Category: Technology

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…

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.

Seven small, fundamental, inventions without which the modern world would not be as it is…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Innovation, Learning, Life, Technology

After doing some repairs to a flight of garden steps in the blazing sun, the Badger settled down in the shade to finish reading a book he’d purchased a few days earlier. The book, a proper hardback from a local bookshop, is Nuts & Bolts, Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (In a Big Way) written by Roma Agrawal. She worked on The Shard in London, and is a structural engineer, author, and broadcaster with a physics degree and an MBE. It’s an excellent book, an easy one to read, and one that makes you realise that a small number of fundamental inventions underpin the world as we know it today. These inventions, the Seven Small Inventions in the title, are the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string and pump. Without them, our modern world full of complex technology that ranges in scale from the tiny to the huge, would not be what it is.

While chilling out reading the book, the Badger’s nephew arrived to return a laptop he’d borrowed recently after his own broke. He’s in the middle of revising and taking exams that determine whether or not he goes to University in the autumn. With video and music from Glastonbury streaming on his smartphone, the youngster sat down and asked the Badger what the book was about. The Badger playfully answered that it was about the fundamental inventions, namely the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string and pump, without which the Glastonbury music festival and his smartphone wouldn’t exist! The disbelief on the youngster’s face was palpable, and a light-hearted discussion on the Badger’s assertion ensued.

The Badger took the initiative and mentioned that without the fundamental invention of a nail none of the festival’s structures would exist, without the magnet there’s no electric guitars or sound systems, and without the invention of a lens there would be no pictures to stream. At first his nephew was unpersuaded, but a glimmer of enlightenment soon emerged as he started to think more deeply. ‘So’, he said, ‘you’re really saying that the internet, social media, and the smartphone are not fundamental inventions because they could not have been produced without the prior engineering invention of the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string and pump?’ The Badger nodded, and said that it’s worth remembering that integrated circuits, first invented in the 1950s and now at the heart of today’s computerised world, could not have been produced without the prior existence of the Seven Small Inventions highlighted in Roma Agrawal’s book.

The youngster, a budding biological scientist, grinned. He said he now appreciated that what we see as routine in our complex tech-dominated modern world is derived from simple, fundamental, and often not very obvious engineering inventions. The Badger sensed that he may have awoken an inner latent engineer in his nephew, and that’s no bad thing…

This item contains nothing generated by Bing Chat…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Automation, Business, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Life, Risk, Technology

The Badger’s been experimenting for some time with Bing Chat, an integration of the GPT model developed by OpenAI with Microsoft’s search engine. It’s been both fun and thought-provoking. The capability is impressive, which is why there’s been massive interest in the technology in the 6 months since the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Many of the Badger’s interactions have made him chuckle, roll his eyes in annoyance, or better appreciate its use for good or evil, but every interaction has, in truth, reinforced why Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, calls on US lawmakers to regulate AI. This capability  has enormous scope to develop further. It’s already engaging the public and changing the way things are done, and it will continue to do so in the future. The Badger, like many, sees many pros and cons, but the primary outcome of his experimentation has been to crystalize the realisation that he must deal with how this impacts his content-producing activities like the writing of the blog you are reading now.

AI is destined to affect the activities and jobs of white-collar workers across a wide variety of industries (see here and here, for example). Indeed, the Badger can think of many functions and jobs that could be impacted by AI-centred automation in the IT industry alone. With perpetual improvement to make the profits stakeholders expect at the core of any business’s survivability, it’s inevitable that AI will speed up the drive for organisations to do more with less people, especially as employing people is expensive. Working in IT or tech industries doesn’t provide immunity from this impact, as BT’s recent announcement highlights. BT is cutting more than 10,000 jobs due to new technology and AI over the next 6 years. For employees in any organisation, therefore, this isn’t a time to stick your head in the sand; it’s a time to scan the horizon, think about how your livelihood might be impacted, and assess your options for countering the threat. All is not completely bleak, however, because AI seems unlikely to replace jobs requiring human skills such as creativity, judgement, physical dexterity and emotional intelligence. If these dominate your job, then the immediate threat is limited.

Experimenting with Bing Chat brings much of the media debate and commentary on AI to life. It’s made the Badger think seriously about intellectual property, ethics, and things like the transparency of content origination in a world where services like Bing Chat cannot be ignored. The Badger believes people deserve to know if any of the content they read online has been generated using a service like Bing Chat or Google Bard. Well, if you’ve read this far, then you can be confident that what you’ve read has been created entirely by a human being. It contains nothing generated by Bing Chat or any other similar capability.

Science and technology change lives for the better…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Life, Science & Engineering, Technology

In a phone call with the Badger last week, his cousin spoke proudly about their career in oceanographic science and engineering, and of how grateful they were for the science and technology advances of recent decades. His cousin specialised in producing and operating submersibles, and he expressed a little regret that his children had no interest in science and engineering because it was too difficult. We laughed, reminisced about science and technological advances during our lifetime, and jovially agreed that these advances underpinned everything that is good in the world. The conversation subsequently played on the Badger’s mind as he watched the coronation of King Charles III, the first coronation for 70 years, over the weekend.

Life was very different in 1953 when the last coronation took place. Rock and roll was in its infancy, music was listened to on radios or gramophones playing 78rpm discs, and only 10% of UK households had telephones. Central heating was a rarity and coal was the dominant fuel for heating homes. The rationing of petrol and sugar following World War II had just been lifted, the first commercial jet airliner service was barely a year old, and the USA announced it had a thermonuclear weapon. The only way of looking inside the human body was by X-rays, the first vaccine for polio became available, and Crick and Watson announced they had discovered the structure of DNA. In 1953 there was virtually no vandalism, swearing in public was an offence, men gave up their seats for women on buses and trains, and there was only 53 Kilobytes of high-speed random-access memory on the whole planet!

Roll forward 70 years to King Charles’ coronation and life is different due to the dramatic science and technology advances of the intervening decades. As the Badger watched the coronation events, his cousin’s words about being grateful for these advances echoed in his head, ostensibly for two reasons. The first was that advanced science and technology quietly underpinned everything associated with the coronation. The second was that his cousin sadly passed away the day before the event.

The Badger’s cousin was diagnosed with prostate cancer 14 years ago and given only months to live, but he took the opportunity to engage with a scientific research programme using experimental treatments which gave him many more years with his family, the satisfaction of knowing he was helping others, and validation of his belief that science and technology was a force for good. He felt that a good STEM education not only meant that the world was your oyster, but also that it enabled the ability to create things that change lives for the better. He wanted our younger generation to share his belief and overcome any fear that science and technology is too difficult. He was inspirational and will be sadly missed.

The Uk cellular national emergency alert test…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Public safety, Risk, Security, Technology, Telecommunications

The Badger was untangling a tape strangling a vintage cassette player when last weekend’s first cellular UK national emergency alert test happened. When the alert sounded on his smartphone, it made him jump because he thought he’d broken something in the cassette player! Within a second or so, however, the Badger realised it was the alert test.

The merits or otherwise of the new emergency alert system has had extensive coverage in UK media and on social media, but the Badger thinks it’s a useful public safety facility, if used wisely, given the dynamics and tensions of today’s world. The Badger learned during his IT career that for systems like this to be truly successful, the discipline, processes, and motives of the people controlling its use are as important as the system’s capabilities, engineering, and robustness. Will those in charge use it wisely? Time will tell, but if there’s a false alarm event like that in Hawaii in 2018 then public distrust of systems and those who control them will reach levels that are off the scale!

The alert test was also a reminder that communication networks are the unseen plumbing of today’s digital world. As the Badger cogitated on this point, his landline phone warbled. He automatically picked up the handset without looking at the caller display showing a UK landline number that’s not in his address book. ‘Hello, are you the homeowner and responsible for the computer at your address?’, an Indian lady asked. Scam, the Badger thought before answering with ‘Who are you, who do you work for, and how did you get this number?’ The lady just repeated her question, and the Badger terminated the call. The phone immediately rang again, this time the caller display showed a UK mobile phone number that isn’t in his address book. It was the same lady who cheekily asked, ‘Why did you put the phone down?’ The Badger answered, ‘This call is being recorded’, and the lady terminated the call. Checking the two caller numbers using Who Called Me confirmed that the calls were not from a reputable telemarketing source.

So, here’s the thing. Public suspicion and distrust of emails, social media content, and telephone calls continues to grow. We are relentlessly bombarded with spurious contact and content, and so it’s unsurprising that many are rather dubious about a cellular National Emergency Alert System. Other countries already have similar systems, and the Badger feels the new system is ‘technology for good’ and has a role in the UK public safety landscape. If the first real National Alert to his smartphone, however, is to warn of a nuclear attack, then the Badger’s realistic enough to know that by the time he’s read the message and decided whether its real or the result of hacking by bad actors, it’ll be too late…

Computers, systems, satellites and…potholes!

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Processes and Practices, Public Institutions, Satellites, Technology

A couple of weeks ago, the Badger’s saw OneWeb’s announcement that it was to launch the 36 satellites completing their first-generation Low Earth Orbit constellation on the 26th March 2023. Earlier this week the launch from a Space Centre in India took place successfully and the Badger mentally cheered all the engineers and computing professionals involved. This achievement has computers and  ‘systems’ at its heart, and this fact coloured the Badger’s thoughts as he left home to walk to the local shops. By the time he returned, however, positivity about computers and ‘systems’ relating to satellites had been replaced by gloom about ‘systems’ for fixing potholes on roads!

The route to the shops means navigating a T junction between a busy side road and a main thoroughfare. The approach to the junction is heavily potholed for about 30 metres. The surface, which has many of the different types of crater set out in the RAC’s Pothole Guide, is a danger to pedestrians, cyclists, motor cyclists, and car drivers alike. It’s been this way for a very long time, making it a wonderful  example of the pothole blight  infecting UK roads. Reports to the County Council have led to monthly visits by a repair crew who only patch a small number of holes every time.  

As the Badger walked by, a repair crew was patching a few holes again, and a lady was demanding to know why some holes were being patched but others, equally dangerous, were not. The workmen told her that ‘the central computer’ produces their worksheet and that they only fix, and get paid for, what’s on it. ‘Don’t blame us, blame the computer’, the workmen asserted bluntly. The Badger walked quickly by, thinking that the ‘system’ – the overall combination of process, people, IT, contracting, finance, quality, and compliance – was the problem, not the ‘the computer’.  

On returning from the shops, the repair crew and the lady had gone. A few potholes had been patched, but after three visits by a repair crew in the first three months of this year the road remains a danger to road users and pedestrians, especially at night. On reaching home, the Badger cogitated over a coffee and concluded two things. The first was that if motor vehicles are required to have annual MOT roadworthy tests, then road surfaces should also be required to have some kind of regular safety certification. The second was that for a country that has a computer and ‘systems’ pedigree that can put and operate satellites in space, it’s ‘systems’ for the repair of potholes on its roads are shameful. Although computers get conveniently blamed for many things in today’s world, it’s worth remembering that ‘systems’, which are much more than just computers, are more often the culprit.

Toddlers and online safety…

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

Gone are the days when toddlers just played with toy cars, trains, books, and physical building blocks, and watched children’s television before bedtime. They learn quickly from those around them, so it’s hardly surprising that they want to play with mobile phones, tablets, and laptops when their parents and grandparents are using them routinely as part of day-to-day life. The Badger’s toddler grandson, for example, already runs around with an old pocket calculator to his ear mimicking a mobile phone, adeptly swipes through the photo gallery on the Badger’s smartphone, and also selects and plays videos on the ‘Hey Duggee’ YouTube channel on a tablet.

Last weekend, as his grandson sat watching ‘Hey Duggee’ on an iPad, the Badger read OFCOM’s ‘Children and parents: media and attitudes report 2022’ .  It’s full of interesting information and hard numbers about how children between the ages of 3 and 17 use the internet and social media. It brings home the fact that the online world is central to children’s lives from a very early age. That’s both a positive thing and a negative, with the negatives falling mainly under the umbrella of the following neat words in an antipodean news article:

‘We’re living through the wild west of the internet. In Google, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and the rest, we have a new kind of critical infrastructure, not unlike the railroads and telephone lines of the mid-1800s…….we’ve become rapidly dependent on this new critical infrastructure, which has in many ways transformed the world for the better, but we’ve done it before we figured out how to make it safe’.

Responsible parents and grandparents want their offspring to benefit from the positives of the online world from an early age, provided they can be confident in online safety. Unfortunately, confidence isn’t high.  With just under half of children in the UK aged 12 having at least one social media account in 2019, and apparently more PR than substantive improvements in the aftermath of  Molly Russell’s 2022 inquest, the Badger feels that the case for regulation is overwhelming, and that it’s the only way to improve confidence that his grandson will be safe online. 

But here’s the rub. The UK’s Online Safety Bill, here, has been plodding through Parliament since 2019 and looks unlikely to become law before 2024. In the modern world of electronic documents, email, instant messaging, and content sharing, it’s shameful that it takes years to produce legislation that was really needed at least a decade ago.  Why is it taking so long? Is it because politicians are themselves part of the new wild west by over-using the internet and social media for their own ends? Who knows, but with AI set to revolutionise every type of content accessible online, the probability that the Badger’s grandson will enjoy a tamed online wild west seems to be trending towards vanishingly small.   

From slide rule to calculator app to…ChatGPT?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Change, Digital Transformation, Obsolescence, Science & Engineering, Software, Technology

On a shelf in the Badger’s home office is a pristine British Thornton slide rule in its original case. It hasn’t been used in years. In fact, it’s hardly been used since the Badger bought it during his first week as a university student because it was a recommended tool for his subject. Various friends have poked fun at it over the years, jauntily calling it – and the Badger – a relic rendered obsolete by first electronic calculators, and latterly apps on smartphones. Nevertheless, a friend recently gifted the Badger a vintage slide rule instruction pamphlet to ‘complement this Museum piece’! The gift was accepted graciously. It heightened awareness not only that anyone born since the 1970s will never have used a slide rule, but also that the student Badger had actually hastened this tool’s demise by buying a pocket electronic calculator as soon as they became widely available and affordable.

The slide rule’s 300-year reign as a personal calculating tool ended abruptly in the mid-1970s. By the time the Badger had completed his degree, every student on his course had bought a Sinclair Cambridge, Sinclair Scientific, or Texas Instruments electronic calculator. When youngsters josh about the slide rule on his shelf, the Badger reminds them that Buzz Aldrin used one during the Apollo 11 moon mission, and scientists and engineers used them when designing, building, and manufacturing the first computers. They are often amazed, but always respond by highlighting the virtues of the calculator app on their smartphone.

Reading the vintage slide rule pamphlet reminded the Badger that his purchase of an electronic calculator as an undergraduate was an early part of the microelectronics revolution that’s changed every aspect of life since. Reflecting today, it seems amazing that personal calculating devices have morphed from a tactile, non-electronic slide rule into a calculator app on a smartphone reliant on microelectronics to function. Of course, what’s happened to personal calculation devices is merely a specific example of the massive impact that rapid technological advance has on our lives.

Today the Badger’s slide rule is a decorative bygone. His most recent electronic pocket calculator is also infrequently used and languishes in the desk draw because the calculator app on his smartphone has become his default pocket calculator. But even use of this app is waning! Why? Because just speaking to Google or Alexa does straightforward maths. The days of needing a calculator app thus seem numbered, especially if AI like ChatGPT ultimately has the impact that Microsoft anticipates. So, here’s a thought to end with. While the Badger’s slide rule will always be an antique talking point sitting on someone’s shelf, an obsolete calculator app will just disappear into the ether and have no decorative value whatsoever. Hmm, perhaps the Badger needs to stop reading the instruction pamphlet and drink less coffee…

‘Read Aloud’ is no match for the natural intelligence of the human brain…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Information Technology, Learning, Technology

Somewhere on your tablet, laptop, or desktop you may have created a folder or sub-folder to store general items that you think are interesting and might be of use at some stage in the future. The content may, for example, include information and pictures accumulated over time from websites, items from social media or streaming services, and interesting facts, figures, and slides from presentations given by others. If, like the Badger, you have such a folder then the content probably languishes there rarely used. That’s certainly true for Badger who this week came across a subfolder of old ‘that might come in handy’ items while doing some overdue hard-drive housekeeping.

Most of the subfolder’s old content was moved to the Recycle Bin, but one 15-year-old item from the internet was a reminder of the marvel that is the human brain. That item was simply the following paragraph of misspelt words. See if you can read it.

Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny smoe plepoe can. I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheeachr at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, mneas taht it dseno’t mataetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproarmtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig, ins’t it? And you awlyas tghuhot slpelnig was ipmorantt!

The majority of people can read and understand this jumble, and the reason why is in the jumble itself. The human brain is magnificent.

On finding this item, and with Artificial Intelligence seemingly everywhere these days, the Badger wondered if the ‘Read Aloud’  function in Microsoft Word embodied ‘intelligence’ that matched his brain’s ability to read and speak the jumbled words coherently and correctly. After turning auto correct off to type the jumbled words into Word, hitting ‘Read Aloud’ on the toolbar resulted in the words being spoken exactly as written, that is in a babble as if they were an obscure foreign language! Clearly any artificial intelligence in ‘Read Aloud’ doesn’t match the natural intelligence of the human brain.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is, of course, a broad field. It’s also a field in which marketeers liberally associate their products with AI when actually it’s an algorithm rather than ‘intelligence’ at the heart of their product. So, what does the Badger conclude from his simple test? Simply that even though AI seems to be a dominant theme at this year’s CES event in the USA, the human brain remains streets ahead when it comes to true intelligence. And long may that be the case…