i'm afraid the whole supply side method has had its comeuppance yet again. wherever gilder goes, the same things happen.
awk is obviously disappointed and possibly incandescent. not just with what has happened. not just with the ouster of sks. but the disappearance of the loyalty of which he was the great defender. in the end, it was a fealty thing. even snackman turned.
awk was disgusted by everyone he had thought of as wave disciples, who finally wanted a change. he lost control of the multitudes who kept sks in power.
but i also think there's more than sks in play. i think awk was heavily committed to the idea that he was the long's hero and saviour, smiting down the unorthodox and the bashers and generally being the guy around whom everything rotated.
i think he perceived this as a manichaean struggle between good hardware and evil software. he was the messiah of the hardware side.
the arm trustzone thing was also his opportunity to crystallise his role as a benevolent visionary. the telescopic philosopher king. we all know that he didn't originate the idea of trusted mobile but i think he was the earliest to see the phone as a source of a trusted applet based business model originating with arm's environment and linking wave with the masses.
so far, i kinda got it. a guy who bought a vision and was loyal to the guy promoting it.
on the other hand, he has appeared to let awk, the man, the myth, grow out of control, so that now his acolytes tell everyone awk invented this and that and he doesn't correct them. awk mobile. awk trust matrix (or trust zone in disguise). awk financial. whatever the idea is, awk was first.
unfortunately for him, his actual thing with trustzone hasn't occurred. i think there's an obvious reason. the vendors and carriers aren't going to let wave play that role. at least if wave insists on a fee per applet model. and if i know our former ceo, he was not interested in doing anything but that.
nevertheless, it's the role the carriers and vendors obviously want for themselves. and they will go to great lengths to assure themselves of it.
so the failure of sprague and of trustzone to materialise was a very personal disappointment. the leader leads his followers but he also depends upon them. that's my amateur complete bollocks psychological profile. he was heavily invested in his role.
but i digress.
i used to think awk thought about wave independent from the spragues. it became obvious over the director thingie that his attachment to sks was almost religiously strong. to the extent he seemed almost single-handedly to reverse a shareholder vote. i certainly lost patience with him after that. as well as his apparent dissing of those he disagreed with behind the scenes because he was struggling to impose his views online. and his final appearances over here in which he turned over the tables while trying to suppress wave conversations. he forced me to choose. and i chose.
but in the end, he's ended up with no one but his henchmen for company. it's a sad end for a guy who devoted so much time to wave and gloried in leading the wavoids. but he obviously now belongs with rivetz.
inri. i mean inrw.
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