My favorite quote from Frankenweenie, applied to software

Frankenweenie is a very cool movie by Tim Burton, get it, watch it. My favorite quote from it is when the science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, refutes the scaremongering against science that is launched by the mayor, who was very angry since his boy fell down a roof in a very unwise science project he and his friend were doing.

Ladies, gentleman.
I think the confusion here is that you are all very ignorant.
Is that right word, ignorant? I mean stupid, primitive , unenlightened.
You do not understand science so you are afraid of it, like a dog is afraid of thunder or balloons.
To you science is magic and witchcraft because, because you have small minds.
I cannot make your heads bigger, but your children’s is. I can take them and crack them open.
This is what I try to do. To get at their brains!
Ah, thank you.

This quote always reminds me of how so many people treat computers (well, the software) as some kind of magical thunder or witchcraft balloons and then proceed to make all sorts of bad decisions.

These go from colleagues and bosses to politicians and statesmen (in a generic form, not trying to tie out these roles to anyone in particular, mind you) and often the unwise decisions stemming from this ignorance have very, very bad results like wasting money of bad software solutions just because they have “support” (often so bad that it’s much worse than non SLA bases community support we’re used to on healthy Free Software projects) or stupid, primitive, unenlightened law proposals, some of which haven’t been stopped in time, some of which return in attempt after attempt like zombies from a B movie.

How can we fix this? Sigh.

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