customers or slaves?

When Siri (the voice recognition system on Apple's iPhone) learns the command "Show me a Google map of ___," I will believe that corporations want customers instead of slaves. 

I also await, but with little hope, the day when an Apple phone understands the command: "Use Dragon Dictate instead of Apple's wretched dictation software, so that you finally start understanding what I'm saying." 

Siri's refusal to invoke a non-Apple product is called "vertical integration." It's the process by which we are required to use a company's incompetent products in order to use their competent ones. Its purpose is to entrap the customer so as to prevent actual competition from occurring, as competition would require corporations to do actual work, including actual innovation.

Vertical integration is the mechanism by which the vendor-customer relationship is being transformed into a Lord-vassal relationship, as in feudalism. Like a vassal I must choose my Lord, Apple or Android, and then be utterly loyal to Him in both his good and his evil moods.

The other mechanism for abolishing the customer is the merger of companies in the same business, where stamping out customer choice is quite explicitly the whole point.  

Abolishing customer choice, and thus abolishing the need to actually innovate, is the real purpose of the modern corporation. If customers were free to choose, corporations would have to work harder, and there would be more innovation. But we can't have that.

Discuss.

Comments

[Everett Keyser]

Using the most appropriate product available would be a dream, but so long as we are fettered with capitalism and a growth-based economy, it is just a dream. Vertical integration exists to control costs, and to provide specific features (Google and Apple's maps are good examples).

The alternative is something akin to running a blog. Platforms like Drupal provide the most freedom, and Squarespace the least (Wordpress, and Joomla fall somewhere in the middle). The user experiences on those platforms invariably falls on the bumpier end of the UX spectrum compared to the ease with which we use our phones. More freedom, means more choices that need to be made.

An intriguing model to me is the W3C; one I think is worth trying for a while. It creates standards which can be restrictive, but which also creates a playing field. Are you suggesting some kind or organization like this, but for mobile? Should the W3C extend its reach?