Musings

Founding Sillyz.Computer was Easy for A Couple Reasons

I think crediting computers should be more like crediting movies and I think crediting movies should be more like crediting computers.

What do I mean?

For a movie, above the line talent shows in the intro, below the line talent— after the above the line talent happens again at the end during the credits.

The cool thing about the movie doing this— everyone is seen. In software, there's above the line talent and below the line talent as well.

For computers, above the line talent appears in news headlines, has stage time, performs the art of the company. The below the line talent does the work, but there's not really credit in software, not publicly anyway. There are full audit trails of who changes what, where, when, and why, but that's proprietary computer vendor knowledge.

Fundamentally, computers aren't viewed like movies and movies aren't viewed like software.

Sillyz.Computer thinks they can be.

At the end of the day, computers make movies and movies make computers. Think about the iconic 1984 Apple ad— a short film that sold a brilliant number of computers.

Performance art.

Behind the scenes, Apple employees are shrouded in mystery to guard against corporate espionage and sabotage.

Sillyz.Computer doesn't think they have to be.

At the end of the day, computers and movies are built on social graphs shaped by the passings of papers, which inevitably outgrows the paper and needs a thumb drive.

When this happens, who owned what paper gets confused and there's not a proper way to attribute contributions across device and context boundaries.

At least, there wasn't until Sillyz.Computer.

And if the bottleneck of my career was not performing art, then I shall perform art.