It wasn’t a good week to be a Bay Area pioneer\/visionary\/control maniac in black.<\/p>\n
Steve Jobs and Al Davis probably never met, but both of them were in the same business: they were carving a path in their own image through an industry that was hidebound by conventional wisdom and safe practices. \u00a0Don’t hire the minority coach. \u00a0Don’t sign the maverick free agent. \u00a0Don’t try to compete with Blackberry and Nokia and Motorola on phones. \u00a0Don’t branch out into digital music.<\/p>\n
Don’t be different.<\/em><\/p>\n Conventional wisdom, and its amen chorus of pundits, is the greatest threat to this country and to our way of life. \u00a0Everybody knows<\/em> the truth is somewhere in the middle. Everybody knows<\/em> you can’t raise taxes on anyone in a recession. \u00a0Everyone knows<\/em> there’s no way Vanderbilt can be competitive in SEC football. \u00a0Bow to the status quo. \u00a0Accept the world as it is. \u00a0Be the way everyone thinks you ought to be.<\/p>\n And Steve and Al spoke, and they said, fuck you.<\/em><\/p>\n Everybody knew the AFL was a joke, and everybody knew beleaguered Apple Computer had no future. \u00a0And the moral, as always, is beware of what “everybody knows.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It wasn’t a good week to be a Bay Area pioneer\/visionary\/control maniac in black. Steve Jobs and Al Davis probably never met, but both of them were in the same business: they were carving a path in their own image through an industry that was hidebound by conventional wisdom and safe practices. \u00a0Don’t hire the … <\/p>\n