Churn and Burn

An anonymous source, whom we'll call Janet, made the following statements about computing devices: "I never upgrade my system. At least, I try not to. Look, I don't do anything at work but write memos and access email.

I use Microsoft Word, but I don't use any features that weren't available in Word 3.0, 25 years ago. This whole industry is based on ‘churn and burn': They churn their products so we'll burn our cash. "All this hype about 64-bit processors and 500GB disks-who needs them? I'm sure I don't. And if Microsoft hadn't put so much junk into Windows, we could all be happy on an Intel 486 processor like the one I had in 1993.

We're suckers for falling into the ‘you gotta have this' trap. "Frankly, I think there's a conspiracy between hardware and software vendors. They both want to sell new products, so the hardware people come up with these incredibly fast and huge computers. Then, given all that power, the software types develop monster products bloated with features and functions that nobody uses. It would take me months to learn all of the features in Word, only to find out that I don't need those features.

"To see what I mean, open Microsoft Word, click on View, then select Toolbars. In my version of Word, there are 19 toolbars to select, plus one more to customize my own toolbar. Now what in the world do I need with 19 toolbars? I write all the time, and I have two selected: Standard and Formatting. Two out of 19! Could I pay Microsoft 2/19 of the price of Word, because that's all I want or use? "Here's how they get you, though. Because we live in a connected world, they don't have to get all of us to use those 19 toolbars, just one of us.

Take Bridgette, over in Legal, for example. Bridgette likes to use the redlining features, and she likes me to use them when I change draft contracts she sends me. So if I want to work on her documents, I have to turn on the Reviewing toolbar. You get the idea; just get someone to use a feature and, because it is a connected world, then all of us have to have that feature. "Viruses are one of their best ploys.

They say you better buy the latest and greatest in software-and then apply all the patches that follow so that you'll be protected from the latest zinger from the computer ‘bad guys.' Think about that for a minute. If vendors had built the products correctly the first time, then there would be no holes for the baddies to find, would there? So they have a defect in their products that they turn to a sales advantage. You see, they get us to focus on the virus and not on the hole in their product. In truth, they should be saying, ‘Buy our latest product to protect yourself from the defective junk we sold you last year.' But truth in advertising hasn't come that far.

"Besides that, users are their own worst enemies as far as viruses are concerned. If I'm down on 17th Street at 4 in the morning, half drunk and with a bundle of cash hanging out of my pocket, what's likely to happen to me? I'm gonna get mugged. So if I'm out in some weirdo chat room-you know, out where you get pictures of weird sex acts and whatnot-and download and run a file, then of course I'm gonna get a virus. Viruses are brought on by user stupidity, that's all.

"One of these days, users are going to rise up and say, ‘That's enough. I don't need any more. I'll stay with what I have, thank you very much.' In fact, maybe that's happening right now. Maybe that's why software sales aren't growing like they were. Maybe people have finally said, ‘No more toolbars!'"

Discussion Questions

1. Summarize Janet's view of the computer industry. Is there merit to her argument? Why or why not?

2. What holes do you see in the logic of her argument?

3. Someone could take the position that these statements are just empty rantings-that Janet can say all she wants, but the computer industry is going to keep on doing as it has been. Is there any point in Janet sharing her criticisms?

4. Comment on Janet's statement-"Viruses are brought on by user stupidity, that's all."

5. All software products ship with known problems. Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple all ship software that they know has failures. Is it unethical for them to do so? Do software vendors have an ethical responsibility to openly publish the problems in their software? How do these organizations protect themselves from lawsuits for damages caused by known problems in software?

6. Suppose a vendor licenses and ships a software product that has both known and unknown failures. As the vendor learns of the unknown failures, does it have an ethical responsibility to inform the users about them?

Does the vendor have an ethical responsibility to fix the problems? Is it ethical for the vendor to require users to pay an upgrade fee for a new version of software that fixes problems in an existing version?