Telecommunications – The Information Badger

The Badger was asked the question ‘What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?’ during a conversation with a youngster who’s just started the final year of their university degree course. The conversation was centred on the Badger’s experience in the IT industry and was primarily focused on helping the youngster not only look beyond completing their degree, but also decide whether to stay at university for a higher degree or move into industry to bolster their immediate income. As the Badger described some of the dynamic technological changes encountered throughout his own career, the youngster paused for a moment, pursed their lips, frowned, and then unexpectedly asked this question.

The Badger was taken aback. After what seemed like a prolonged and embarrassing silence, but was really just a few seconds, the Badger took the easy option and answered with a bland ‘I don’t know. Different generations will probably have different views.’ The youngster smiled and chided him for being cleverly uncontentious! They then answered their own question, and their answer took the Badger completely by surprise. Why? Because he did not expect what he heard from a Generation Z person who is completely digital-native with no experience of life without the internet, personal computers, social media, or mobile phones.

‘Social media is the development that has had the most detrimental impact’, they proclaimed. They contended that social media has developed such that its content is the embodiment of 7 R’s – rage, rumour, rackets, rubbish, robbers, retail, and revenue – which is growing to be ever more corrosive to the fabric of society. They voiced their distrust of the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter), and expressed concern that users of such platforms are naïve about their impact on personal privacy and social stability. Their final assertion was that social media has had the most detrimental impact on the world in the last 20 years because it has undermined law and order, respect for others, encroached on privacy, and enabled the immediacy of widespread fraud and misinformation. The Badger, who was a little surprised at hearing this from a digital native of Generation Z, quickly refocused the conversation on the youngster’s post-graduate aspirations!

Whether you share the youngster’s view or not, history suggests that some developments which change society are lauded during their time, but ultimately prove to be devastating in the long run. For example, fossil-fuels revolutionised life in the 20^th Century, but they have had a damaging impact on the sustainability of life on our planet and are now shunned. The Badger’s undecided whether social media, a once exciting early 21^st Century development, falls into this category, but if you want some fun at a multi-generational gathering of friends or family then ask the youngster’s question. The result is almost guaranteed not to be what you expect…

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…

Category: Telecommunications

The Uk cellular national emergency alert test…