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The Primetime Article

John Walker -- May 14, 1985 22:41

I grasp for adjectives and fail.

Is this how we want to present the company we have all worked so hard to build? A freak show which uses every hype word in the lexicon of the flack, or as a group of hard working people whose dedication to competence and quality have made a name for ourselves?

Let me list some of the pure bullshit words used in this odious document:

``functionally unique'', ``THE success stories'', ``brilliant'', ``virtually limitless'', ``breakthrough'', ``state-of-the-art'', ``sweeping in a new definition'', ``exemplars of the great entrepreneurial spirit'', ``Japanese Management techniques'', ``new, light, airy office building'', ``spiritual aegis'', ``people-consciousness'', ``literally changing the way many industries do business'', ``Autodesk meteor'', ``quantum leap'', ``revolutionary'', ``forcing change'', ``synonymous with productivity'', ``unparalleled accuracy'', ``foundations in American history'', ``combined business acumen with social values'', ``dynamic much deeper than their...bottom line''.

I won't comment on the numerous egregious misstatements, gloss-overs, and misperceptions in this cowpie of a company profile. The overt illiteracy of the writing and slipshod editing is self-evident, but perhaps the centered, consciousness three, holistic well-being bubbleheads at whom this piffle is aimed are post-literate exemplars of the New Age.

Would anybody who was impressed by this execrable effigy of our efforts be a likely customer of AutoCAD? Would we even want them to know we existed? If they stormed the building, we might have to lay in a supply of reality gas.

How can we respect the public relations judgement of anybody who could read trenchant prose like this and then submit it to a client? And if it wasn't reviewed before submission, what are their standards?

  After meditating in the spiritual aegis of Mount Tamalpais, I must render my verdict upon this brie-dripping bastardization of our brainwork. I hope my attitudes don't forever align me with those ``traditional corporate heresies'' we disdain when I say,

``I don't like it''.

   

Peter Barnett drew this representation of a street intersection based on a California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) specification manual. This drawing, done on a pre-release version of AutoCAD 2.0, uncovered several bugs in object snap, which was first introduced in that release. It has since been used as a sample drawing and plotter test.


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Editor: John Walker