Showing posts with label mephistopheles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mephistopheles. Show all posts

Monday, 6 June 2011

Faust 2.1

 

Angels were created, according to Christian and Hebrew tradition, before men and women. Angels were far more perfect, and certainly less tied to human limitations.

However, in the beginning of times, one of them rose against his creator. Against God Himself.

He was the most beautiful of them all, and claiming his own merit based on that, he led nothing less than one third of the angels supporting his rebellion. He would not accept to bow down to mankind after having discovered God’s plan of salvation. He would not accept being second best to creatures not so perfect as him, to Sons and Daughters of God.

Men and women were not perfect, after all.

Now we have our own version of Faust dwelling into these troublesome and difficult waters… and moving one step ahead. After all, he is not unfamiliar to Hebrew traditions, we suppose.

He will not launch a product which is not perfect

Leaving aside any definition of what perfect exactly means in his mind, should we understand that when WebOS is out there it will really be perfect? Will the tablets or smartphones that run there really achieve that?

Several million people all over the world may have something to say about that… and the same wrongly understood sense of pride which ultimately led Lucifer to rebellion floats in the atmosphere, as Satan’s shadow floated over Faust through Mephistopheles, according to the German legends that our dear 21st-Century Faust is probably not unaware of.

Lucifer is also know as The Fallen Angel… if he continues the trend of the stock value of the company he is leading, he will soon match the same “perfection” as the former.

 

Sunday, 5 June 2011

Faust 2.0

 

German culture and traditions are an intrinsic part of Europe’s History. As Europe may not be understood without Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Balzac, Macchiavelli, Dumas, Locke… it could not either without Goethe, one of whose latest works was the story about Faust.

This is the story of a deal… an agreement, if you will… or in modern language, a Strategic Alliance. Faust was given 24 years of unlimited happiness by Mephistopheles in exchange of his immortal soul for eternity.

Immortal souls are often represented in art like auras or halos around their owners… Immortal souls which constitute the essence of their owners, like state-of-the-art products constitute the souls of leading technology companies.

Recently one German-led company has allowed its German head to sell off a significant portion of its immortal soul, or halo, in exchange of having its new partner serving as exclusive agent to HP for certain Universal Communications (UC) solutions. Probably the same way as Mephistopheles was the agent of Faust to grant the latter the appropriate deliverables for his ultimate happiness.

We do not really know what is included in the definition of happiness for our new version of Faust, but in fact it has not proven any kind of happiness to HP shareholders so far, as much as Faust’s original happiness did not really mean any happiness at all to poor Gretchen.

And we do not know either for how long this so-called happiness will last… Despite the original legends stipulated 24 years, our personal bet is that Faust 2.0 may enjoy 24 months, or eventually 24 weeks…