A Technologist for 25 years

I’m soon going to be 40 (yes really). I wanted to write this posts before then so that it didn’t sounds like I was writing as a forty-something. For some reason it seems better it seems better to be looking back as a thirty-something.

I’ve been a technologist now for over 25 years. My love of technology started with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum which I received as a Christmas present at the end of 1982. I was dazzled by all of the potential. I had a friend who had the older ZX81 and we used to spend hours getting games to work (it took so long that you rarely actually played them) and writing some code. Once the ZX Spectrum arrived, though, I was off writing code day and night. One of my ‘O’ levels had a computing element and I submitted the code that I had written which I printed out on the silver thermal paper that the ZX Spectrum printer used. The teachers were amazed.

I’ve still got the aged ZX Spectrum in the loft.

After 25 years I’m now seeing things from a whole load of different angles. I often feel a bit like Sting who once wrote:

I never saw miracle of science
That didn’t go from blessing to a curse

For many of the technology advantages that I see I am also seeing many curses.

Miners compensation has recently made a return to the press in the UK. People suffered serious injuries over many years – mainly through ignorance. I look around me at work and I see all sorts of medical conditions that concern me. I see people who are clearly impacted by attention deficit trait. I see people who have a posture that has been impacted by years sat at a keyboard. The volume of people off work with stress is alarming. How long will it be before we start to realise what we have been doing to ourselves over all these years.

And then there are all of the ecological issue – particularly power consumption.

But beyond that I worry whether we are really doing any good at all.

I’ve talked before about teleconferences and their impact upon productivity. I’m sure that in many cases the impact has been a wholly negative one. On Monday evening I had to be at home to cater for a set of people who were coming around for diner. It was all planned in my diary, I was unavailable for work. But then an urgent teleconference was called – right in the middle of when I was most required. I should have stuck to my principles and said no, but I didn’t, I joined the call. The result was that I was sat at diner with the phone on speaker-phone rushing my food down. If the technology had not been available it would never have been an issue.

I work with a lot of customers who use office productivity software. There ability to produce content has gone through the roof. Once upon a time a document would have a single title page. Every document I receive these days has at least 3 or 4. Why? Because they can, lots of reiteration of the same information that someone thinks is important. I’m currently looking at a pile of paper over 1″ high. I need to review the contents of these document today. There are only a few things that I need to know, but I will have to trawl through the entire pile to be sure that they have been designed in the way that I need them to be. We seem to live in an age where the adage “never mind the quality – feel the width” has become a mantra. Why? Because it takes longer to say things precisely and succinctly than it does to blurt it all out. And the really demoralising thing is this, I know that most of these documents have been produced to get a tick in a box. They have been produced because the process says that they need to be. No one knows what the real purpose of the document is, they just know that they need one.

And then there is the issue of Internet usage and the risks that are involved.

But then I take a look around me and also into my own life, and I wonder?

Am I just being a grumpy old so and so?

I think about Jonathan and his dyslexia. He is coming up to taking his GCSE’s. In the past his hand written notes would have been ignored as too difficult to deal with. He would have been regarded as slow and a problem student. Today his typed notes and course work are usable and show his rich intelligence.

I think about the photographs that we took in Venice recently and the way that we could make them available to many friends. They get so be a part of my experience in a way that they never could have been before.

I think about the updates I get on twitter about colleagues who are hundreds of miles away. I get to be a part of their day in a way that I never could have been before.

I think about the GPS in my BlackBerry and how useful it is to be able to see a satellite view of where I am.

I think about my iPod and the podcasts that I listen to. As a tool of learning I’m constantly amazed at the knowledge that I can carry around and ingest on the move.

I think about the emails that I exchange with my brother as he works on a cruise liner somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. It takes weeks to get post to them.

I think about the way that I can go into a shop and talk to them about a purchase and check the price of the same goods in hundreds of other places before I decide to buy.

I think about the mountains of information that I consume every day. Thousands of blogs from hundreds of people. A breadth of information that was unthinkable in the days when I had to buy a paper to know anything about the world.

Sting may have said: “I never saw miracle of science. That didn’t go from blessing to a curse” and I think, to a certain extent he is correct. Each one of the benefits has a draw back. But Arthur C Clarke said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I think I am missing a little bit of magic at the moment, but I suspect that it won’t be long in coming.