IT people could be better utilised!
Another interesting article from "How to save the world"... I work away on projects and usually get really immersed in them and think I'm doing something really useful, and then I realise what Dave Pollard points out in the following extract:
How to Save the World: "Although IT people can create wonderful software, quickly, effectively, to accomplish almost any information processing need, it's all really just a hobby. It rarely makes the world a better place. Most of the world isn't online at all, and most of the people online are still struggling with simple things like e-mail. And I don't think that's going to change in another generation: As I've said before, unless a technology is dead easy to use, it will never catch on, will never become mainstream, will never be more than a passing fad. All the social software tools, blogs, and cleverly coded programs that have been and are being developed are just a recreational drug for us, a tiny minority of the population bored with the inanity of our 9-5 jobs. It's largely a hobby destined to be no more significant in historical terms than ham radio, CBing, or scrapbooking. The best that can be hoped is that all this software will ultimately be built into very simple, ubiquitous tools that will allow people to network better, find people and communicate with them more easily, and learn faster and more easily."
The article's main point, directed at people in IT, is as follows:
"Your bright, disciplined analytical minds are desperately needed to develop practical new technologies that can solve the global problems of our world. But instead the majority of you are marginalized in IT, one of the few branches of science and technology that really can't help solve these problems. And paradoxically this is happening at precisely the time when there is more knowledge about science and technology, more power of individual and collaborative enterprise to introduce new technologies at a modest cost than ever before. "
Worth a read.
How to Save the World: "Although IT people can create wonderful software, quickly, effectively, to accomplish almost any information processing need, it's all really just a hobby. It rarely makes the world a better place. Most of the world isn't online at all, and most of the people online are still struggling with simple things like e-mail. And I don't think that's going to change in another generation: As I've said before, unless a technology is dead easy to use, it will never catch on, will never become mainstream, will never be more than a passing fad. All the social software tools, blogs, and cleverly coded programs that have been and are being developed are just a recreational drug for us, a tiny minority of the population bored with the inanity of our 9-5 jobs. It's largely a hobby destined to be no more significant in historical terms than ham radio, CBing, or scrapbooking. The best that can be hoped is that all this software will ultimately be built into very simple, ubiquitous tools that will allow people to network better, find people and communicate with them more easily, and learn faster and more easily."
The article's main point, directed at people in IT, is as follows:
"Your bright, disciplined analytical minds are desperately needed to develop practical new technologies that can solve the global problems of our world. But instead the majority of you are marginalized in IT, one of the few branches of science and technology that really can't help solve these problems. And paradoxically this is happening at precisely the time when there is more knowledge about science and technology, more power of individual and collaborative enterprise to introduce new technologies at a modest cost than ever before. "
Worth a read.
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