Stamp Out Fascist Open Standards
It was of course the Marquis de Sade who once observed from his observatory of mankind that was the asylum of Charenton that "Those who define are the masters." In that he not only summed up the most important issues of our time but some of the most trivial. I speak here of the very minor footnote to Internet history which is the misguided Occupy Flash site and the shadowy figures behind it that prefer to not come forward.
Let's start with the intellectual dishonesty of co-opting the Occupy Wall Street movement, one of the most important popular manifestations of our era. I don't really like hamburgers very much. So from the same logic, it would be fine for me to create an Occupy McDonalds site, declaring the importance of returning to a hamburger that was 100% organic beef. You'd say that was self-selving and trivial? If so, you would be right. The creators of Occupy Flash are quite aware of the dishonest nature of their hijacking of the OWS brand, since they declare that: "We understand we are fairly shamelessly co-opting populist terminology. And for that matter, we're not really occupying anything. More like evicting. Or banishing. Regardless, we love the idea of normal people taking on big corporations in the interest of the population at large."
Right. More truthfully, they love the idea of grabbing the fleeting attention of developers for the empty vessel that is their antipathy towards Flash. If they wanted to take on "big corporations" they could just as easily start with Apple, the master of closed systems. But Adobe is a much easier whipping boy.
These folks don't like Flash in a big way. But why? "The Flash Player is dead. Its time has passed. It's buggy. It crashes a lot. It requires constant security updates." Well, one out of five isn't bad, I guess. It does require a lot of security updates. Like, oh, let me see, Windows and Mac OS? Like any mature Internet-facing technology, in other words. I'll tell you right now I use Windows systems and for me, Flash doesn't crash any more, perhaps less, than anything else. Sorry, that's just how it is. Buggy? What does that mean? Its time has passed? And what will replace it? HTML5? Please, give me a break.
Here's the thing. Flash may well annoy a lot of people. Mac users, in particular, have a real antipathy towards Flash, thanks in part to the late, great Steve Jobs casting a fatwa upon it. This has been exacerbated by Adobe being its typically arrogant self in flogging it relentlessly as the key to the universe while dragging its feet in key areas. But so what? Show me something better that can really set the browser free. These Occupy Flash types would prefer we all march to the dumbed-down open standards song, a browser-based experience that would set the clock back a decade. Sure, open standards simplify the life of developers but where do the users show up in all this? Typically, nowhere. The technical elite call the shots to further their own narrow agenda and users are left to update their Facebook profile and buy junk on Amazon. Hello, isn't the Internet capable of just a bit more than this? And of tolerating technologies that (horrors!) are not the product of standards committees. You know, those groups that have contributed so much to the advancement of humanity.
I think we just might be able to tolerate the existence of a single browser plugin that actually has the potential to greatly enhance our experience of the Web. The responsibility is all Adobe's for not spending the last few years encouraging the development of such compelling Flash content that we wouldn't all rise as one and demand that they continue extending its capabilities. But failing that, to allow a coterie of developers with a selfish agenda to incite us to stick a knife in it—no thanks, you can count me out.
Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com
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