Daniel Ichbiah, an entertaining French technology writer and musician, dreams of a day artists might get their act together in protest at software protection of a kind which threatens the long-term future of their work.
When I read his cri de coeur in the September issue of the excellent monthly 'SVMMac' (Fr), I decided it merited an ever wider audience.
Ichbiah, whose name first became familiar to English-speakers when he told much of the story of the rise and rise of Bill Gates for the first time in 'The Making of Microsoft' (with Susan Knepper, 1989) is among people I've long wanted to meet.
His prose is prolific, clear, sometimes vitriolic, very often amusing. So I was delighted when he proved happy to see some of it translated and posted at Blogcritics, which I've just done, with the benediction of Laurent Clause, a chief editor at the Mac monthly.
I had no hesitation about "tu-toying" Daniel in my e-mail: his monthly columns are the work of a feller often on own my wavelength, including a splendid dig at some of the more sublime idiocies of the website run by the French state rail company SNCF. Myself, I've thought that this place was designed by people determined to make sure you miss the very train you're desperate to get a seat aboard and end up with some package hotel deal in Brussels. In speed and efficiency, it is to many airline reservation sites what Stephenson's Rocket (pictured at Pixel Pot) was to the TGV (Clem Tillier and Yann Nottara run a worship site).
On the 'phone, my worst suspicions about Mr Ichbiah were confirmed. He speaks good English himself, has a wicked sense of humour, and is one of those fortunate writers tucked away with his family in a "very little village" safely out of spitting distance of Paris.
I also accidentally told him a fib, because the Kid and I do have one of his books, 'Le guide stratégique Myst III : Exile'. It's the first Myst we get stuck on sometimes.
Computer games and their history, however, are only one string to Ichbiah's bow: his most recent publication came out in March and is a practical guide to setting up your Home Studio.
Apart, however, from making sure that I'd correctly grasped the notion of "dongles" -- since I've never seen one until this week and don't have to wade through a heap of them and waste precious USB sockets on the computer when I want to do something creative -- Daniel and I talked surprisingly little of what he wrote.
That speaks for itself.
We opted for the more enjoyable subject of nothing and everything, as the French put it, which ranges wide. I was particularly interested to hear the first-hand opinion of a Frenchman who has recently visited the United States, a country Daniel has long liked, and been on the sharp end of the treatment I mentioned back in April.
He didn't actually say: "It pissed me off!"
But he came close. As I noted in that entry, 'Behind enemy lines?', the sour feeling often became mutual. It's a pity that many people adopt such attitudes because of the stupidities of their governments. It's a bigger pity, as I think Daniel would agree in these insane times, that the rest of us have to put up with the stupidity of people who believe their governments.
11:07:33 PM link 
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