On the Importance of Professional Writers
Writing is easy. That’s what non-writers say. And writing is easy, but making sense? Not as easy, apparently.
According to this article, we’re reaching the end of the PC era. IBM ditched the PC market a while back, and now HP seems to be following suit. Tablets are the future. Blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to talk about this transition or the changing face of technology. I want to talk about a quote from Steve Jobs, who should probably fire his speech writer, or hire one if he’s coming up with this stuff on his own.
“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms.” Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.
“PCs are going to be like trucks,” Jobs said. “They are still going to be around.” However, he said, only “one out of x people will need them.”
One out of X people? The PC market already only penetrates “one out of X people,” because X can equal ANY NUMBER YOU CHOOSE. That’s like saying that only one in X people use Facebook, when the actual statistic is one in four people. One in four is impressive. Facebook must be very famous. But what if it X was a million? Only one in a million people use Facebook. That statistic would imply that Facebook is barely known in the world community.
In essence, whether the PC market suddenly crashes or booms or stays the same, Steve Jobs can look back on this speech and say he predicted it. The statistic means nothing. Perhaps that was his devious plan all along. Perhaps.