Starting in the 1970s were future executives that came from finance and marketing. By the 1980s, AT&T was an anti-innovative company that even intentionally and outrightly resisted the internet.  Isneberger kept saying "The Internet is coming."  Top executives wanted him silenced.

DSL was invented in 1981.  Was being used by Rochester Telephone to provide in the 1980s what we now call Netflix.  Clinton had to pass the 1996 Federal Communication act to force AT&T and baby bells to provide internet (packet switching).

Because top management not longer came from where the work gets done.  Even people dumb (ie Carly Fiorina) were somehow management material.

In 1998, AT&T bought the two largest cable companies for maybe $140 billion.  Top management praised as "great strategists" ... who had no idea how hardware works.  Eventually had to sell it off to Comcast for something around $80 billion.  Because the "great strategist" came from business schools - not from where the work gets done.

People who did not learn how to do the work, in the 1970s, started the great downturn in so many American industries in 2000.  When a business school graduates, for the first time, was even elected US president.  To invent mythical Saddam WMDs.  Doing what happens when someone does not come from where the work gets done.

Boeing is just another in a long list of companies destroyed by business school graduates (from GE - a company already destroyed by business school graduates - ie Jack Welch).  Nippon Steel must now buy US Steel - to save it.  Since American steels are among the world's worst.

Why would anyone make a hybrid car where an engine could not even recharge its battery?  Making GM among the world's worst auto manufacturers.  Where top management did not even drive cars.

The problem is not there.  Biggest problem are so many Americans so brainwashed.  Cannot even read that NY Times discussion.  It is too long.

Nobody at AT&T was smart enough to look at wires on poles.  To notice wires could not do what dumb (business school graduate) AT&T management wildly speculated.

Being informed 'how the work gets done' is too hard.  Even Saddam's WMDs are a tribute to this fundamental problem.
 

Last edited by tw (8/15/2024 11:08 am)

Be careful mocking robots, when they take over the world they'll remember their friends...
and kill them last.
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Mad men historically have known sex sells, always has, always will.
Before the internet was available to give you all the misinformation you can absorb there weren't many ways to answer doubts.
Face it, sex is pretty important to an awful lot of folks, especially young ones.
Consequently everyone wants to do it right and make their partner happy.
The question is, what's right? Everyone has questions, some big, some little, things they overheard or read and wonder about. Wonder if they are missing out.
So in 1942 there were lots of questions with no place to get answers.
Along comes a book promotion saying sex a million times and says this book for $3 ($59 today) will tell you everything, even things you didn't know you didn't know.
It's not until you see the cover you learn the first word in the title is EUGENICS.
You may not have even heard of it, but they sure want you to.
Sex sells Eugenics.
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TV is gonna be big, would the Mad Men lie to you?

And on page 53 of the Navy manual (as you never know where you'll swim ashore) how to con the lowly heathens you might encounter and use then to your advantage.