Computer Corporate Imprintitis

I got the sort of email I get every once in a while yesterday (edited for spelling and grammar):

I don’t know why, but I always have the feeling you are a big fan of
hardware monopolies.

Wouldn’t it be nice everybody using Big Brother Intel products???

Think twice before talking or writing.

Civility is good, but inspiration is better, so my response was . . .

I can diagnose this. You suffer from computer corporate imprintitis, in
particular, AMDitis. This is a paranoic delusional state caused by
inflammation of ego whenever the corporate entity with which the victim has
imprinted.

This illness has many variants, including but not limited to AMDitis,
Intelitis, nViditis and ATItis. In all cases, victims display selective
perception and memory, apparently seeing and remembering certain stimuli
and not others. For instance, AMDitis victims usually display
hypersensitivity and perceived long-term memory to any criticism made of
AMD, yet total amnesia of any equivalent criticism of Intel or praise of AMD
made by the same party.

Victims of corporate imprintitis disassociate criticisms from actions,
apparently due to the delusion that criticisms do not stem from actions nor
for any reason stated in a criticism but from other causes unmentioned by the critic.
They also tend to view all praise and criticisms of the competing corporate
entities as a zero-sum game, considering any praise of one company to be a
criticism of the other and vice versa.

We now understand that corporate imprinting works as follows:

To be an appropriate target for corporate social bonding an object (it could, of
course, be a person or a company) has to provide stimulation that is
pleasurable and in this sense, comforting. This will happen when some aspect
of the object (for example, the shape and texture of its logo, its
performance, or some other positive trait) has the capacity to innately
stimulate the production of endorphins (the brain’s own form of morphine).

When a victim is exposed to such an object it is immediately comforted and
if the exposure is extensive, the initially neutral features of the
object/company gradually acquire the capacity to themselves stimulate the
production of endorphins. This happens through an as yet to be thoroughly
understood learning process.

It was once believe that computer corporate imprintitis was permanent and
irreversible, but clinical tests have shown that extensive exposure to me
can often greatly reduce and in some cases even eliminate the condition.***

So my prescription is a continued and complete dose of me daily, to be
carefully read and digested at least once a day. Before your daily dose,
you should carefully follow the instructions on the package, and assume that
they are just as written, for the reasons stated and no other.

You may find taking notes
each and every day to be helpful in finding patterns in what the dosage is,
and why it is being given.

🙂

Unfortunately, the person who wrote this apparently didn’t have the courage to get a response from me; it
bounced back to me with a “server permanently rejected message.” No matter, his loss is your gain. 🙂

But do you know what? I wrote it as a joke, but I’m not so sure the imprinting part is. I might have stumbled on to something . . . .

***The paragraphs on imprinting are a modified parody of the description of imprinting found here.

Email Ed