Morrissey, milk, and changing generations

My wife, eldest daughter, and I went to see Morrissey in concert last night in Salt Lake City. Morrissey actually answered one of my pleas, singing one of my favorite songs from his early days with The Smiths:

Haven’t had a dream in a long time/

See the life I’ve had

Could make a good man turn bad.

So, for once in my life,

Let me get what I want.

Such poetry! 🙂

Actually, sitting through the concert (yes, I’m old enough now that I am allowed to sit through concerts, though I was on my feet for “National Front Disco” and other favorites), I spent a lot of time looking around at the other middle-aged bozos like me, living out their teenage years with a decidedly not teenage Morrissey (I think he’s 48 now, and it shows in his paunch – the man should probably not take off his shirt in public anymore, though he did it twice). My generation has passed away….It was the same at the U2 concert my wife and I attended last year – life has moved on, and despite Bono’s funky glasses, it has left him behind, too.

Which reminds me of my recent trip to Helsinki. When I sat down to lunch, I was shocked to find a room filled with glasses of milk. Everybody was drinking milk! I felt right at home.

When I asked why, I was told that it stemmed from the 1930s/40s when World War II was in full swing. The Finnish government apparently figured out that milk was a cheap way to provide nutrition, and so made milk a staple of government rations. Before the war, milk was just another drink; after the war, milk became an integral part of the national identity. In one fell swoop, generations of Finns were changed forever.

I see the same thing happening in software. I hear the Old Guard parroting the party line: “Open source is not disrupting us.” They’re wrong. It is changing everything. Open source and SaaS are changing the rules of the game, to focus vendors on service, not software. This is the dilemma that SAP is fighting right now, and it’s the same quandary that all proprietary software vendors find themselves in. How to burn the boats to the past while staying profitable for the future.

It’s nontrivial. But “The Times They Are a ‘Changin’,” all the same. I may still sing the old songs, and the Finns may still like their beer, but milk and The Shins/Subways/Flaming Lips/etc. are taking over. We’ll still reverence the past, but let’s not mistake the past for future. It’s shocking how fast the future becomes the past, and how critical it is to adapt.