Title: Thinking Aloud

I recently got back from spending Thanksgiving in New York City. It was the first time I've been over there since September 11th and it was rather interesting. There had been some suggestions that the Macy's Parade, held every Thanksgiving Day, should be cancelled, because the crowds would make such a large target for terrorists. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the parade went off as planned.

It was a fabulous parade - huge balloons sort of like barrage balloons pulled along by marchers in the parade, clowns on roller blades handing out smaller balloons to the watching kids, floats of all sizes and descriptions, marching bands and individuals dressed in amazing costumes. The weather was warm and sunny - amazing for late November - and the hundreds of thousands of people that turned out to watch had a ball.

The truth is that the citizens of New York City were doing what they always do best - giving two fingers - this time to terrorists. The aim of terrorism is to paralyse the functioning of the target society. 'We control our lives', New Yorkers were saying, we are not going to be intimidated and we will rebuild after the tragedy and carry on with making our lives.

I couldn't help but contrast this way of dealing with terrorism with the sorry catalogue of hi-tech silver bullets that the politicians and air lines had come up with for dealing with the issue. Yet again, it seems we are going to evade the people issues by touting the mis-application of technology. You only have to ask exactly how each of these high tech measures would have stopped the September 11th tragedy to realise that they are little but a fig leaf to cover the want of real solutions.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm a geek, I love hi-tech gadgets and I don't even want to think about how much of my disposable income goes on them! But I absolutely hate seeing technology mis-applied in this way. It means that nothing is done to solve the underlying problems and technology gets discredited when it fails to solve the problem it was never designed for in the first place.

Take just one example in this case, face recognition. Everyone in the business knows that face recognition technology is still in its infancy and can easily be fooled by people growing a beard, wearing glasses, etc. It's simply not ready for deployment generally, let alone in a sensitive environment where it will give a false sense of security to those charged with keeping an airport secure.

But that problem is only the tip of the iceberg. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the system worked 100%^[1] and apply our 'Would it have stopped the September 11th tragedy' test. No, of course it wouldn't, because none of the terrorists involved were known to the security forces. The FBI - the body charged with security inside the US, didn't even have their names, let alone their pictures to put into a database of known terrorists.

The net effect is less security, because people are relying on technology that not only doesn't, but can never, work. I'm sure there are perfectly legitimate uses for good, functioning face recognition technology. I have no intrinsic objection to the technology, just it's misuse. I fly often enough that the potential lowering of security caused by this sort of wishful thinking seriously disturbs me.

While we are on the subject of mis-applied technology, it might be worth looking at another case that has come into the news in the last week or so.

I think everyone knows by now that Microsoft was convicted by a US court of abusing its monopoly position in the software industry. Well, currently there are a lot of outstanding cases about restitution for damage done as a result of this, including possible overcharging of customers. I don't want to get into the pros and cons of the case against Microsoft, I just want to look at one of the proposed remedies.

The suggestion had been made that Microsoft should atone for its behaviour by providing deprived schools with free computer kit and software. Sounds good, doesn't it. Frankly, I despaired when I read this. For a number of years I was the Chair of Governors of a primary school who's catchment area was a number of large estates. It was heartbreaking. Not only did we not have enough money to keep the nursery open full time, we didn't have enough money to employ the extra teachers we needed to provide extra assistance to children whose home language wasn't English, and we didn't have any money to buy books for the library so that kids would have access to books. Our teachers were wonderful and incredibly hard working, but everyone knew we were fighting a losing battle.

The last thing we needed was to be dumped with a load of computing kit with no money to train teachers to use it. What the school needed was not computers, but more real flesh and blood teachers. Indeed, computers caused the nearest we came to the financial collapse of the school. The government upped the reporting requirements for schools and we had to get new reporting software for the admin computer. Of course, the new software was Windows and wouldn't run on the old 286 the school used The school faced a major financial crisis because there was no money to buy replacements. Fortunately, by sheer chance two of my friends were moving to the US and they kindly agreed to donate their computers (P90s) to the school. The crisis was staved off till next time. But what a way to have to run a school.

But it's the same attitude - lets throw technology at the problem, that'll fix it. It doesn't work. To teach kids you need teachers not computers. And not just kids. Only last week there was a report published showing that far more people drop out of company sponsored on-line training than complete it. No one ever asks why this is the case. The attitude is that 'If it's on-line/computerised/hi-tech it must be good'.

This all sounds very negative, I know, but I find the high profile mis-application of technology so depressing. The frustrating thing is that there are so many things that we got right, but they have just slipped seamlessly into the general culture and only the big screw-ups make the headlines. The truth is that only people can solve people problems. Yes technology can help, but it is not in itself the solution, and the sooner we realise this we can start using technology for the things it is good at, rather than things it is hopeless at.

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