Category: Education

Children’s toys and ‘invisible’ e-waste…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, e-waste, Education, Information Technology, Toys

One day last week, the Badger arrived early to collect his grandson from nursery school. As he waited, he  couldn’t help a wry smile as the young tots resisted the nursery leader’s attempts to get them to tidy the plethora of toys away. One little girl came up to the Badger with a battered Fisher-Price musical guitar and insisted on showing him how to extract noise from it. The noises from the guitar demonstrated that it was on its last legs! One of the nursery helpers then ushered the little girl away, and as she did so she told the child that the toy was broken and needed to be ’thrown away’. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’, or did they mean ‘recycled’? It was pretty clear that they meant the former.

In due course, the Badger’s grandson, who had been playing with a musical toy in the form of a mobile phone, was returned home to his parents. Afterwards, the Badger found himself cogitating on how different today’s pre-school toys are from those of his generation. No toys for pre-school kids in his day required a battery to function! Today,  however, toys requiring a battery and containing microchips are commonplace. The Badger found himself  muttering a phrase that everyone uses at some stage when they get older, namely ‘those were the days’. His thoughts moved on to the nursery helper’s ’thrown away’ remark. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’ rather than ‘recycled’? Well, since toys top the list of  ‘invisible’ e-waste finding its way into landfill, then, yes, they probably did.  

Many things young children play with today contain recyclable electrical or electronic material that goes unnoticed. The amount of such material in an individual toy may be tiny, but every little bit matters if we truly want a sustainable future. Unfortunately, however, awareness that a child’s toy should be sent to recycling at the end of its useful life isn’t as high as it should be. That’s why children’s toys contribute to the growing so-called ‘invisible’ e-waste in the world’s land fill sites. The Badger thus feels it’s incumbent on us adults to be more knowledgeable and make better decisions when it comes to disposing of broken children’s toys.

The Badger also suspects, perhaps wrongly, that the WEEE’s recent International E-waste Day on the 14th October 2023 passed most of us by. It’s purpose was to shed light on the overall scale of  ‘invisible’ e-waste, see here.  Our awareness of ‘invisible’ e-waste must be improved, and, as the WEEE Forum puts it, we must all be more conscious that we can recycle anything that has a plug, uses a battery or microchip, or has a cable. So, if you hear someone telling a child that a toy should be ‘thrown away’ then tell them to recycle it, and wish them good luck in getting it out of the child’s hands without a tantrum to do so…

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…

Should ‘information’ be thought of as a poison?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Information Technology, Learning, Life, Online Safety, Press & Media

A couple of weeks ago, BBC News unveiled BBC Verify, a new brand to counter disinformation and reinforce audience trust by showing how its journalists check the veracity of what’s reported. Inevitably, Verify has been frequently featured in the broadcaster’s radio and television news programmes since the announcement. Surveys (like the one here, for example) show there’s been a significant drop in trust in the UK news media over the last five years. With BBC News having suffered one of the biggest drops, it’ll be interesting to see if Verify helps to stem their downward trend.

The advent of BBC Verify, plus recent social media and online clamour surrounding a number of human tragedies, triggered childhood memories of the Badger’s father reading his newspaper at the breakfast table. He would regularly say ‘Don’t believe everything you read in newspapers, lad. Most of the information is just poison’. In today’s world we access and consume news and information in a very different way, primarily via our televisions and internet enabled laptops, tablets, and smartphones on a 24 by 7 basis. This fatherly advice, however, seems even more relevant than ever today. These days, being sceptical about the content  you consume and wondering if it contains something poisonous likely to harm you, is definitely no bad thing.

In biochemistry, a poison is a natural or synthetic substance that causes damage to living tissue and has a harmful or fatal effect on our body. The act of poisoning involves a cause (the poison), a subject (the entity being poisoned), an effect (symptoms), and a consequence (debilitation or death). Awareness that things like insect and snake bites, drugs, dodgy food, pesticides, radiation, and biological/chemical agents can poison us is good, but our awareness that ‘information’ can poison our minds and change behaviour is still too low, especially in youngsters whose lives are dominated by social media and the virtual world. It’s no surprise that evidence for harm to young people’s mental health through their use of social media continues to grow.

The Badger’s found himself wondering if there’s merit in thinking of ‘information’ as a poison giving the synergy with the act of poisoning noted above. Just like a medical drug, ‘information’ consumed in an appropriate context from a trusted source can do much good. But also like a drug, ‘information’ in high quantity glibly absorbed and accepted from anywhere can cause an individual great harm. Categorizing ‘information’ as a poison might, perhaps, simplify and embed greater understanding of its potential impact on wellbeing, especially in youngsters.

The Badger tested this musing with his teenage nephew, only to be told that age had clearly affected his mental faculties! If that’s true, then it’s down to the ‘information poison’ he’s consumed over the years and the fact that there’s no real antidote in sight…

Exploding batteries…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Electric cars, Life, Risk, Technology

A note in a Christmas card this week was not only a reminder that the imminent festive and New Year holidays aren’t always jolly occasions for some people, but also that our modern lives depend on rechargeable batteries. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, household devices, DIY tools, gardening equipment, and electric cars all have a battery at their heart, but do we fully appreciate the risks of having battery powered devices in our households? Probably not. We tend to take their safety for granted because they are certified to comply with requisite safety standards.

The Christmas card and the note therein was from a cousin. It conveyed Christmas greetings, and also information that the battery in their mobility scooter had recently exploded causing a fire and attendance by the fire brigade. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but smoke damage has rendered their home uninhabitable for the next six months.  The Badger phoned his cousin, who has poor mobility due to advanced cancer, and was impressed by their insistence on looking forward with positivity rather than dwelling on events and their new circumstances. The first thing they said was a line from the movie Forrest Gump, namely ‘My mama always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’’  Their objectivity and optimism was remarkable given their health and the stress of having their life turned upside down before Christmas.

A security video shows the mobility scooter, unplugged, not being charged, unused for a number of days, and covered by its standard weather-proof cover, simply burst into flames when the battery exploded! The fire brigade are now using this as part of their campaign to raise awareness of the potential fire hazards associated with rechargeable batteries in, for example, e-bikes, e-scooters, and …mobility scooters used by the infirm.

As we approach Christmas, the Badger’s intent here is not be alarmist,  but simply to make three points. The first is to not only encourage you to be aware of the risk that comes with the use and storage of equipment with rechargeable batteries, but also to raise the profile of related fire brigade safety campaigns. The second is to reinforce a point the cousin made in our conversation, namely that Christmas is not really about material things, it’s about people, community, and looking forward rather than dwelling too much on past tribulations. The third is simply to wish all readers a happy and safe Christmas and New Year, and to encourage optimistic thoughts whatever your personal circumstances. Oh, and there’s one final thing. After the Badger finished talking to his cousin, he felt overwhelmingly relieved that Santa’s sleigh for delivering Christmas presents to children across the world is powered by magical forces, and not by batteries that could explode!!!

Think differently about your performance appraisal with your boss…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Learning

The reactions of people who’ve just had a performance appraisal with their boss varies enormously and also highlights how different we are as individuals. Personal reactions, of course, cover a wide spectrum. The Badger’s experience, however, is that while a person’s demeanour and body language says a lot about their reaction, most people share little more than the odd comment about their appraisal with others. There are always, of course, people who think they’ve been treated poorly and say so to anyone who will listen. In the Badger’s experience, such individuals tend to be self-centred, averagely talented, poor listeners, and they normally have egotistic or narcistic personalities.  These individuals, and those at the other end of the spectrum who are just downright lazy, unproductive, and permanently negative,  tend to share their displeasure widely and keep HR functions busy with claims of unfair treatment.

A youngster in their first job since leaving University 15 months ago whined to the Badger this week that their appraisal had been a shock and unfair. The youngster, hungry for rapid career and salary progression, unfortunately failed to recognise that they haven’t adjusted to working life as well as their peers. The Badger explained this, and in the course of doing so remembered some wisdom from a training course he attended many years ago. On that course, a behaviour expert, building on the sport coaching work of Tim Gallway, emphasised that we should think about individual performance using the simple equation ‘Performance = Talent – Interferences’. If someone has 100% Talent, then their Performance is never 100% because there are always Interferences from personal and/or organisational factors. Personal interferences come, for example, from lifestyle, health, family and/or caring responsibilities. Organisational interferences come, for example, from skill set mismatches with work role, adequacy of role definition, relationships with leaders and work colleagues, organisational bureaucracy, and factors like organisational dynamism and workforce stagnation if business growth is poor.

The behaviour expert’s key message was that everyone has Interferences, so no one can ever perform at 100%! Interestingly, they used the same equation to describe the performance of a company. In this case, Talent represents a company’s portfolio of  products and services, and Interferences are largely the policies, processes, and  controls that influence the delivery of the portfolio to clients. Bigger companies tend to have more Interferences than smaller ones, and no company ever performs at 100%, although clever accounting and expectation management often masks this!

So, think about your performance appraisal in the terms above. Your Talent is constant, so your Performance dips when Interferences rise. Eventually Interferences will reach a level that makes you feel like doing something different with your life. It’s very empowering when this happens, because it definitively changes the way you approach your appraisal with your boss.  

There’s more to getting a smart education than ever-smarter technology…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Education, Learning, Life, Smart & New Technology, Uncategorized

With a bleak Winter on the horizon, Pink Floyd’s ‘We don’t need no education…’ grumbling from the radio, and Remembrance Day a few days away, thoughts about the grip that tech has on our lives have been a trifle melancholic. Remembrance Day is always poignant for the Badger. His grandfathers, who he never knew, served in the Army during WW1, and his father rarely spoke of his childhood, his life during WW2, or his post-war Army service. The poignancy is heightened this year because the horrors and hardships they endured are evident today in a Ukrainian family currently being hosted by a family member. Sadly, the tech-dominated ‘progress’ of the 21st century has done little to change the propensity for humans to inflict harm on other humans.  

Research has expanded the Badger’s knowledge of his forefathers’ lives, producing enormous pride, and admiration for their resilience in the face of adversity. One grandfather won two Military Medals for bravery in WW1. The other was invalided out of the Army after being gassed in the trenches, a primary factor in his death in early middle-age. The Badger’s father was a child evacuee from London when WW2 started in 1939. He was orphaned in 1942 and joined the Army in 1946 serving in a decimated post-war Germany, and then in Egypt. When pressed, he would only say that these experiences were ‘character-building’ and had influenced his three favourite sayings, namely ‘There’s no such thing as can’t, try’, ‘If you’ve got a problem, don’t bleat about it, deal with it’, and ‘Every day is a day for learning’. When the Badger was growing up, these were part of the parental soundtrack of life and became embedded attitudes. It was his father’s way of passing on lessons learned from difficult life experiences. 1

The Pink Floyd rendition here reminds the Badger that education has not only changed dramatically over the decades, but also that today’s Tech makes it easier, in some respects, to adopt an ‘Every day is a day for learning’ attitude. The days of blackboard and chalk, and throwing chalk at a pupil not paying attention, are gone! The smartest of educations, however, comes from complementing learning delivered by ever-smarter technology with face to face, non-virtual, cross-generational discussions with people sharing their experiences and life lessons. Part of the Badger’s melancholic tinge is due to a feeling that ever-smarter technology is progressively diluting this kind of learning. Another part is a feeling that whilst today’s world is different to that of his forefathers, it isn’t really any better. The melancholic tinge will no doubt fade in a few days. On Remembrance Day, the Badger will be paying tribute to his forefathers, and their values, with great pride. ‘Every day is a day for learning’ is very much part of their legacy. Make it part of yours too.

Innovation, USPs, and the herd instinct…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Education, Information Technology, Innovation, Learning

Have you ever listened to leaders talking in person, or via video or teleconference, about innovation, unique selling points (USPs) that make the company stand out from the crowd, and slogans to be used to grab the attention of potential customers? The answer is  ‘probably’, a word used to great effect in Carlsberg advertising campaigns  that trace their roots back to 1973. The Badger’s sat through many such talks over the years, but one more than twenty-five years ago generated a memorable insight that’s still relevant today.

At a senior staff gathering in a London hotel conference centre, the Group Chief Executive gave a lengthy presentation that announced and justified the company’s move beyond its software, systems development, and systems  integration roots into outsourcing and offshoring services. The presentation not only boasted about this being innovation, but also it conveyed new USPs. Many present were, like the Badger, experienced, delivery-centric people who felt the assertion that this was innovation was highly dubious, and that the new USPs were aspirational and not underpinned by any reality. The audience understood the IT market was changing, but they reacted badly to the claim this move was innovation because competitors were already way-ahead, and it felt like the company was just following the herd rather than playing to its true strengths.

In the hotel bar afterwards, a subsidiary executive provided some wise words of insight when tackled informally about the presentation. They pointed out that although the business world worships innovation as necessary for survival and growth, the reality is that true innovation is rare and it’s imitation that is the endemic driver. They used examples of the new products and approaches emerging across the IT industry at the time to illustrate that these were born out of imitation and not innovation. The executive also highlighted that since the herd mentality is a feature of human behaviour, no one should ever be surprised that companies follow the herd and assert USPs that are primarily just slogans to differentiate in business conversations with potential clients. The bigger a company, the executive asserted, the more the slogan is influenced by spin and market trends, and the more tenuous the link with raw capability. This has coloured the Badger’s calibration of company sales and marketing messaging ever since, and the executive’s innovation, USP and herd mentality insight still resonates in today’s world in which we are bombarded with information relentlessly, and organisations do everything they can to grab, keep, and capitalise on our attention. So, just remember that if something claims to be an innovation today, then be sceptical because imitation is endemic and true innovation is scarce. Similarly, always explore any asserted USP to see if it passes the ‘unique’ test amongst industry peers, because it’s the herd instinct rather than uniqueness that dominates the world of business.

Setting the bar too high…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Education, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Project Management

In his school days, the Badger was in the school field athletics team because he was good at javelin, long jump, and – rather surprisingly for someone of average height – the high jump. It was, according to the team coach, the Badger’s natural technique rather than any specific physicality that underpinned why he was good at these events. The coach, a resolute athlete who demanded the same dedication from others, had two favourite phrases to encourage team members to train hard and do better. The first was ‘technique is the difference between reliable success and reliable failure’. The second, used especially for the high jumpers, was ‘you don’t jump high unless you set the bar high’. Little did the schoolboy Badger know that he would regularly hear leaders and managers utter this one throughout his working life!

The Badger’s often heard executives say ‘you don’t jump high unless you set the bar high’ when setting an expected, imperative outcome that is challenging, and when trying to persuade their audience that the challenge is tough, but the outcome is within reach. These last few words, however, are crucial because if an audience don’t sense that the outcome is within reach then they will nod sagely, consider argument futile, and only work half-heartedly towards the objective. If that happens then the road ahead will almost certainly be full of disappointment, blame, low morale, problems, and financial under-performance.

For many leaders and senior staff in sizeable organisations, attending an annual gathering at which executives set out the key priorities and targets for the coming year is routine. The Badger’s attended many such events over the years, and whilst fundamentally there’s nothing wrong in using ‘you don’t jump high unless you set the bar high’ to set ambitious targets, two observations crystallise from the experience. The first is that if the audience sense the challenging target is reachable then they will embrace it, fully align their support and activities, and executives will hold onto their jobs. The second is that if the audience feels the bar has been set so high that you need binoculars to see it, then they will pay lip-service to the challenge, gossip about the credibility of executives, worry about the enterprise’s viability, and speculate about whose heads will roll when outcomes are not met.

The point is simply this. If you are the leader in a company, project, programme, or service, then don’t lose touch with reality or your people. If  you set the bar way too high, then you will have an unhappy workforce, people will leave, output and quality will decline, financial forecasts will not be met, and your credibility as a leader will be damaged. The best leaders stay grounded in reality, make good judgements that balance competing soft and hard priorities, set the bar within reach, and communicate honestly and inspiringly. Those that don’t ultimately suffer the consequences.

School kids’ imagination and driverless vehicles…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Driverless transport, Education, Technology

A recent IET item about what school kids expect from driverless cars provides an interesting insight to how our digital-native school children imagine and think about the future. Their internet-dominated world provides lots of content about a future full of driverless cars, robots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and renewables replacing fossil fuels. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that driverless cars grab their imagination, especially as they have the vehicles operated by their parents as a tangible, modern-day reference point.

It has always been the case that when school kids are asked how they imagine life to be a few decades in the future, their answers are influenced by their awareness of technology advances, hot societal issues, their interests, and factors like their family and schooling environment. When the Badger was a schoolboy, the Apollo Space Programme putting men on the moon was in full swing, nuclear reactors were proliferating to generate electricity, satellites were blossoming to broadcast television pictures around the world, and semiconductors were rapidly changing the size, capability, and quality of radios, televisions, gadgets, and mainframe computers used by major corporations. If the Badger and his school friends had been asked what life would be like some decades later, then living on the moon, human interplanetary space travel, abundant cheap electricity, and less work and more leisure time due to automation would have featured in the answers. Such answers are, in fact, similar to those in this interesting BBC Archive footage of 1960’s kids talking about the year 2000 .

Comparing what the Badger and his friends would have imagined with how things turned out just confirms what mature adults know, namely that the future is always different to what kids think it will be! After all, humans are not living on the moon or engaging in interplanetary space travel, nuclear reactors haven’t given everyone abundant cheap electricity, automation hasn’t really produced less work and more leisure time, and no one imagined the internet. It’s a certainty, therefore, that what today’s school kids are imagining the future to be will not happen as they envisage. There’s a quite simple reason for this and it’s this; kids’ imagination is unencumbered by the hard realities of politics, finance, economics, bureaucracy, legalities, and liabilities. It’s these realities that explain why the future is never quite what they imagine.

Today’s school kids should always be encouraged to imagine the future, but will what they imagine for driverless cars journeys on public roads become a reality in a few decades time? Unlikely, because delivering what technology can do into real use is always constrained by non-technological factors. Where the non-technological barriers are lower, however, things happen faster. For example, the school kids of farmers who imagined driverless tractors many years ago are seeing this come to fruition. Truly driverless tractors for use in fields will be coming off the John Deere factory line later this year.