Curious Behavior

So I admit it,  I have a huge problem. I check my email constantly — every 20 seconds — constantly. I cannot work on a computer with less than two screens because email must always be visible.  Buzz and other social media, however, don’t get checked as often.  So, today,  right before a late lunch, I finally get around to checking Buzz — theres one message.

It was a “retweet” — Richard Stallman (THE Richard Stallman) was coming to Google for lunch today. I immediately checked the clock on my PC — 1 PM. Crap! I might be too late! I immediately forgot what I was working on, jumped out of my chair, mentioned it to a bunch of coworkers (while walking towards the door), and ran to the cafeteria.

I got there and found him towards the back (where they said they would be) — the only surprising thing was how small of a table they had! There were but two other people talking to RMS, one of whom was the guy who coordinated his visit. I would think that of all places Google has a whole bunch of open source / GNU folks who would kill for a chance to talk to RMS. I understand if people might have missed the Buzz but he is kind of a memorable face, what with the big beard and all. If I was in the middle of my sandwich and looked up and saw RMS, or Linus Torvalds or Barack Obama or Larry Lessig or <insert other figure at the head of some political/ethical/technical movement you care about> at the next table with 4 empty chairs, you can bet that I won’t be finishing that sandwich in the chair I started it in.

So… where was everybody?  Why did the folks I mentioned this to on the way up not come (they knew who he was)?  Why would all the engineers in the cafeteria not stop by?  To these questions I have no answers.

Talking with RMS obviously got me more motivated than I already was to promote software and technical freedom, so I grabbed some “iBad” tickets (promoting awareness of the rights Apple doesn’t give you and the evil things they do) and brought them back to the office.  I talked with some of the guys… and I know im not RMS and I don’t have 15 years experience trying to convince people of this stuff, but I’ll be blatant: I struck out entirely.  Didn’t convince anybody of anything other than the fact that I’m a nut.

So, why is this so hard?  The first problem is I am probably terrible at it and don’t have much training or experience in preaching people on ethics.  The second problem is  that the people I was talking to already dedicated Apple users, if not even “fanboys”.   I would take it to be a very difficult problem to convince some body to give up devices they already own and use — and might even do a better job than the competition — for intangible ethical reasons.

I guess I’ll just have to keep trying.