindred spirit with the Fake Steve.

Edit: Ok, that's a tad hyperbolic. Lyons has said some monumentally stupid things in the past. But I'm with him this time.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting similarities between Scientology & Microsoft
Both run by supreme egoists who want to control all life on planet earth. 
Both believe their Ideology/Tech is the "Right" Ideology/Tech, and all others are wrong, and should be destroyed.
Both are about using tech to kill aliens.

Both operate a vast Black PR apparatus to identify, discredit, and destroy "enemies"/competitors.

Both attacked by governments for criminal activities on a worldwide scale.
Both universally hated except by core true believers.
Both appeal to egocentric people who are seeking "power"- especially over others.

Unknown said...

I've always equated Scientology with Apple.

Both Apple and Scientology have policy. They have leaders, creativity and they have direction.

If we're going to equate anything with anything, I'd like to equate "Anonymous" with Microsoft.

"Group think," "Toe the party line," "if anything gets in the road, destroy it."

Of course, this is only picking a few minor attributes and comparing them. Anonymous is fighting the Martians. Apple is a hardware/software company. Microsoft is a software company. And Scientology is the biggest volume of data, i.e. knowledge (not belief) on life and the human mind that we have. It is vast. And it's not theories, "I think ....," it's actual information that can be used.

Comparing these things is ridiculous. We might as well say that sugar is salt because both are white powders.

Yours sincerely,

John Davis

Anonymous said...

I would love to see some of this "volume of data" and vast set of knowledge. Unfortunately, I'd have to pay gobs of $$ to see it, and if I posted it here, I'd have to deal with some schmuck attorney giving me (and Google) a DMCA takedown notice. No thanks!

Anonymous said...

That's "Tow", not "Toe".
Bad analogy, Apple and Scientology. Apple fans aren't brought in by empty promises of better things, they actually get better things. iPhone, iPod, iTunes and of course, OS X and the fantastic Macintosh.
Empty promises, that's more like umm, Longhorn, Vista, and that weird Mp3 player, whatzis name.

Anonymous said...

"Toe the line" means to follow orders with everyone else. For example to have everyone line up in a straight line, with everyone's toes on a line.

"Tow the line" means . . . I don't know, maybe something to do with fishing?

Anonymous said...

"I'd have to pay gobs of $$ to see it"

It's in books like "The Problems of Work" and "Dianetics" by L. Ron Hubbard. That's like 20$.

Books are a good old way of storing and sharing ideas, information and knowledge.

So it's out there, easy to access, though you can't publish it yourself online or on print.

Anonymous said...

John's comparison of Scientology with Apple is spot on. Scientology has been fighting Big Pharma (which equate pretty easily to Micro$oft)) and organized psychiatry for the last 50 plus years. So the analogy is a pretty good one.

Mr. Anonymous above has himself worked into a frenzy here. He needs to back off and calm down. He's got it all wrong. Scientology appeals to people who want to be more able. Funny how some people just can't stand the thought of others being better off.

Or cutting into their ginormous income stream by telling people to stay off psych drugs as they are harmful. My own sister went to counselling for depression a few weeks ago, got put on some psych drug with a black box label, and then tried to commit suicide. Boy was she pissed off when I showed her the black box label that says,"May cause suicidal or homicidal ideation."

One of the signs I saw at the recent anonymous demonstrations said, "This protest paid for by Big Pharma" -- another one said, "The only true religion is psychiatry". What? Oh... well, that's what their signs *should* have said.

Unknown said...

"That's "Tow", not "Toe".
Bad analogy, Apple and Scientology. Apple fans aren't brought in by empty promises of better things, they actually get better things. iPhone, iPod, iTunes and of course, OS X and the fantastic Macintosh.
Empty promises, that's more like umm, Longhorn, Vista, and that weird Mp3 player, whatzis name."

I guess the Mac vs. PC commercials weren't considered empty promises to you from Mac? But that's a whole other discussion.

Not sure if scientology and apple are a good analogy, but I do often correlate rabbid Apple users to douchiness.

And FYI, I own a Zune, and it is vastly superior to the 3 ipods that died on me, and don't get me started about the piece of crap software that is iTunes.