Author: The Information Badger

To buy a battery-powered EV now…or not…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Electric cars, Technology, Transformation, Transition

The future of that symbol of personal freedom and independence, our car, involves electric propulsion. The push to move us from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles to battery-powered electric ones (EVs) is well underway. Governments have set targets for the transition, car makers are replacing ICE models with battery powered ones, and there’s a rush to build the ‘gigafactories’ crucial to the EV battery supply chain.

Battery-powered EVs have been on the Badger’s mind recently because the total mileage on his trusty, elderly, diesel SUV has reached the point where it’s inevitable that maintenance and repair costs will soon surpass the vehicle’s inherent value. Sadly, it’s time for a change, so is now the time to change to a battery-powered EV? To help answer this question, the Badger has explored the plethora of information, news, analysis, and opinion relevant to moving to a battery-powered EV at this time. The macro points, summarised below, that he’s taken from this research have influenced the answer to this question.

From a lifecycle perspective, a battery-powered EV is only greener that an ICE counterpart if the electricity used to charge batteries comes from renewables. EVs are expensive to buy, heavy, and minor collisions that damage the battery are expensive to repair. Insurance premiums are higher, and battery fires can be extremely hazardous.  Battery technology continues to advance, and so does fuel cell and synthetic fuel technology. Real-life EV range can vary substantially with seasonal driving conditions and the use of creature comforts (like air conditioning, for example). Journeys in an EV need forward planning to cater for charging which can be a time-consuming chore on long journeys. The national EV charging infrastructure is still developing.

Just like oil, supply of the key materials needed for batteries is not immune to the vagaries of international politics and crises. It’s also inevitable that the UK government will raise taxes on using EVs in order to compensate for the loss of fuel tax revenues on petrol and diesel. Government timescale targets also have a habit of eventually being watered down. However, the biggest influence on answering the question came from an article highlighting the transitional similarities with that of the move from horse and cart to the motor car over a century ago, and an item that reminds us that transitions will follow the ‘S’ curve.

The Badger’s decided that now is not the right time for him to change to a battery powered EV! Taking everything into account, a newer ICE vehicle is the most economical, climate friendly, and sensible option. Does that make the Badger a luddite or climate change denier? No, just clear-eyed and objective. After all, a societal move to battery powered EVs is a huge transformation. Unforeseen circumstances and unexpected downsides will materialise just like they do on all transformation programmes with serious technology at their heart. Waiting is the prudent option…  

‘Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Ethics & Regulation, Online Safety, social media, Technology

Some days you see something that tugs at your heart strings and makes you sad. One such day recently was when the Badger walked the leafy lanes where he played as a child.  Two vans and three burly men with chain saws were cutting down two magnificent horse-chestnut trees  – trees that the Badger and his childhood friends used to not only play beneath, but also climb to find the best conkers! The trees are still healthy, but they are being felled to make way for a new housing development. The sadness at seeing one of his favourite childhood haunts being dismembered was real.  It was a reminder that change is inevitable, that progress isn’t always for the good, and that the Badger’s childhood was very different to that of most children today.

Since the time the young Badger climbed these conker trees, much of the world has become healthier, better educated, and wealthier. The internet, computing, communication, and social media revolution has changed both social norms and the nature of childhood. As children, the Badger’s generation routinely climbed trees without adult supervision, ropes, or protective equipment, rode bicycles without wearing a helmet, and interacted with every type of creature in nature on an almost daily basis. We took the scrapes, bumps, and bruises that came with this freedom in our stride.  Our freedom was real. We were naturally innovative and imaginative when playing games with playmates, and we problem-solved and learned from each other without thinking about it.   

Childhood today is more cosseted, more organised, more risk averse when it comes to unsupervised outdoor play, and it is shaped and heavily influenced by modern tech and social media. The Badger thinks childhood is actually more dangerous today! Why? Well, whereas there was no online world when the Badger was a child, today it is a major aspect of a child’s life, as an OFCOM report illustrates.  This exposes them to cyberspace threats that simply didn’t exist when the Badger climbed conker trees and the tech world that we know today was science fiction.  Accordingly, the Badger believes the Online Safety Bill , currently in its final stages in the UK Parliament, is a good thing and long overdue.

The values of our country are fundamentally family values, ones which protect children and the vulnerable from those that would do them harm. These were the values when the Badger was a child, and it should still be that way in today’s online world. Our values and our way of life are also determined by us, and not by the huge digital tech corporations that dominate today’s world. John F. Kennedy said, ‘ Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future’. The UK’s Online Safety Bill is thus doing a good thing; it’s protecting the world’s most valuable resource…

India, a technological force to be reckoned with…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Information Technology, Offshoring, Space

Legend has it that Buzz Aldrin played a cassette of Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly me to the moon’ when the Apollo 11 lander touched down on the Moon in 1969. If that’s true, then it was the first song ever played on the lunar surface.  This trivia came to mind when India’s  unmanned Chandrayaan-3 mission recently landed at the Moon’s South Pole, just days after Russia’s Luna-25 failed attempting the same feat. News of the Indian landing made the Badger wonder if the lander had played Bollywood music on touch down! Whether it did or not is, of course, immaterial. What is material is that India has cemented its position as a force to be reckoned with in space technology, and that its achievement will reverberate for decades to come.  

The Badger first visited India in the late 1990s when offshoring software development and IT services was rapidly accelerating. This first visit, as a member of a UK team performing due diligence on a small Bangalore company being strategically purchased to grow into a major offshore delivery centre, changed and expanded the Badger’s mindset. On the flight to India, the Badger had been sceptical that he would observe capabilities similar to the norm in the UK, Europe, or North America. On the return flight, that scepticism had reduced significantly because he’d witnessed impressive technical prowess from people who were young, well educated, motivated, hungry to learn, hungry to better themselves and their families, and hungry for success for their team and country.  

During the trip, the Badger visited a lush, modern, technology campus housing mainly call centres for some large UK financial services companies. It was buzzing, well organised, and the people were articulate and passionate about their work.  Most call handlers were university graduates. They were paid a good salary by India standards, but a fraction of what was paid in the UK, Europe or North America. The campus visit, and days spent with the technical designers and programmers at the company being purchased, opened the Badger’s mind. India’s software and IT talent could not be ignored, and it was good value for money.  On the flight home, the Badger knew that capitalising on that talent by offshoring to India was essential, and that making it happen across an established UK IT business would be a challenge.  

Much has happened in the intervening years. Today, Indian companies like TCS and Infosys are ranked in the Top 10 global IT companies (none of which are headquartered in the UK). All the Top 10 have sizeable capabilities based in India. The Chandrayaan-3 moon landing thus further illustrates the depth and diversity of India’s technological prowess. India will undoubtedly be a technological force to be reckoned with for decades to come. Can the same be said for the UK? Now that’s an interesting question…

‘My way, or the highway’…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Software

Many years ago, the young Badger and some others were injected into a major, fixed-price, software development project to turn it around. It was seriously off the rails. Shambolic planning and poor processes meant deliverables were missed or late, some design aspects were problematic, and much of the code produced was poor quality. The large project team was demoralised and in need of effective leadership. The company was haemorrhaging money and the client was considering termination and litigation. In the face of potential reputational and financial disaster, the company decided it must sort the mess out rather than fight a costly battle in court.

Shortly after the Badger and others were injected, the company CEO called us to his office to introduce our new boss, the senior Project Director newly assigned to lead the recovery overall. The Project Director, recently back in the UK after two years in the company’s USA subsidiary, was burly in stature, had a voice that shook the ground when they spoke, and a stare that injected fear. They brimmed with self-confidence and were lyrical about how they had turned around other projects. The Badger thought that his new boss would be a challenge, and so it proved!

The following day the Project Director called the entire project team into a conference room to introduce themselves more widely, talk about their approach to the task in hand, and to answer questions. They spoke for half an hour, during which the atmosphere turned from one of quiet optimism, to one of abject gloom and disengagement. The room full of intelligent software professionals did not react well to the Project Director loudly proclaiming, in finger-jabbing mode, that a) they were a problem,  and b) being told repeatedly that it would be ‘my way, or the highway’ in the future. The Badger, who winced many times while his boss spoke, lost count of how many times this phrase was repeated. No one asked any questions, and as the team left the room afterwards, a software engineer told the Badger that ‘the highway’ seemed a good option, because they’d no idea what ‘my way’ was, and that even if they did, the Project Director wasn’t a person they’d go the extra mile for.

All leaders, of course, have a ‘my way, or the highway’ streak, but in this case the over-zealous public exposure of it turned what should have been a motivational call to arms into a disaster. The best leaders choose their words carefully when speaking to those whose support is needed in order to convert difficulties into successes. Preaching ‘my way, or the highway’  loudly and continuously comes with the danger that the good will needed from a team to overcome problems deteriorates rather than improves. Frequent articulation of ‘my way, or the highway’ is thus simply a marker that there’s danger ahead…and that ‘the highway’ might actually be a good option!

The human dimension, not tech, underpins crisis management…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Conflict, Information Technology, Leadership, Risk, Technology

Sixty-one years ago, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of global nuclear war. Much has changed since that time in 1962, but the scope for catastrophic miscalculation in the corridors of power remains as great today as it was then. Why? Because at the heart of any crisis are people with power, strong personalities, egos, opinions, and different motivations. Having had experience managing crises, the Badger’s interest was thus piqued recently when a friend recommended the film Thirteen Days about the Cuban crisis. It’s based on two books, one of which was written by the US Attorney General in 1962 (Robert F Kennedy), and it dramatizes the US political leadership’s perspective of events.

The Badger watched the film and was struck primarily by two things. The first was that the technology in use during the 1962 crisis was ‘medieval’ compared with what we take for granted today. The film conveys well the fact that the Cuban crisis happened long before the internet, social media, personal computers, smart phones, video calls, digital photography, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and satellite constellations. Landline telephones, switchboard operators, teletypes, paper letters, memos and instructions, and non-digital intelligence photographs from U2 planes provided the  White House drumbeat for managing the crisis in 1962. Today’s technology means the drumbeat is different, computers dominate, information flows and communications are faster, and intelligence comes more rapidly from  open sources as well as from military capabilities etc. (Intriguingly, satellites and UAVs have yet to replace U2 spy planes; these are still in use and not scheduled to retire until 2026.)

The second thing was the human dynamics, the interactions  between political and military leaders, the diversity of advice on dealing with the threat, and the enormous potential ramifications of the decisions that rested on the shoulders of those present. Having been involved in crises in the commercial world, these human dynamics struck a particular chord, even allowing for some dramatic licence. Today, this same human dimension will still be happening as world leaders grapple with various crises. It’s worth noting that the US President, Secretary for Defence, Attorney General, and others, were positively youthful (late thirties to mid-forties) at the time of the Cuban crisis. Today those holding such posts are beyond pension age.

Commenting on this potentially ageist observation, the Badger’s wife asserted that in a democratic society it’s voters who have the fundamental, innate, responsibility to elect leaders with the rationality, capability, character, and vigour needed to make good judgements under intense pressure. It’s a point worth remembering perhaps, because although digital technology has come to dominate every facet of life since the Cuban crisis, it can’t provide any insight into what’s going on in the minds of those who have to make the ultimate judgements and decisions that could affect us all. At least not yet…

The UK 2030 ban on new petrol/diesel cars, and a battery powered EV…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Electric cars, Transformation, Transport, Uncategorized

The car park at Polesden Lacey was busy. Good weather and the school holidays had brought out young and old alike to visit the extensive grounds, gardens, and historic house. Finding a space in the car park looked to be a challenge, but a car backed out and the Badger was quickly able to manoevure his trusty diesel SUV into the vacated area between tall hedges and a Volkswagen ID3 EV. On disembarking for the short walk to the estate’s entrance, the sight of the Badger’s aged, diesel vehicle next to an EV typifying the future of motoring seemed rather incongruous, especially as he’d listened to a programme on EVs and the UK 2030 ban on new petrol/diesel cars during the drive to Polesden.

The sun is setting on fossil-fuelled engines as the dominant means of propulsion for personal motoring, but are battery powered EVs the future? The Badger thinks it’s healthy to maintain some scepticism, to avoid the herd mentality, and to stay objective in the face of evangelism, campaigning, and politicking when it comes to answering such a question. The radio programme had sown the seeds for the Badger to cogitate on the topic, but the treasures of Polesden Lacey’s house and gardens meant these seeds didn’t burst into life until stopping for a picnic lunch on a bench nestled under the house’s South Lawn colonnade.

The UK 2030 ban on new petrol/diesel cars is just six years away, and the motor industry has been ramping up battery powered EV production and discontinuing petrol/diesel models for some time. After considering things holistically, the Badger thinks the 2030 ban will be relaxed. Why? Well, foremost because this is a massive transformation, few of which ever meet their targets. The number of EVs registered in the UK is rising, but they remain economically out of reach for those of modest means. The public charging infrastructure is problematic, the economic case for owning an EV isn’t as attractive as it was, and the Lithium required for EV batteries requires global production to rise threefold by 2025 and six-fold by 2030. Factors like the forced extension of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, range anxiety, vehicle weight, battery life, and battery fires (e.g. see here, here, and here) are also making people think harder before moving to a battery-powered EV.    

A lot can change in six years, but the Badger believes the 2030 ban on new petrol/diesel car will be relaxed. Of all the cars in the Polesden car park, just a handful were EVs. Progress in their adoption is slow. Furthermore, on returning to his car for the journey home, the owner of the VW ID3 EV parked next to him was on the phone to a recovery company. Are battery powered EVs the future? The prudent answer is…perhaps…

When your home broadband goes wrong…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Broadband, Online Services, Service, Technology

What conclusions would you draw from the following interaction with a home broadband provider:   

  • Your broadband degrades over 48 hours and becomes unusable. Your checks don’t find any fault and so you call your provider suspecting a fault on the physical line.
  • After 30 mins on the phone waiting, you speak to a person who says their systems show no fault on the line. They suggest waiting 24 hours to see if the situation improves.
  • It doesn’t, and after another 30 minutes on the phone, you speak to a person who says that there is, after all, a fault on the physical line. They arrange a time 3 days hence, the soonest slot available, for an engineer to visit. Progress, but it means being without home broadband for a week before it’s fixed.
  • With no advanced warning of any kind, the engineer simply doesn’t show up. After spending another 30 mins on the phone to the provider, you speak to a person who offers no explanation. They simply rebook the engineer for the earliest available slot a few days later.
  • Again, the engineer fails to show up. You spend another 30 minutes calling the provider, but when you speak to a person, they are sympathetic, arrange another date and time for the engineer’s visit, and insist that it will happen.
  • With no advance warning again, the engineer fails to show up. It’s now 3 weeks since first contacting the provider. You spend more time on the phone before getting to speak to a person who says the engineer couldn’t visit because ‘they only had a partial address for you’. You point out that the provider routinely uses your full address on their bills, and that the engineer could have called the  mobile phone number registered with them to check.
  • The person ignores the point and goes on to say that the fault is not with the physical line, but with the provider’s hub in the home. They say a new hub will be dispatched within 48 hours and that the fault will be resolved by simply unplugging the old one and connecting the new one.
  • You control your annoyance and calmly make a formal complaint.

The Badger concludes that the provider’s customer service is 20th century, their IT support systems are likely woeful and not joined up, that resourcing must be a problem, and that against such a backdrop the introduction of more AI-centred technology is unlikely to improve matters for customers. OFCOM’s recent report on complaints about providers  probably paints a rosier picture than reality when it comes to typical customer experiences. It’s thus perhaps hardly surprising that many, like the Badger, are making the jump to smaller, modern, local fibre broadband providers where both service and value for money is substantially better.

Tech for social good…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Digital devices and the environment, Education, Information Technology, Life, Tech for social good

Sitting at his desk over the weekend, the Badger enjoyed a coffee and a slice of cake  while reading about Charlie Mackesy, the Oscar-winning author and illustrator of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse. The words ‘Every day I wake up wondering what I will draw today. I’m just another human trying to tell the truth. Love, kindness, and empathy are the answer. And cake…’ struck a chord. Not because the Badger was eating cake, but because they resonated with the circumstances of someone he knows and helps. After retiring from a low-wage, low-skilled, working life, they live alone with their cat and wonder what to do every day. They have no home broadband connection or digital devices. Although they are proud and fiercely independent, they allow the Badger to provide help, kindness, and empathy as they try to navigate a world that demands tech awareness, devices, and skills that they’ve never acquired.

This person illustrates that in the UK, a country with a high level of digital infrastructure, there are still many digitally disadvantaged people. This person cannot afford a broadband connection or connected devices, and even if they could, they are at a loss on how to use them. Their priority is simply to ‘keep the wolf from the door’ with their meagre budget. The Badger visits once a week with doughnuts, his tablet and smartphone, to chat over coffee. They often have worries that he manages to alleviate using his smartphone or tablet. A few weeks ago, the Badger gave them an old tablet found languishing at the back of one of his cupboards to help acquaint them with modern tech without the worry of cost. After some initial reticence, their confidence in using some of the rudimentary aspects of the device is rising. It’s small but rewarding progress!

After his visit last week, the Badger came across the ‘Circular electronics for social good: reusing IT equipment to bridge the digital divide’ research from the Good Things Foundation (a UK digital inclusion charity), the Circular Electronic Partnership (CEP) (the biggest names in tech, consumer goods and waste management), and Deloitte. It’s an enlightening insight into digital inequalities and how equipment reuse can not only help address these, but also assist in reducing a growing e-waste problem. The major businesses engaged in the CEP are clearly taking tech for social good seriously. But here’s the thing. Digital inequality, reuse and e-waste of course needs action from charities, businesses, and governments, but it also needs regular members of the public to reach out to the digitally disadvantaged in their community with kindness, empathy, compassion, and above all patience. Tech for social good needs people to engage with others at a human level with patience, which – sadly – seems a rarer commodity today  than it used to be…

Your face, your voice, AI, and human rights…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Education, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Legal matters, Online Safety, Privacy and Surveillance, social media

In the gap between completing his undergraduate degree and starting post-graduate study, the Badger took a temporary job as an assistant in a dockyard laboratory performing marine metallurgical failure investigations and associated corrosion research. It was a great few months which enabled the application of what he learned during his undergraduate degree to real world events. Those few months are the reason why, for example, the Badger has a particular interest today in the findings of the investigation into the Titan deep-sea submersible failure. The dockyard lab staff were experts with colourful personalities and diverse opinions on a wide range of topics. Engaging in wide-ranging discussions with them, especially at lunchtime in the canteen, was enlightening, thought-provoking, and has been the source of fond memories lasting for years.

One particular memory is of one senior expert, highly respected but always cantankerous and quarrelsome, refusing to be photographed sitting at their electron microscope for a newspaper feature about the laboratory. They didn’t want their image captured and used because, they claimed, it was part of ‘who they were as an individual’ and therefore it was part of their human rights to own and control its use. The lab boss saw things differently, and for days there was a lot of philosophical discussion amongst staff about the expert’s position. The newspaper feature ultimately used a photo of the electron microscope by itself.

The current strike by Hollywood actors, due in part to proposals relating to AI and the use of an actor’s image and voice, brought the memory of the lab expert’s stance regarding their image to the fore. In those days, the law was more straightforward because the internet, social media, personal computers, smart phones, and artificial intelligence didn’t exist. In today’s world, however, images of a person and their voice are routinely captured, shared, and manipulated, often for commercial gain without an individual’s real awareness. The law has, of course, developed – all be it slowly – since the expert’s days at the lab, but the surge in AI in its various guises over the last year seems to illustrate that the gap between legal/regulatory controls and the digital world continues to widen.    

Today, and with advancing AI, an image of you or snippet of your voice can be manipulated for any purpose, good or evil. Whilst there’s some teaching of online safety at school, is it enough? Does it sufficiently raise awareness about protecting ‘your image and your voice which are both key attributes that characterise who you are as a person’? Did the dockyard lab expert have a point, all those years ago, in asserting that it was part of their human rights to own and control their image? The Badger doesn’t have the answers, but he senses that AI and human-rights will inevitably be a fertile ground for campaigners, legislators, and regulators for many decades to come…

Change starts with the individual…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Climate & Environment, Energy and Energy Markets, Learning

The amount of electricity and gas Kilowatt Hours the Badger uses has reduced by 12% and 21%, respectively, over the last year. He’s also used 10% less vehicle fuel. The reductions come from small behavioural adjustments, rather than wholesale lifestyle change. The Badger’s pleased because the savings are helping the planet, and because they illustrate the impact of taking personal responsibility for ‘change’ which is, after all, one of the perpetual rhythms of life which humans have coped with for millennia.

Feeling good about his energy reduction helping the planet, the Badger visited his community’s monthly street market where stalls of locally produced goods, food, and drink interleave with those of charities and campaign organisations. Good weather meant the market was busy. As the Badger nonchalantly browsed the stalls, he lingered a little too long at a climate campaign stall. He was cornered by the stall’s hosts, a mother and daughter who were vaguely known to the Badger as neighbours from further along the road where he lives. Not wishing to be rude, the Badger listened politely to their pitch about the need for more government action in climate issues and moving away from fossil fuels to save the planet.

They asked if the Badger agreed that reducing  the world’s dependency on fossil fuels was beneficial, and if he soon planned to drive an electric car. He answered Yes and No, respectively, and added that a) he wasn’t sure that the whole-life environmental impact of current electric cars was positive, b) that he expected to drive his trusty diesel SUV for the foreseeable future, and c) that he was already adjusting his behaviours to benefit the planet regardless of campaigns by environmentalists! They seemed a little stunned. The Badger asked if changes to their individual behaviours had reduced, for example, their own energy consumption over the past year, and, looking rather sheepish, they admitted they didn’t know. They disengaged when the stall became busier, and the Badger sidled away to continue browsing through the market.

Walking home afterwards, a car pulled up and asked if the Badger wanted a lift. It was the pair from the climate change stall. The Badger declined the offer on the basis that the exercise was good for both him and the planet. The mother grinned and said ‘You’re a proper ecowarrior! You made us realise that we really should be doing more adjustments to our own day to day behaviour to reinforce pressing our climate message to others’.

The Badger’s been called many things over the years, but never an ecowarrior! Just remember, change starts with the individual and is not the responsibility of others. You too are an ecowarrior if you make small behavioural adjustments that will ultimately benefit our planet. Life is, after all, a journey of continual change, and our inherent individual capacity to change is why our species has come to dominate the planet…