John C. Dvorak, author, columnist and editor, writes for PC Magazine as well hosts the podcast show "Cranky Geeks." Fed up with the obsession with technology itself, John Dvorak targets the ineffective, pretentious and flashy in the technology field, and wants us to return to functionable, quality products that serve the consumer, not the other way around.

1. You identify yourself as a "cranky geek," or someone who has gotten over being impressed that technology exists at all, and now wants the whole package to "just work." When did you start viewing technology as a means, and not an end, and why do fewer people speak up in the way that you do?

I started out viewing technology as a means to an end in the 1970’s when I thought technology could help me get organized. It never did the job and I became cranky. I’m more disorganized than ever.

As for the meekness of others, I think there are two reasons people do not speak up. The first is because they are often bedazzled by technology and the BS that surrounds it. The second is that they are genuinely scared to speak up. I’ve been told this by a lot of people. It’s weird but I hear that and comments like, “How do you get away with saying those things?” It’s not good.

2. How does a company or individual make software and hardware that works as you'd like it to? Is it substantially more difficult than what they do now?

I don’t think so. Most people either design for themselves, which is generally good. Or they design for an imaginary public, which is bad since they are disconnected from the real public. I don’t look for something designed for me. I look for something good that I can adapt to.

3. With a growing number of people living through MySpace and dumping their girl- and boyfriends over text message chats, how do you think the social network-world affects real-world social life?

It modernizes it. If we accept that better and faster communications is a good thing in general then all this is good. If I were in high school I think it would be cool to break up over text messages. Why not? It has to be a lot less agonizing.

4. How and why are American generations growing up to become "narrow thinkers"?

They do not get a good well-rounded education. Everything is specialized. Teachers are techno-phobes. And the schools budgets go to middle managers who do nothing. The situation spells doom for the nation.

5. Everyone talks about network security today. Why is this so difficult?

Software is just hard, period.

6. What importance does quality leadership in company have on the quality of products? Are there any outstanding examples?

Everything is top down. If you have a person at the top who is a stickler for quality then you get quality. For an overall outstanding example let me go a little to the wild side and suggest the winemakers in France and Italy who practice Biodynamic winemaking.

7. Does working within certain narrow tasks have a chance of reducing our ability to think about the whole task, and consequently becoming oblivious to making stuff "just work"?

Of course it does.

8. You experimented once with a Mac; Steve Jobs is known to be a fascist, or as Jean
Louis Gassee put it, "an enlightened tyrant." How would you run a company like Apple? Would it be any different from how you would run Microsoft?

These sorts of companies can only be run by the visionaries who established them. Nobody else can fully understand what they’re thinking. If I ran these companies I would sell off the pieces and bail out since there is no way I could do anything else but let the companies slide downhill. I’d bust them up instead.

9. Do Open Source products do better or worse than the mainstream?

The jury is still out. But it seems that open source may do better, but take longer.

10. Tell us what gadgets you use, and why. Do you have a method of resisting gadget overflow?

I’m pretty much a cameras and computers guy not obsessed with gadgets. I seldom carry a cell phone and prefer a big stereo with real speakers to using deafening and injurious ear buds and iPods for music. Most gadgets have a dehumanizing aspect to them that I don’t particularly like. Over the years I’ve reflected this in my writing and don’t actually talk about gadgets much.

Interview was conducted by Alex Birch the 29th of June 2008.

Corrupt would like to thank John Dvorak for kindly participating in the interview and sharing his views on the world of technology.

John Dvorak @ PC Magazine

John Dvorak @ Cranky Geeks

Dvorak Uncensored