M-A-C is not G-O-D
Category: Uncategorized
And now for a little levity…
Leander Kahney’s article “Cult of Macintosh: Worshipping at the Altar of Mac,” published earlier this month in Wired, is a semi-serious, semi-humorous look at Mac adherents. And it relates to yesterday’s topic (the similarities between religious marketing and commercial brand marketing).
It looks like Wired has been on a what-is-religion-? kick recently, because they also recently published Randy’s Dotinga’s article, “Flying Spaghetti Monster Inspires Wonky Religious Debate,” describing how a few religious scholars are studying seriously the Pastafarians.
Update 12/23/2007
Two more relevant article suggests from the comments:
Karyn points out “Of Gods and iPods” in Science & Spirit, and Steve recommends “Umberto Eco on Macintosh vs. DOS.”
December 20th, 2007 15:55
This everything-is-religion mind-set is all around us. There’s something similar on http://www.science-spirit.org/newdirections.php?article_id=731
It compares Mac and PC as two different “religions” via their branding.
December 20th, 2007 18:51
Umberto Eco’s back-page column link –
http://jowett.web.cern.ch/jowett/EcoMACDOS.htm
So — if the PC and DOS is Protestant, the Mac is Catholic, how does open-source Linux fit into this model?
December 21st, 2007 10:33
Karyn and Steve,
Thanks for the links — these are both very relevant articles, and later this week I’m going to add them as an update to the main post or write a new one.
Since I use both systems without fanatical interest in either, it seems to me that the branding is more what distinguishes one system from another. I’m not really buying the argument that at its core, Mac is really Catholic and the PC is really Protestant.
But if we do use that model, then I think we should claim open source software as very UU!
See: http://uuworld.org/ideas/articles/41733.shtml