Tech chat - an occasional blog about stuff I find interesting
Discussions and thoughts around (but not limited to) technology/IT as seen by a sometimes dyspeptic but still relatively engaged hack
Thursday 24 July 2008, 3:19 PM
Why I am now a Technology Tory
If the classic definition of being Tory is a dislike of big government and a hankering after the clarity of the past, I now find myself happy to be classed as such.
What has 'gone wrong' in so much of business use of IT, it seems to me, after not just coming up to 25 years in technology one way or another but based on some recent experiences (!) with clients, is too simplistic a belief in the power of systems and processes.
Time and again I find myself being told that complicated-way-of-doing-something X is to be preferred to simpler-but-low-tech Y. In effect: I work with people who want to use collaborative online multimedia systems when I say we can get the job done - quicker, cheaper too - with the equivalent of a fax and a pencil.
This is because people (companies, organisations) genuinely think complex systems are 'better'.
Translation to the real world: PFI, the National Curriculum/SATs, CCTV, NPfIT - the list goes on and on and on.
Call this touching faith 'Technology Socialism'.
I want nothing to do with it. It just doesn't work!
A process by definition will tend to damp down the interesting ends and margins in favour of the middle. It'll take too long to set up. It will be cumbersome. And then we'll scrap it and get the latest, best new Thing.
Enough, say I - begone with your Tech Red nonsense. Back to basics is the way forward.
It's the story of the pen in space, isn't it - the Yanks spend loads developing a ballpoint that writes in zero g and the Soviets just bring pencils into orbit.
They wasn't stupid, them Russkies I now believe...
What has 'gone wrong' in so much of business use of IT, it seems to me, after not just coming up to 25 years in technology one way or another but based on some recent experiences (!) with clients, is too simplistic a belief in the power of systems and processes.
Time and again I find myself being told that complicated-way-of-doing-something X is to be preferred to simpler-but-low-tech Y. In effect: I work with people who want to use collaborative online multimedia systems when I say we can get the job done - quicker, cheaper too - with the equivalent of a fax and a pencil.
This is because people (companies, organisations) genuinely think complex systems are 'better'.
Translation to the real world: PFI, the National Curriculum/SATs, CCTV, NPfIT - the list goes on and on and on.
Call this touching faith 'Technology Socialism'.
I want nothing to do with it. It just doesn't work!
A process by definition will tend to damp down the interesting ends and margins in favour of the middle. It'll take too long to set up. It will be cumbersome. And then we'll scrap it and get the latest, best new Thing.
Enough, say I - begone with your Tech Red nonsense. Back to basics is the way forward.
It's the story of the pen in space, isn't it - the Yanks spend loads developing a ballpoint that writes in zero g and the Soviets just bring pencils into orbit.
They wasn't stupid, them Russkies I now believe...
