I'm not usually one to quote long passages of other people's writing, but I can't resist quoting Scoble's post today about ants. In Robert's vision, the ants represent Microsoft employees and the bees are third-party developers like Marc Canter. I love it when people use literary devices, such as metaphor, in a technical or business context. It encourages new ideas and makes us see things in a new light. It also reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously :-) Now, take it away Scoble:
"I started having a dream that I was in an ant hill, and it was raining honey from above. The ants were harvesting the honey, and storing it away to use on future expansion projects.
The ants couldn't see where the honey was coming from, but they knew it was "raining" regularly, so they were able to plan. Then I had a vision of the honey dripping from a bee hive up on a tree branch that was overhead of the ant hill.
What are the bee hives? Third party developers. In my vision, Marc was a bee. I was an ant. Now, in Marc's post, he says that the ants figured out where the bee hives were, and they killed all the bees.
My vision is that it's far better for the ants to leave the bees alone. Why?
Ever see an ant colony try to develop its own honey?"
