"Second, we're spending a huge amount of money on technology so that everyone can check out laptops and portable phones. We're spending more money to write our existing information into databases or onto CD-ROM"
About this Quote
The complaint isn’t really about laptops or CD-ROMs; it’s about the lazy belief that digitizing equals progress. Jay Chiat, the ad-world businessman who helped sell Silicon Valley’s future to the mainstream, is sounding an alarm from inside the machine: institutions love buying shiny tools because it looks like modernization, even when the underlying work hasn’t changed.
His phrasing does the heavy lifting. “A huge amount of money” and “more money” reads like a drumbeat of escalating waste, then the punchline: we’re “write[ing] our existing information” into new containers. Existing. The subtext is brutal: if your grand transformation is copying the old world onto CD-ROM, you haven’t innovated, you’ve just repackaged bureaucracy with a power cord. “Everyone can check out laptops and portable phones” also hints at the performative democratization that tech budgets promise. Access becomes the headline, while purpose, training, and outcomes stay in the fine print.
Context matters here. Chiat lived through the late-20th-century boom when “information technology” became a magic phrase that could unlock funding in schools, libraries, and corporations. Databases and CD-ROMs weren’t just tools; they were status symbols, a way to signal you were keeping up. Chiat’s intent is to re-center the conversation on value: technology should change what you can do, not just how you store what you already know. The quote lands because it skewers a pattern that never died: buying the future is easier than building it.
His phrasing does the heavy lifting. “A huge amount of money” and “more money” reads like a drumbeat of escalating waste, then the punchline: we’re “write[ing] our existing information” into new containers. Existing. The subtext is brutal: if your grand transformation is copying the old world onto CD-ROM, you haven’t innovated, you’ve just repackaged bureaucracy with a power cord. “Everyone can check out laptops and portable phones” also hints at the performative democratization that tech budgets promise. Access becomes the headline, while purpose, training, and outcomes stay in the fine print.
Context matters here. Chiat lived through the late-20th-century boom when “information technology” became a magic phrase that could unlock funding in schools, libraries, and corporations. Databases and CD-ROMs weren’t just tools; they were status symbols, a way to signal you were keeping up. Chiat’s intent is to re-center the conversation on value: technology should change what you can do, not just how you store what you already know. The quote lands because it skewers a pattern that never died: buying the future is easier than building it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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