Minutes before I started a Skype-call this morning, I heard the news.

Microsoft had bought Skype for $8.5 billion dollars.

To put it mildly, many people aren’t happy about it

My immediate reaction was indifference. I have to add to this, that I use Skype daily. It plays a central role in the way I make a living and connect to students, colleagues, family and business partners.

Have I gone completely nuts?

Why don’t I care about this potentially disrupting change?

Don’t I feel that my livelihood is threatened? Doesn’t it devalue the central thesis of my upcoming book about using (tools like) Skype for online teaching, instead of using “virtual classroom” software?

No. And double no.

In fact, I’m happy about it.

Why?

Because the technology is irrelevant to what I do

We are afraid that Microsoft will ruin our favorite global VOIP service. Microsoft is “evil”. Every child knows that, right?

But is it less or more evil than Google, Facebook or Apple?

How can I say that technology is irrelevant while at the same time I’m using it everyday to connect to people all over the world?

Isn’t that a paradox?

Not at all.

People have become so obsessed with what operating system is the best, what company is better, etc. that we are living in a constant haze of confusing the content with its container, forever enshrined in the comical “Mac vs. PC” debate.

In the same way that owning a Stradivarius doesn’t automatically make you a Vivaldi, owning an Apple computer doesn’t automatically make you more creative, even if the hard and software may lend itself more to it.

So, why am I happy about this whole Microsoft Skype deal?

Because it doesn’t mean anything.

Because it shows that instead of focusing on what we can possibly do with technology, we continue to be obsessed with the technology itself.

It shows that there is a great “demand” for writings like this.

That there couldn’t possibly be a better time than to release my new book about Online Teaching which can be summarized as an iconoclastic introduction into the vapor-world of eLearning and how to make a living by helping others using simple tools like Skype.

I say “like Skype”, because Skype is just a popular synonym for being able to communicate globally and freely, as if the person was sitting right next to you.

Skype didn’t invent this principle. Neither is it the only company that offers it. Nor will it disappear, if Microsoft messes it up.

It has simply (by matter of coming at the right time and having the right branding) managed to become the most popular manifestation of this idea.

But the idea itself cannot be bought! Even if you slap on 10 million patents and defend it with lawsuits.

Let me tell you a little story to illustrate…

The Tin Can Telephone

Once upon a time there were two children who had built a “tin can telephone”, a simple contraption consisting of two cans and a wire. By keeping the wire taut, they could hear each other’s voices transmitted through the wire. Soon it became popular with other children in the neighbourhood. In fact, it worked so well that soon the whole city had built themselves such simple communication devices. Until, one day, a grown-up came along and spent a lot of money, buying the original “can telephone” from the inventors themselves in the hope of gaining an advantage and lots of profit in the big world.

The children, smiling at the adult’s shortsightedness gladly took the money, gave him the phone and continued playing.

In fact, they were happy because the can telephone had started to bore them, already. It was just catching dust, anyways.

And while the whole neighbourhood was ripe with talks debating the acquisition, the worthiness of the new proprietor or the future of this “technology” – the two children soon forgot about the “can telephone” and continued playing, accidentally inventing radio-signals, satellite communication and the Internet.

While the man who had bought the original spent his life worrying about something that was outdated the moment he bought it.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44442915@N00/4960579336/sizes/s/