At the risk of committing the ultimate sin -- mixing characters from multiple comics universes -- we present the best way to understand the strategies, motivations, and internal struggles of today's top tech leaders, through their uncanny superhero alter egos.
Steve Ballmer
One
is an outsized beast who flies into an uncontrollable rage at the
slightest provocation. The other is a comic book character with green
skin. But both Ballmer and Dr. Bruce Banner (aka the Incredible Hulk)
have more in common besides a desperate need for anger management
counseling. Like the Hulk, Ballmer has managed to smash the puny
weaklings who looked like they might succeed him in the big chair. And
like Banner, he has issues with transformation -- unable to convert
Microsoft from a lumbering colossus into a being nimble enough to
compete with his rivals. Whatever you do, don't make him mad
Eric Schmidt
Professor
Charles Francis Xavier is a legendary telepath and headmaster of Xavier
Academy, a Hogwarts for teenage X-Men. Schmidt famously once said, "We can more or less know what you're thinking about."
As chairman of the Google X-Men, he's guiding a flock of Googleplex
mutants as they construct fleets of driverless cars, design
privacy-eviscerating video glasses, fund interplanetary travel, and
prepare humanity for the singularity when man and machine merge. Are
Schmidt's intentions good or evil? As with most comic book characters,
you'll have to wait until the next issue to find out.
Marissa Mayer
If
any company needed a superheroine to rescue it from the maelstrom of
mediocrity, it was Yahoo. In her first year Mayer has breathed new life
into Flickr; tossed the Lasso of Truth around Tumblr, Summly, and 15 other acquisitions;
and hurled her razor-sharp tiara at Yahoo's pajama-wearing slackers and
BlackBerry-toting weenies. While no one's predicting the imminent
demise of Google just yet, employee satisfaction at Yahoo just hit a five-year high,
and the company is no longer thought of as the prototypical Web 1.0
dinosaur. All she needs now is some black hair dye, a spandex suit, and a
pair of bulletproof bracelets.
Tim Cook
After
working side by side with the caped crusader for more than a decade,
Tim Cook is fighting crime and Android in Gotham City all on his own.
But whether he's made the transition from sidekick to superhero is a
puzzle worthy of the Riddler. While Apple's fan base is as fiercely
loyal as ever, its stock price has plummeted,
longtime employees are beginning to look elsewhere, and the company is
snared in a seeming endless legal stalemate with rival Samsung. More
troubling: Wayne Enterprises' vaunted R&D lab seems to have run out
of life-changing gadgets. Holy unsubstantiated rumor, Batman -- is that
an iWatch we see or just the distant memory of One More Thing?
Larry Elliso
Like Tony Stark, Larry Ellison is a man of large appetites -- whether for acquiring smaller companies (86 and counting), wives (four and counting), or the America's Cup
(only one so far, but give him time). What Larry wants, Larry
eventually gets, even if it requires spending billions of dollars and/or
laying waste to major metropolitan areas. Why settle for being the
planet's fifth richest man when you could be No. 1? Only a heart-size cold fusion reactor could power an ego this large.
Kim Dotcom
To
Hollywood, Dotcom is a monster -- a high-tech experiment gone hideously
wrong. But to the music and movie swapping masses he's the ultimate
anti-establishment hero, unwilling to back down even in the face of
impossible odds. The SWAT-style takedown of Dotcom and his Megaupload
digital locker by legal authorities in January 2012 only made him more
determined to do battle. The introduction of his Mega encrypted storage
service a year later can mean only one thing: It's clobberin' time.
Jeff Bezos
Don't let the lack of blue skin fool you; like the Watchmen's Dr. Jon Osterman
(aka Manhattan), Bezos is an individual of unusual power, able to move
freely between the past, present, and future of cloud commerce. Presumed
dead after the dot-bomb implosion of the late 1990s, Bezos engineered a
remarkable resurrection, transforming Amazon from an online bookseller
to a powerhouse in the field of retail goods, entertainment, and
computing. With the passing of the Dark Knight, Bezos is perhaps the
only individual in the tech realm with the power to create markets with
the introduction of a single device -- provided he can avoid those
tachyon particles. Watch out, journalism. You're next on the telekinetic
Dr. Manhattan's to-save list.
Tim Berners Le
If
you're looking for someone who can spin a web, who better than the guy
who invented it? The creator of the World Wide Web is considered the
ultimate tech superhero by many, but like his arachnid-human
counterpart, Sir Tim prefers to avoid the limelight. After inventing the
Web in 1989, Lee went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium, a
standards body still in effect today, and the World Wide Web Foundation,
dedicated to extending the Web's reach to the two-thirds of the planet
who remain unconnected. You know what they say: With great power comes
great responsibility.
Mark Zuckerberg
These
hoodie-wearing 20-somethings have more in common than the superpower of
extreme social awkwardness. To earn the love of Ramona Flowers, Pilgrim must defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends.
For his part, Zuckerberg must conquer the SEC, FTC, privacy cranks, and
angry shareholders to achieve his plans for world domination. All he
wants to do is play his guitar and mine the personal information of 1
billion people for his own personal gain -- is that really so much to
ask?
Julian Assange
As one of the powerful and fashionable of the X-Men mutants, Storm can control the weather
-- summoning the wind and the rain simply by unfurling her designer
leather cape. Assange has been known to cause a few storms of his own,
summoning the media to his door with the release of more secret
documents. Both have found themselves on the wrong side of the powers
that be, and each is most effective when surrounded by other mutants
and/or Wikipedians.
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