Sarah Jeong’s covering the Oracle v. Google trial, whereby the two companies are fighting over Java, copyright and the difficulty of explaining things like APIs to “normals.” Most interesting is how the trial reveals not only how completely alien “nerd subculture” is, but that normal people — judges! juries! — are surprisingly good at spotting and exposing Silicon Valley’s hypocrisy and narcissism.
The nerds struggle to be understood. It doesn’t help that towards the end of his cross-examination by Oracle, Schwartz became snippier and snippier, answering the Oracle lead attorney’s questions with passive-aggressive hostility.
Schwartz seemed less upset about being called one of the worst CEOs in America, and more put off by the sheer indignity of being cross-examined by a man who didn’t know what a blog is—enough that he broke a 10-month long Twitter silence to snark about it.
In public! With billions on the line! During the trial! Shades of Matthew Keys — an almost supernatural level of arrogance before the people who, literally, are there to judge you.