This past weekend was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which means I spent it watching broadcasts from Salt Lake City. In one of his talks, President Monson (the president of the church) referred to a passage in Alice in Wonderland that I think has some application to ITS:

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Whether we run applications on a mainframe or a Solaris box or a Windows laptop doesn’t make a lot of difference if we don’t know what we want them to accomplish.