Category: Life

History suggests that a future generation will face a ‘Digital Crisis’…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Digital Transformation, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Internet, Life, Online Services, Risk, social media, Transformation

Spanish philosopher George Santayana is credited with saying ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’, and Karl Marx remarked that ‘History repeats itself first as a tragedy, and then as a farce’. These came to mind while quietly musing on a future which is in the hands of younger generations who’ve grown up with global communication, the internet, social media, and online services as a norm. It’s sobering to be reminded that in just a few decades, digital technology and IT has transformed life faster than at any time in human history. AI adds to the unabated momentum of tech-driven change. But here’s the thing. History shows that many things that have a transformational impact on society have serious consequences that only become fully apparent decades later, creating a crisis for society that a future generation is forced to address. History thus implies that a future generation will have to deal with a crisis caused by the digital revolution.

Bold thinking? Maybe, but consider this. History shows that motor vehicles revolutionised transportation. It’s only in recent decades, however, that society has realised, and started addressing, the true impact of motor vehicles on public health and the planet. History also shows that the use of fossil fuels (particularly coal) during the Industrial Revolution transformed the world. Our dependence on them since, however, has impacted the climate and sustainability of life forcing society into corrective action, but only in recent decades. Similarly, plastic – a material that’s made the modern world possible – has gone from being a wonder substance a century ago to being reviled as an environmental scourge today. It therefore seems perfectly feasible that history will repeat itself with regard to the digital revolution we are living through.

Falling happiness in younger generations (see here, for example) and a tense interview with Elon Musk , who remarked that ‘moderation is a propaganda word for censorship’, illustrate that history may well repeat itself regarding social media. Social media platforms have revolutionised information sharing over two decades, but amplifying misinformation, disinformation, bullying, mental health issues, and eroding personal privacy in the process. They are commercial enterprises bound by the law, but they set their own rules and guidelines for content and its moderation. When a US Surgeon General says allowing young people to use social media is like giving them medicine not proven to be safe, and that it’s insane that governments have failed to adequately regulate them, then society has a problem regardless of Mr Musk’s dislike of challenging scrutiny. History means that society today is having to face up to a ‘Climate Crisis’. Taking note of history is always wise, which is why it’s not outlandish to think that a future generation will face and need to address some kind of existential ‘Digital Crisis’ …  

Systems failure? keep calm and carry on…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Service

Fred (not his real name), an 80-year-old retired civil servant, walks past every morning on his way to the local supermarket for a newspaper. He does this regardless of the weather. Fred walks slower on his way back because the round trip to the supermarket is the limit of what he can manage in one go. On his return leg, therefore, Fred and the Badger often chat if the opportunity arises. Fred has a passion for modern history, current affairs, financial markets, and public service, and while he may be slowing up physically, his mind remains sharp, informed, and impressively analytical. Our conversations are always enjoyable and enlightening.

On Sunday, we had one such chat. Fred knows the Badger’s background is in IT and so he asked about the previous day’s delivery order and contactless payment problems at a well-known UK supermarket chain. ‘In IT there’s always going to be unexpected failures due to software defects, hardware and system problems, human error,  or any combination of the three’, the Badger answered benignly. ‘Didn’t affect me; a good old-fashioned visit to the supermarket and cash will always be my preference’, Fred responded, adding that it didn’t reflect well on the state of society when shrill hysteria and blame floods social media and the news whenever there’s an outage of online services. Fred thinks people take online services for granted and have lost the ‘keep calm and carry on’ spirit that’s normally a strength of the British character! Whether you agree or not, it’s an understandable point of view.

The conversation moved on when Fred mentioned that he’d been reading books about Mr Putin, cyber security, and artificial intelligence. He reckons humanity’s future is bleak, not because of technology, AI, or cyber warfare, but because younger digital-native generations are already slaves to algorithms, aren’t interested in facts and share comments before thinking, have a first response to everything which is a search for blame, and are too willingly ‘followers of the herd’! Again, it’s an understandable point of view. Fred added that Mr Putin doesn’t really need sophisticated cyber tools or AI. He just needs his supporters in key IT roles in some supermarkets, banks, fulfilment and distribution companies, energy suppliers, and network providers to coordinate a simultaneous ‘human error’ moment when making changes to systems! Fred thinks this would cause national mayhem.

Fred’s an interesting guy whose views are shaped by his eight decades of life and what he sees, hears, and reads on a daily basis. Our conversation reminded the Badger that he learned early in his IT career that systems will fail, often in unexpected ways, at an inconvenient time, and disruptively. When they do, it’s important for everyone to ‘keep calm and carry on’. Sadly, calm, patience, and individual resilience seems to be in increasingly short supply in our digital-dominated world…

Describe the internet without refering to technology using a maximum of 10 words…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Internet, Life, Online Services, Web

What do you do after a long ramble through park land with large herds of free-roaming deer when the weather is rainy, chilly, and blustery? Dry off and warm up in a café with a hot drink and something to eat. That’s exactly what the Badger and his wife did at the end of a bracing wander around Petworth Park. The café, in Petworth House  which sits magnificently at one end of the park, was busy but we found a table next to a small group of millennial couples who had hiked cross-country from Midhurst seven miles away. They were refuelling with tea, sandwiches, and hot soup in readiness for the trek back. Their lively conversation wasn’t about their hike or their return journey, but about the internet and AI! Some of the group, the Badger sensed, clearly had a background in IT. As they finished and rose to leave, one commented cheerily to another that ‘There should be a simple way of describing the internet that doesn’t use jargon or refer to technology’. After the group left, the Badger’s wife challenged him to do just that using a maximum of ten words!

Thoughts bubbled in the Badger’s brain for the rest of the day, and later that evening he told his wife that he’d converged on a description for the internet that met the challenge. She merely shrugged her shoulders disinterestedly and continued surfing the internet on her smartphone. Undeterred, the Badger announced that the internet is ‘All human interactions, from good to evil, sped up’. She simply nodded and told the Badger to use it for his blog, and that’s exactly what he’s done!

There are probably many valid and better alternatives, but the Badger thinks these words powerfully describe the internet, that nebulous entity which not only invisibly connects people, places, information, stories, beliefs, knowledge, and ideas globally, but also entertains us, sparks our curiosity, and mirrors our aspirations, flaws, and contradictions. The words also encapsulate the fact that all the good and bad attributes of humanity waltz together on the internet at a speed humankind has never encountered before. The fight between good and evil for domination is thus unrelenting, perpetual, and affected only by human ingenuity. Sometimes good dominates and other times evil does, which is why we should be wary, cautious, and conscious of safety, security, and privacy when engaging in the virtual world where the yin-yang of modern life is played out.

The Badger’s wife has now suggested a new challenge – to describe AI in ‘a simple way that doesn’t use jargon or refer to technology’ using a maximum of ten words. The Badger’s first thought was to describe AI using the same words for the internet. His second thought? To avoid challenges spawned when your spouse overhears something in the conversation of strangers!

A world without Google…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Smart & New Technology, Technology

A feature entitled ‘Where would we be without Google’ appeared on the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) website last week. It’s an insightful, entertaining article that takes a wry look at how Google (or more properly Alphabet) has become part of today’s critical infrastructure and why we must let it stay that way. The Badger nodded in agreement when reading the author’s words that the world created by Google should more accurately be described as the world that we – consumers, society, and legislators – have allowed Google to create. The Badger also sympathises with the feature’s conclusion, that for the sake of humanity Google must never be allowed to stop because  nobody knows what might happen if somebody switched its services off. The consequences would be awful in ways that we haven’t envisaged.

Since every facet of personal, public, and business life involves risk, believing that Google could never be ‘switched off’ seems foolish, especially when big tech wields more power than governments, and global instability is on the rise. Switching Google off would be a digital earthquake that shakes the very heart of today’s connected world. Its likelihood may be low, but it’s clearly an identifiable risk and so it’s worth thinking about the impact if it were to happen? Do you know what the consequences would be? Do you know what you would do if you woke up one morning and Google wasn’t there? Probably not, because it’s doubtful that most people have this eventuality on their personal radar. To tickle your thoughts, therefore, here’s a brief sense of the impact if Google was ‘switched off’.

Our go-to source for answers, information, translation, scholarly articles, and academic papers (Google Search, Translate, Scholar) would vanish. A billion or more email inboxes, virtual meetings, and chats would fall silent (Gmail, Google Meet,  Hangouts). Travellers and delivery drivers would become disoriented and wander aimlessly (Google Maps). Online collaborative work would grind to a halt and documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and critical business files would disappear (Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides). Similarly, YouTube creators and viewers would lose their stage and access to content, smart homes would lose their brains, and thermostats, house cameras, and doorbells would lose connectivity. Marketeers and advertisers would find their strategies undermined, and businesses using Google Cloud would be disrupted. Your Android phone would need a new operating system. Just imagine the turmoil as you and a billion others try to adjust at the same time!

It’s unthinkable that Google would ever be switched off, you say. Maybe, but thinking about the unthinkable is at the heart of good risk management. What can we do to minimise the impact on ourselves? Well, the saying  ‘don’t have all your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind. It’s as relevant today as it was before big tech dominated the world…

Future-gazing while eating fish in Riyadh…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Change, Delivery, Digital Transformation, Information Technology, Life, Outsource, Tech for social good, Technology

The Badger visited Riyadh with some members of his London-based project team. The team was developing the SARIE Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) computer system for the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA). We stayed at the Riyadh Intercontinental Hotel, the normal base for short visits to meet client staff and Kingdom-based project staff. The work schedule for the visit was intense because the project was at a crucial stage in its delivery. On the penultimate night of the visit, the hotel had a ‘fish night’. The Badger and his companions duly booked a table for what turned out to be a memorable meal. It took place outside under a night sky full of twinkling stars in near 30C heat. Riyadh is in the desert 250 miles from the nearest seaport, and so it felt a little surreal seeing not only unfamiliar fresh fish on a mountain of crushed ice, but also choosing one to eat! This was more than 25 years ago.

Unsurprisingly for a group of relaxing IT professionals, we future-gazed while eating our fish and drinking alcohol-free fizzy apple juice – ‘Saudi Champagne’. Mobile phones at the time provided voice communication and SMS messaging. They were rudimentary compared with today’s smartphones, and we knew that the new one in our hand would be usurped by a newer model within weeks. Communication network technology, internet use, and IT were high growth areas, and the PCs and laptops of the time, see here for example, had nowhere near the capabilities taken for granted today.

Three areas dominated our future-gazing during the meal. The first was MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). Would it actually arrive, be useful, and popular? (It arrived in 2002). The second was off-the-shelf, reusable, software products and kernels. Would they decimate bespoke software development and speed up systems development for clients? (They did. Software has become commoditised). The third was outsourcing. Would it change the IT industry and stifle innovation and technical creativity? (It has, although views on innovation and creativity vary). We debated affably as we ate. We did not foresee the tech and online world that has emerged to be the global critical infrastructure of personal, business, governmental, and military life today!

With the Middle East in the headlines and tech CEOs savaged while testifying at a US Senate hearing, the Badger wonders what discussion he and his companions would have during a ‘fish night’ in Riyadh today.  One area would inevitably be AI and given the history of the last 25 years of digital revolution, whether its dark side would eventually overwhelm its benefits. With general points from the Senate hearings like ‘Because for all the upside, the dark side is too great to live with’ (made by Senator Lindsey Graham) rattling in his head, the Badger thinks that the dark side of AI alone would dominate the discussion and make the conversation even livelier than it was 25 years ago!  

Fun using Microsoft Copilot (Bing Chat with GPT-4)…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Business, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Life, Online Services, Tech for social good

The 2024 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos ended last week.  It’s where business, government, and civil society leaders meet to discuss global issues, share ideas, and collaborate to find solutions – according to the PR machinery. The Badger’s always rather sceptical about Davos as it seems to have similarities with the annual senior leadership/management conferences that big corporations hold. The Badger attended many such corporate shindigs during his career, but he always returned a little unconvinced that they really made a difference. The conferences had themes, presentations, speeches, and breakout workshops involving attendees, but, in reality, the most important topics were addressed quietly and privately by a small group of corporate stakeholders behind closed doors. Davos, an event for powerful and wealthy elites with enormous egos, appears little different.

One of this year’s Davos themes was ‘AI as a Driving Force for the Economy and Society.’ The mischievous Badger thus asked Microsoft Copilot (Bing Chat with GPT-4) the question ‘Does Davos actually make any difference?’ The 150-word answer, mostly contextual fluff, culminated in ‘The effectiveness of the meeting is subjective and depends on the perspective of the attendees and the outcomes of the discussions’. Hmm, this is surely validation of the Badger’s scepticism! He then asked, ‘Is AI more hype than substance?’ Copilot’s answer ended with ‘While there is certainly a lot of hype surrounding AI, it is clear that there is also a lot of substance to the technology. AI has the potential to transform many industries and change the way we live our lives. However, it is important to approach the technology with a critical eye and to be aware of the potential risks and challenges associated with its use.’ The Badger smiled; it was the type of benign answer he’d expected.

The Badger’s next two questions were ‘Will AI replace lawyers?’ and ‘Will AI replace software engineers?’, ostensibly because both professional groups are crucial to the functioning of the world today and also relevant to Davos’s ‘AI as a Driving Force for the Economy and Society’ theme. In both cases Copilot answered that AI will likely augment their work making them more efficient and effective, rather than replacing them. Increased efficiency and effectiveness implies the need for fewer people in these professions, but time will tell whether this is the case.

After some fun asking more questions, the Badger sat back and considered again whether Davos makes any difference to life for the vast majority of the global population. No, it doesn’t, because it’s just a talking shop for billionaires and elites and has no executive power. It’s the constant and speedy advance of diverse technology, and AI in particular, that makes the difference for most of us. Davos is, therefore, not the dog that wags the technology tail changing our lives, it’s the other way around…

The biggest challenge of 2024 and beyond…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Life, Online Safety, Online Services, Opinion, Press & Media, Public Institutions, Public safety, Risk, Smart & New Technology, Technology, Wellbeing

This year, 2024, will bring many challenges of one kind or another. Every new year, of course, contains challenges, some which already feature in our awareness, and some which don’t because they tend to emerge from leftfield in due course. The online world, the traditional press, and broadcast media provide plenty of opinion on forthcoming challenges at this time of year, but they tend to highlight things that are already the larger blips on our awareness radar. To start the year off, therefore, the Badger set himself a personal challenge, namely, to decide on the world’s biggest challenge for 2024 and beyond, one that deserves to be a much bigger blip on everyone’s  radar.

The following reality provided the backdrop for the Badger’s deliberations:

  • Life today is dominated by digital technology, global connectivity, the internet, automation, and an addiction to smartphones whose applications provide immediacy of information, anytime, anyplace, for ~75% of the world’s population.
  • Digital evolution continues apace, AI is advancing rapidly and cannot be ignored, international conflict is on the rise, politics is increasingly polarised, and the world order is under considerable strain.
  • Unforeseen natural, humanitarian, financial, and economic crises, are an inevitability.

A front runner for the biggest challenge of 2024 and beyond emerged quickly in the Badger’s thoughts, ostensibly because it had already been bubbling in his mind for months. He quickly concluded that this front runner was indeed the world’s biggest challenge. So, what is it? Put simply, it’s to stem the rise of distrust.

Trust is a fundamental component of cooperation, relationships of all kinds, business, service, and interactions between social groups and different cultures. Society is on a slippery slope to failure without it. Unfortunately, research over the last decade or so shows that our levels of distrust have been progressively rising. Distrust in politicians, governments, corporates, and their leaders continues to rise. Similarly, distrust of the internet and social media continues to grow as we all become more aware of data breaches, fake and weaponised news, misinformation, disinformation, online safety, security and privacy issues, swindles, and cyber-crime. AI seems unlikely to change the trend. The Badger thus feels that stemming the rise of distrust  warrants being the world’s greatest challenge if we want a better society for our children and grandchildren.

Addressing this challenge is not easy, but change starts when lots of people make small adjustments to their behaviour. This year the Badger has resolved to stem his rising distrust of  ‘pushed’ online content that has become the norm in our 24×7 online world. He’s breaking the mould, taking back control, and engaging with it differently and more selectively in 2024. New Year resolutions, of course, have a habit of falling by the wayside. It’s early days, but so far so good…

The delivery of letters…a pre-Christmas musing

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Digital Transformation, Life, Public Institutions, Tech for social good

You never know what will catch your eye or pique your interest when you browse in a charity shop. Two weeks ago, the Badger sheltered from a downpour in one, and the ‘The Post Office went to war’, a 94-page pamphlet published by His Majesty’s (George VI) Stationery Office in 1946, caught his eye. In good condition for its age, it describes how the GPO – the public service providing the UK’s letter, parcel, telegraphy, and phone services during World War II and until the late 1960s – actually worked during wartime. The Badger was drawn to it because, after service in the British Army, a close relative became a GPO postman and delivered letters and parcels to their local community from the late 1940s until the late 1960s. They enjoyed the work, the camaraderie, and interacting with customers while out delivering the mail. They took great pride in wearing their GPO uniform, and in delivering the mail reliably.

The Badger bought the item for 50p and subsequently read it from cover to cover. It was a revelation. Did you know, for example, that during World War II the GPO managed to deliver letters and parcels posted in the UK to recipients in the British Isles in two days, even when sorting offices and infrastructure had been bombed, and even when the location of recipients was transient due to the war effort and housing damage? That’s an achievement, especially when the technology for the handling, distribution, and delivery of the mail at the time bears no comparison with that of today. A little research via the postalmuseum.org reveals that the cost of a stamp as a proportion of the weekly average wage is almost the same today as it was in those times. It also reveals that the number of people actually delivering letters and parcels as a public service is much the same today as it was then. Has today’s modern technology significantly improved the time it takes for a letter to land on your doormat? Hmm, probably not.

A friend living in Northern England phoned last week. They mentioned that they’d posted a Christmas card first-class to the Badger. Our postman delivered the card this morning, a week after it was posted. Draw your own conclusions, especially as the postal public service ecosystem today is markedly different to that when the GPO existed, but surely something’s amiss when today’s tech-rich society cannot match or better the letter delivery of a bygone era with about the same number of employees and stamp price?

Christmas is now just a few days away. Have a happy Christmas however you celebrate the occasion, but please remember that family and friends, especially those who may be vulnerable, should always take priority in your thoughts…not Christmas cards that haven’t arrived due to postal delays!

Dr Who and the batteries…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Batteries, Electric cars, Information Technology, Life, Science & Engineering, Smart & New Technology, Technology

The first episode of Dr Who aired on television on the 23rd November 1963. The series became part of the Badger’s childhood routine, although it almost didn’t! It aired on Saturday evenings, and initially the Badger’s parents didn’t think it suitable for their children to watch on the family’s black and white television. They capitulated following tantrums by the Badger and his siblings, however, on the understanding that if  we had nightmares then the programme would be excluded from Saturday night viewing. We never had nightmares, but we often cowered behind the sofa when our parents were out of the room and an episode included the Daleks or Cybermen.

As an undergraduate at university years later, watching Dr Who with friends on a communal television in the Students Union was a weekly ritual, one which always led to discussions about the episode’s ‘whimsical science’ in the bar afterwards. One friend, a chemistry student who became an electrochemical research scientist in the battery industry, always asserted that the gadgets in Dr Who, the Daleks, and the Cybermen had one thing in common – a fundamental reliance on batteries! Dr Who’s still on television today and the Badger’s still in contact with his friend. In fact, we chatted recently after the Dr Who 60th anniversary special episodes. His friend asserted the same point about batteries that they’d made all those years ago, and they added that any of Dr Who’s gadgets, cyborgs, or robots that were more than two years old needed charging multiple times a day! Since the Badger’s two-year old smartphone now needs more frequent charging than six months ago, we laughed and agreed that smartphones proved their point!

The physics, materials, chemistry and design of modern batteries is complex. According to his friend, in the coming years we’ll see improvements in how fast batteries can charge and how many charging cycles they can withstand, but not a huge change in how long they can last between charges. If that’s the case then battery life, charging frequency, charging speed and depreciation will be key criteria when buying goods requiring batteries for years to come. Depreciation is an often forgotten but particularly sobering point because after 3 years an iPhone, an Android phone, and a battery electric vehicle will have lost ~50%,  ~75%, and 50% of their initial value, respectively.

Dr Who, of course, doesn’t worry about such things, but for those of us in the real-world batteries and the depreciation of the goods they power are key aspects of modern life and the cost of living. Dr Who is full of creative license and not practical matters like batteries and depreciation, and so it should be! It’s science fiction and highly imaginative escapist entertainment. It should trigger to interesting discussions about ‘whimsical science’ and batteries over a beer in a Student Union bar for years to come…

Leadership; never, never, never give up…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Life, Psychology, Training

In May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister to lead the nation through World War 2. As this old item on leadership highlights, he was a ‘chubby, stoop-shouldered, funny faced man…and political has-been’ whose career in politics had been patchy. Nevertheless, his leadership proved to be just what the nation needed. On this death, his state funeral on 30th January 1965 was watched on television by over 350 million people around the world.  Televisions and global communication at the time was, of course, rudimentary compared with the norm today. A very young Badger was among that TV audience, watching black and white pictures of the funeral with his parents on an old Bush television with thermionic valve circuitry in the corner of the sitting room.

Little was said, but at one point the Badger’s sombre father leant over from his armchair and said ‘Son, remember Mr Churchill’s words – never, never, never give up. They’ll  stand you in good stead through life’. Those words have never faded in the Badger’s memory, and they came to the fore again last weekend when a visiting cousin asked the following over a family meal – ‘Do you think your career as a leader was due to being born a leader, or due to the training you received?’  The Badger told his cousin, a talented artist, that it was both, and that although much is written about the attributes needed to be successful leaders (just Google the subject), there’s no simple answer to whether leaders are born or trained. Psychologists signal that leaders are born with some relevant attributes but always need training to develop others.

An entertaining discussion unfolded, and we chortled when the Badger’s wife noted that Winston Churchill was evidence that you can’t tell if someone is a leader from just the way they look! The Badger’s cousin was interested not only in the Badger’s view of key leadership attributes gleaned from his experience in the IT industry, but also whether they derived from inherent personality or training. The Badger quickly summarised his view of the most important leadership attributes as integrity, rationality, objectivity, an ability to remain positive with a ‘can do’ attitude in the toughest of circumstances, and a focus and determination to get things done in a way which energises others. The Badger added that he felt these attributes come from personality and normally come to the fore from being exposed to new or challenging experiences in life and at work. If you are never exposed to new things, then you’ll never know if you can be a leader! Training alone never makes a successful leader.

Remembrance Day is a few days away. Churchill’s leadership is an apt reminder that you can be a leader and handle any difficult situation if you have an inherent personality and mindset which has ‘never, never, never give up’ at its heart.