Intelectural Restructuring

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 06:54 PM 4/6/99 -0700, Dennis wrote:
>On Mon, 5 Apr 1999, Henry C.K. Liu cross-posted:
>
>> Microsoft Skims Off Academia's Best for Research Center
>>                     By Mark Leibovich
>>                     Washington Post Staff Writer
>>                     Monday, April 5, 1999; Page A01
>> 
>> REDMOND, Wash.—The company well known for its
>> aggressive domination of the software world has set
>> itself a new target: the best minds of academia. With cash,
>> stock options and the promise of vast resources, Microsoft
>> Corp. is luring faculty elites to its research center at a
>> pace so fast that some campus departments say they're being picked
>> clean.
>
>Ha, ha! Trust Microsquash to make all the stupid mistakes IBM made, only
>on a global scale. This is a fine example of Bourdieu's habitus at work 
>-- BillGe (my favorite acronym for everyone's favorite $80 Billion Man) is
>trying to recreate, for some very interesting reasons, a kind of Bubble
>Academy, a glassed-in zoo of intellectuals, which he can purchase,
>house and feed like pets.

Perhaps the greatest use-value of such purchased intellectuals is not what
they CAN do for the Microsoft, but in what they CANNOT do for anyone else,
having been coopted by Billy G.

That is the role the academe has been duly playing in making the world safe
for the rule of capital, no?

Wojtek