zlacker

>>sirkne+(OP)
In the minds of most Finns, Nokia ceased to exist a long time ago.

Not saying that this was not personally significant for sirkneeland, and it's a nicely written piece. For myself, for the past few years, Nokia has ceased to exist a little bit more every day. This is just one more of those days.

Somehow, I feel this is appropriate here:

  The computer center is empty,
  Silent except for the whine of the cooling fans.
  I walk the rows of CPUs,
  My skin prickling with magnetic flux.
  I open a door, cold and hard,
  And watch the lights dancing on the panels.
  A machine without soul, men call it,
  But its soul is the sweat of my comrades,
  Within it lie the years of our lives,
  Disappointment, friendship, sadness, joy,
  The algorithmic exultations,
  The long nights filled with thankless toil,
  I hear the echoes of sighs and laughter,
  And in the darkened offices
  The terminals shine like stars.

– Geoffrey James, The Zen of Programming (1988)

>>metafu+Z1
Thank you for the kind words. Yes, my Finnish friends (and thanks to Nokia I have many) have expressed similar sentiments about when Nokia "died" to them. But for me it hit me today, when as I walked out the doors of the office I realized that while I would walk out of the same doors ~24 hours later, I would never walk out the doors of Nokia ever again.

>>sirkne+G2
What really struck me, was that for the first time, even though I've read it a thousand times before, was the fact that Nokia had one of those impossible goals.

Connecting people, is somewhat like the Microsoft vision of giving everyone a personal computer. And while there are people in certain parts of the 3rd world that doesn't have mobile phones, I would say Nokia did an amazing job to get a mobile phone into everyone's hands.

My dad worked for Ericsson, so I've never owned a Nokia phone, you were the "evil rivals" after all, but I bow my head to Nokia for what they did, for how many people they connected with mobile phones.

Nokia might not have been the company that profited from SmartPhones, but they were the company that created the market for SmartPhones.