The Myth of Tech Meritocracy

The Android vs iOS debate has been raging on for years, with no end in sight. In each camp, you have devout followers that swear (sometimes very loudly) by their chosen platform.

I have a friend who's a bit of an Apple fanboy, and he absolutely despises Android technology. And I remember one day he was telling me how Android ought to die because its tech is shit.

Die, Android, die!

My opinion was that he wasn't being entirely rational about this - in fact, I was quite positive that he was looking at this from a very emotional point of view. Because things don't work that way in technology. Don't get me wrong - this isn't a debate about which technology is better. Even if, for arguments' sake, I agreed with him that Android technology is shit; Android is not going away. And for his own sake, my buddy should pray that it remains so.

Android, at this point in time, enjoys the largest market share worldwide next to Apple's iOS. What if my friend's wish comes true and Android disappears from the market forever? The void left by Android would not be readily filled, and Apple would reign supreme.

King of the hill

Sounds like a fanboy's wet dream, eh? Just wait - it goes downhill from here.

I think we can all agree that Apple isn't some benevolent mobile tech Santa giving us awesome products for the sheer joy of it. No, like all credible tech companies, Apple is a business, and is motivated by desire for consumer dollars. And its great innovations in recent years was a direct consequence of having to constantly up its game in the face of stiff competition from Android. What happens when that stiff competition is no longer present?

This is what I think happens...

Apple halves its workforce because the amount of talent on their payroll is no longer required.

Apple products slowly become shit, because Apple are now just about the only game in town and if they feel like feeding you shit, you'll eat it and like it.

Apple begins its inevitable decline.

Just a little
competition.

What I'm trying to say is - competition keeps businesses honest. But again, this isn't about Apple or Android - it's about the myth of tech meritocracy.

Let's talk about meritocracy, shall we?

The professional world isn't a perfect meritocracy. Higher management positions could be filled by people who don't deserve to have a job, much less a high-paying one. Less capable and driven folks may get that promotion simply by kissing up to the right people. Pretty girls may get ahead simply because the fellow in charge is a hum sup lou. Less qualified staff could remain employed simply by being better at keeping their jobs rather than actually doing their jobs. The lower echelons of the workforce could be teeming with a serious case of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with any of that. This is simply how the world works.

Likewise, technology isn't a perfect meritocracy. Tech doesn't die simply because it's inferior. Tech rises to prominence for a variety of reasons, not just quality. And once that tech has entrenched itself as part of the ecosystem, removing it poses several problems, some of which may adversely affect that rival tech you're such a huge sucker for.

More examples

Remember classic ASP, written in VBScript? It was supposed to have been replaced by ASP.NET back in 2003. Where is it now? It's still residing on servers powering legacy systems - huge legacy systems - all over the world. It's not exactly thriving, but until Microsoft's IIS stops supporting classic ASP, no company in its right mind is going to spend money to rewrite a working system to leverage off new and (relatively) untested technology. So classic ASP stays.

Or, hey, look at JavaScript. For many years since Netscape shared it with the world, JavaScript was the only game in town, at least where client-side scripting was concerned. VBScript was client-side scripting too, but it  belonged to Microsoft and ran only on IE. By most yardsticks, JavaScript wasn't a great language. It had its warts, and I'm being generous when I say that. But decades on, it has become so pervasive that its use has expanded to frameworks, libraries and even server-side scripting. Uprooting JavaScript now would be a Herculean task.

For that matter, why are Pascal, FORTRAN and COBOL still around?

In technology, new things catch on fast. But older tech takes a while to go away if it has already entrenched itself - by being introduced at the right time, or filling some niche uncontested.

See how long HTML5 took to become a browser standard? Sure, it's starting to come into its own now, but XHTML is still alive. Because while HTML5 is superior and fixes many of the problems that came with HTML4.0 and XHTML, its introduction cannot undo decades of XHTML-based content overnight.

Such is the tech ecosystem

Tech ceases to grow when people stop using it to make new stuff. But it only truly dies when... well, almost never.

Besides, why should a piece of tech die just because some people (or several) don't like it and think it's rubbish? Technology is a vibrant and multifaceted world because of the variety, not in spite of it.

That's all for now. (ad)iOS!
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