Monday Forum - terrorism and civil protection, the emerging digital dark age

Today Australian PM Abbott unveils the Government's proposed new security measures. Yesterday , the preliminary report into the Martin Place siege was released. This is the transcript of the joint press conference with NSW Premier Baird, this the joint statement, this is the NSW Government response, here is the report itself.

The PM has made it quite clear that he believes that the balance needs to be tipped between individual freedom and civil safety in favour of civil safety: "we are determined to learn whatever lessons we can and take whatever action is required to address the threat of such an event because the first priority of government is to keep our country safe."

I do wonder just what price we have to pay "to keep our country safe" and indeed just what the existential threat is that justifies the level of rhetoric. None of this makes me feel any safer. I just feel threatened. Am I wrong to feel that the core threat that I face is not terrorism but governments themselves?

Driving home from tennis yesterday, youngest commented on the coming digital dark age, the difficulty posed by the combination of ever increasing digital processing and storage demands with continuous technological obsolescence. The effect is that we store ever more records and information but for ever shorter periods, leading to permanent losses of slabs of critical personal and public material.

You can see all this at personal level in the way emails have replaced letters. Emails are a useful if increasingly overloaded communications device, but a hopeless way of record keeping. That got me wondering. How do you select and store information for future use, or do you just not worry?

Postscript

I took the Review of Australia's Counter Terrorism Machinery out to lunch. That was an error. Quite spoiled my appetite. This is the PM's Statement on National Security. In reading the Review, focus not on all the recommended actions but on the threat analysis and the measures already taken, including the way that increased activity indicators are in fact directly connected with previous  actions. Look too at the language used.

Postscript 2

First, a further brief note on the terror stuff, triggered by further reading.

I don't know, but just to further explain my position.

I supported the first Gulf War. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Reluctantly, I supported the Second Gulf War. Then from the current position in Ukraine back to Afghanistan I now find fundamental foreign policy errors. In regard to the War on Terror, I started by worrying that the approach and rhetoric used would create the very thing that was feared. Then came the growing and egregious personal injustices supported on public interest grounds.

I find now that I have limited faith in the foreign policy judgments of Australian Governments, less faith in the ability of this Government to argue coolly and objectively, no faith that either it or a Labor Government won't misuse power in the name of the public good or national interest. Lost trust is hard to regain.

On a more positive note, on the emerging digital dark age, kvd pointed me to this piece by Jill Lepore, The Cobweb. He suggested that youngest might like this piece too, The Last Amazon. Lepore is a very good writer.     .

 

Monday Forum - the death of email

This is actually something I have written about before, but I now have another case study.

We were talking about communications at Sunday's New England Writers' Center Board Workshop (Lunch in Armidale).Some time ago, we switched from print and post to email. It saved time and cash. It allowed us to "communicate" with members more frequently, providing them with a wider range of information.

Now the results of a survey were in. Our members absolutely hated email. Few read the emails, few opened the newsletters on which so much time had been spent on content and design. Consulting some of our sister organisations, they told us that around 5% of emails were opened and read. The equivalent figure for print and post was about 95%.

Looking at these stats, we decided to stop using email as a communications device. We are going back to the old print and post. It just works better even though it is much more expensive.

I wondered about you. Do you hate emails? How on earth do you manage your email traffic? I can't.

Are we seeing the death of emails?
 

NBN and the Vertigan Report - economic modelling gone silly

Wednesday! Where has the first part of the week gone? Tonight, just the national Broadband Network.

Communications Minister Turnbull has released (part released; some of the content is redacted) his cost benefit study into the NBN. I haven’t had time to read it yet. I do want to comment, however, on some of the reporting.

As I write, my local area network connection shows a nominal download speed of 100 Mbps. As we all know, actual speeds are always lower than nominal speeds. I am on 100 MBps because I have my computer plugged directly into the wall socket. If I go though the modem, my nominal download speed drops to 50 mbps. That’s with one user.

I am on an ADSL connection over copper. Working via the modem, the connection speeds are sometimes so slow, not always, that I cannot watch a You Tube video, properly download some software. If I were to really set the house up in the way I want with the main computer in the front office plus wireless connectivity that would accommodate visiting friends  or another device of my own, my connection speeds are likely to drop to blazes.

I mention this now because the Vertigan report is based on some modelling by Communications Chambers. It is that modelling or more specifically some of the underlying conclusions that I want to address. Now before going on, I want to quote some of the reported conclusions from Communications Chambers (CC). I am quoting reports. I am happy to accept corrections.

Subject to that qualification, it seems that according to CC:

• in ten years’ time, only 5% of Australian households will demand internet speeds of 43Mbps or more
• The 2023 household median demand will be just 15 Mbps. CC reckons that this low demand needs to be seen in the context of the continuing benefits of video compression and the fact that 58% of households only contain one person
• The growth in the number of households who use (the internet?, broadband?) had risen from 64% to 83% from 2007 to 2014, but this growth was driven by older single-person households who place significantly less demand on the networks than families.
• At the busiest time of the evening, the average connection was used to just 1.7% of its capacity.

Sorry CC and Vertigan, you have really annoyed me. Let’s leave aside the question of what demand might be like if the bandwidth was there at the right price and just focus on me as a user, one who already has to pay a considerable price and cannot do all the things he wants when he wants at current connection speeds even though his nominal 

Now this single person older household demand driver is, just at the moment, writing this post. The email connection is on, one just arrived, but but my bandwidth usage is very low. Silly me, bringing down the average. Even when I post in a few minutes, my usage will be low. You see, what is relevant to me is not the average but the peak, and there I am already in a degree of trouble.

Our blogging friend AC has been in Poland. Poland has quite good bandwidth, apparently better than Australia in terms of top speeds, real connections over 100 Mbps. To save money, AC went for a 25 Mbps connection while she was there, then found that that 25Mbps did not work when it came to Skype video conference or even phone connections. The low bandwidth made for very poor quality, especially in reproduction.

This is 2013, not 2023. I am not getting value for money at the moment on my phone/broadband connection. I can’t upgrade the service to meet my peak needs because the pipes aren’t there, and I’m in a densely populated part of Sydney. Think what it’s like elsewhere.

None of this means that the NBN is the best solution. But economic modelling carried out to support a case does not help. That may be unfair. Perhaps the modelling is simply bad.

As I read this stuff, I thought what planet are these people on? The Vertigan report appears to give me a 2023 solution based on a 2103 reality that already makes me unhappy. Thoughts of tar, feathers, sharp poles with splinters came to mind! Not happy, Jan. 

Postscript

A brief follow up now that I have had  chance to at least skim the underlying reports.

We are all influenced by our own experiences.

I am clearly not a typical internet user, nor are most people I know. I use the internet quite heavily for a mix of personal and professional reasons. So do they.

I am on a notional 50 Mbps download ASDSL broad band connection. That puts me already on Mr Turnbull’s notional target speed connection.

As of this morning, speed test shows a 6.34 Mbps actual down load speed, an 0.71  Mbps upload speed.  In a previous discussion, commenters explained the reason for the divergence between rated and actual speed. I won’t revisit that discussion at this point.

In broad terms, I generally don’t have a download problem, although this does get very slow from time to time. I do have a recurring and sometimes frustrating upload problem because I use photographs. Yes, I  can compress the photos, but sometimes I require high res and, in general, it’s just easier to use the photos as is.

The new things that I would like to do centre on upload. I wish to develop and upload new material. To do this, I have to learn new skills and will probably require new kit. However, once I have all this, it is nor clear to me that I can do what to do with my current upload speeds. I don’t think that I can.

Herein lies the rub with all these arguments. They rely on averages. They just don’t dig down deeply enough to find a Jim who already finds the 2023 projected usage patterns inadequate.

Sunday Essay - simplification in an IT/Internet World

A conversation at work got me wondering. The conversation focused on the way that modern communications have become a burden for many, especially in a work environment. A little later, I was listening to a radio program on the proliferation of the app. The argument was that apps originally designed for convenience had proliferated under commercial pressure to the point that they, too, had become a burden.

I am old enough to have worked in high pressure jobs in a pre mobile, email or internet world. I actually struggle to understand just how senior staff today get any work done at all! This is a photo from Moruya; it’s breakfast time; three staff members checking their mobiles for emails. 

It’s less than thirty years since mobile, email and internet came to dominate working life. In those now distant days, I could leave work at six knowing that I had left work. Yes, ministers or departmental heavies had access to my home phone number and could ring me if something was urgent, but this rarely happened. I was free once I left work. .

During my working day, I could focus on work: yes, there were many meetings; yes, there were multiple telephone calls; yes, everybody wanted a slice of my time. But no one could simply dash of an impulse email and expect me to respond. No one could actually expect me to impose instantly to the latest “it seemed like a good idea at the time” request.

The things that we do now to senior staff, the things that they do to themselves, are actually obscene. Worse, they are grossly inefficient.

By nature, I am a recording and documentation person. I used to track my work, the things that I had to do, all the time. I did so for my staff as well. I didn’t have externally imposed quarterly targets, nor did my staff. My focus was on the maximization of output in a world of change where short term priorities were subject to constant shift. To manage this, I constantly squeezed so that we could manage short term issues while maintaining longer term work, including blue sky work that fell outside current needs but was, to my mind, possibly important.

This work did not need short term paybacks, although that happened. This work did not have to be justified by results specified in advance. How could it? Often, I wasn’t sure whether it would have specific paybacks. How could I be? It was simply something that I thought might be important. Do this, and let’s see what it tells us.

I had reasonable expectations of my staff. They were human beings with different abilities and needs. It became in my mind a bit of a game. How to get the best results from people while recognizing their needs and making work fun?

There were rules of course, although they were simpler and less complex than those applying today. My job was not to manage the rules, but to manage while taking the rules into account. This included what we would now call rule bending, finding a way of ignoring or working around specific rules that wrongly affected individuals or the work. I did so carefully and with discretion. I could let someone have time off, but could not breach financial delegations, for example.

It has, of course, become harder to do what I did, although the principle is still followed in practice by many who just have to get the job done. With computer based systems where everything is recorded, where rules compliance can and is audited, the room for managerial discretion is greatly reduced.

I don’t have an answer to the best way of responding to the rise of systemic complexity. However, I do notice the way in which life simplification as become a popular response. It is also a response that focuses on the

The word simplification has a long history, dating to the French simplifier or Mediaeval Latin simplificāre, to make simple. The idea of a simple life has to a long history too. But the idea of life simplification, of opting out, is much more recent.

Today, the idea of getting rid of or at least controlling the impact new technology has become central.

In business, rules are being introduced to control the use of emails. This includes the introduction of email free days or, even, rules that say emails must only be used for urgent purposes. At personal level, people are reluctant to accept business provided mobiles. If I accept this, they say, I will be expected to be on 24 hour call.

The rebellion is still in its early stags, but it is coming. The thing that interests me most is just where the rebellion will stop. My feeling is that it will be more radical than we expect. This doesn’t mean that we will stop using the new technology. Rather, we are going to use it more selectively.

Saturday Morning Musings – problems with system dependency

This has been a busy topsy turvy week with limited time for writing. It’s also been a frustrating week, one that reminded me (again) of my reliance on sometimes imperfect technology.

Earlier, Livewriter stopped working. I was able to fix that by loading new Microsoft software, but in doing so created another problem. My outlook stopped working, forcing me to rely on web mail. As a consequence, I quickly collided with the mail box size limits.

Then on Thursday I turned the TV on for the first time in two weeks. Not working. The old analog signal has just been turned off in Sydney. I have a digital set top box, but the TV clearly requires some form of retuning that is beyond me at the present time. Youngest, I need you!

During the week the phone systems at work went down several times. along with access to all the on-line functions. The office is part of a large, centralised, cloud based system, and its often rather cranky and slow. I was in Coffs Harbour running a workshop when the worst outage occurred. Apparently, many people simply went home, unable to do their work.

Back at work from the Coffs Harbour workshop, I hit a problem with the NSW Government procurement system. I am familiar with that system. but hadn’t had to process accounts for payment for a while. In the intervening period, a new automated system had been introduced. Now I found that as a contractor, I didn’t have access to the automated system.

We are not talking about approvals here, simply processing. Certain accounts needed to be processed quickly. Since neither I nor the colleague who was working for me on the project could access the automated system properly, we had to find a work-around. We did. Hopefully, the accounts will be paid. Still, the case illustrates a core problem.

All systems must have rules to function. This is especially important for automated systems. However, people have jobs to do, deadlines to meet. When the system impedes your work, you find ways to do your job regardless. This keeps work going, but it also has real dangers, for the need to find work-arounds creates systemic risks.

I am quite anal about these things, as are many of my colleagues. We document and document. Yet when you go to many of the systemic problems revealed in corruption inquiries, you find that the need to find work-arounds reveal paths that can be used by those subject to temptation.

To cap it all off, I dropped my mobile Friday. The back came off. I picked it up, checked that it hadn’t been damaged, put it back together again, and rushed on. It was only later that I realised that the SIM card must have become detached, resulting in a non-working mobile. This is actually important, for my personal mobile number is the fall-back contact point for the various workshops that I am trying to organise.

Unlike some of my friends and colleagues, I am quite patient with technology. They expect things to work and get impatient when they don’t. The reality is that all systems are imperfect and subject to failure. That is the price we pay for greater efficiency, for the ability to do new things. It is also the reason that you have to have fall-backs, ways of operating in spite of technology failures.

Convenience is a trap. I work independently, I have work-arounds in place for most things. Each time a problem emerges, I have to remind myself that it is my responsibility to ensure that I have back-ups in place. Reminder Jim: back up your hard drive!

This week-end I am going to focus on fixing my systems, on ensuring that I can survive regardless of system failures. I need to do so. So do you!

MOOCs 1 - overview

I didn't get a lot of feedback on my post on massive open online courses (MOOCs) (Have you tried MOOCS? What did you think?), but I wanted to continue my discussion as a way of clarifying my own thoughts. It also makes a welcome break from the current Australian election campaign!

I suppose I should start by explaining further why I am interested in MOOCs.

To begin with, what is a MOOC? In simple terms, MOOC stands for:

• Massive. The platforms used allow for almost any number of enrolments. In Autumn 2011, Stanford launched three courses each of which had over 100,000 enrolments. That's massive.
• Open. The courses are open to anyone. There are no limitations on entry. Further, participation has been free, although that is changing.
• Online. The entire course is delivered online. There is no campus.
• Course. Students are enrolled in specific courses of varying lengths.

A free course from major institutions taken in your own home? What's the catch? Well, there are two. The first is that it requires a certain level of determination to get through. Completion rates are as low as 10%. The second is that, in the past, you got no recognition for your efforts. That's fine if you were doing something just for the sake of learning, not so good if you wanted something to put on your CV.

The costs involved in setting everything up are obviously tremendous, and then you give it away. Is that sustainable? No, its not. An institution might do certain things as an ad-on, but you can't do it in a core way for ever. There has to be money in it.

Now here we come to the basic product of a university or recognised training institution. It's not the course, but the qualification or tick at the end that counts. In measuring the economic value of education, for example, economists don't measure the value of the course, but of the qualification at the end.What extra income do people with degrees get?

Now once you have a mass audience, some at least may want to get the qualification. So what do you now do? You charge them for a test or exam and, if they pass, you give them the formal tick. As a former CEO of a specialist medical college, I know this system well. We charged our trainees a membership fee, that covered certain costs, but we also charged them an examination fee for the exams that they had to sit to test scientific knowledge.

Can you see why universities are worried?  I enrol in the course at no charge, then if I am doing well I pay for my test and get my qualification. Bingo, I am a graduate. It's actually not quite as simple as that. In my next post, I will look in more detail at the economics of MOOCs. 

Have you tried MOOCS? What did you think?

As I mentioned in passing a little while ago, I have been watching the emergence of Massive open online courses (MOOCs) with interest. They continue to be all the rage in the university sector. Now they are spreading into other parts of education and training. I can see why MOOCs may disrupt, change, existing teaching systems. However, I have been wondering about the economics of the whole thing, as well at the educational aspects.

MOOCs are, in fact the latest in a series of changes dating bask to at least the early eighties (I first wrote about the process around 1983) that mark the progressive commercialisation and industrialisation of the services sector. I may be wrong, but I suspect that my regular readers are unlikely to be interested in MOOCs as device for personal learning. Still, I wondered if I could find anyone who has had personal experience with MOOCs.

If so would you like to tell me about it? Did you start and then stop? What were the things that you most/least liked about the process? This information would help me cross-check my own views.

Postscript

I am going to leave this post up until Saturday to see if I can get more. In the meantime, a colleague wrote in another forum:

Yes I have tried one. I did an online course with Steve Blank on How to Build a Lean Startup . He lectures at Stanford and I did the course through Udacity. It was excellent! 

In response to a question, Ian added:

It was well presented. it was nicely broken up into modules. There were some review questions in each section. And I felt I was getting as good as I would've got in a face to face lecture. The material was stimulating. There was extra reading to do from a set text book. So it was a very positive learning experience.

Sunday Essay - the importance of people in technology

Browsing in a second hand book shop some years ago, I found a battered management book. Published at the start of the eighties, it argued that IBM would become the world’s dominant corporation because of its dominance over information technology. Ten years later, very similar arguments were being applied to Microsoft.

Both IBM and Microsoft benefited from a technology shift. Both rode a wave of success. Both remain successful corporations. Neither achieved that long term commercial dominance forecast by the popular management pundits.

The creative destruction unleashed by the application of new computing and communications technologies is huge, dramatically altering the business landscape. However, it is not the first such shift, nor will it be the last.

To illustrate, the invention of the internal combustion engine had equivalent effects and in much the same time horizon as the IT revolution. Over the first two decades of the twentieth century, entire industries vanished as new ones were born. The human landscape was reshaped. How we lived, where we lived, what we ate, all changed.

The rolling effects of the internal combustion engine revolution continued for decades. New industries and activities continued to be born. New fortunes were made. The motor vehicle, aircraft, the shopping complex all became natural and apparently fixed features of the human landscape.

If you look at the hype surrounding the internet as the latest manifestation of the computing and communications revolution, there is a huge focus on winners and losers and on the fads, fashion and social implications of the new technology. I am as fascinated with this as anyone else, yet it helps to keep a sense of perspective.

From a practical personal and business viewpoint, the key thing is the way we use the technology to achieve our objectives. We know that a lot of the froth and especially the kit will vanish. That’s just a fact. What is important is how best to take advantage of it all.

My local tennis club is a good example. I play tennis badly, but enjoy the game and the social interaction. Like many of us, I spend far more time in front of a computer than I really should. I need to get out to do something physical and to talk to people.

My tennis club has an on-line presence. I use that to find out what is going on and to make court bookings. They have a simple system that I can use easily. That’s important. However, that’s not why I go back, that’s not why I am such a supporter.

In simple human terms, there are people behind the technology. I am called Jim. If I have a problem, I can call a human. They recognise me when I come to play. We chat.

The technology helps the club because they get more cash up front, have fewer cancellations, make the courts accessible to more people, Yet it works because it helps me as a customer do the things that I want to do without taking away the things that I value.

I think that we all need to remember this when we consider how we might use the new technology to our own advantage. In the end, it all comes back to people.

NBN - oh for a few more cable splicers!

Recently, I have referred from time to time the emerging problems in the roll-out of Australia's new National Broadband Network by the NBNCo. I haven't written a lot on it because its outside my present area of technical expertise. Now the Australian Financial Review has obtained NBNCo internal documents showing jut how bad the problem had become. This story, NBN at war with contractors, paints part of the scene.

A key part of the problem relates to shortages of, and lack of skills of, the fibre splicers who connect the cables. Interestingly, if my memory serves me correctly, it was actually the Union Movement who first pointed to this emerging problem last year, noting that low pay rates were hindering recruitment. I discounted this at the time because of my perception that other games were involved, but they were clearly right.

Initial teething problems are quite normal in a project of this size. However, I have the strong impression that they were compounded by the political need to roll-out over a wide geographic area, thus increasing ramp-up difficulties. I also have the impression that problems were compounded by policy and regulatory reigidities.  In the meantime, it appears that Opposition communications shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull will be revealing his alternative plan tomorrow.

And the commercial winner in all this? Telstra says thank you very much!     

Is modern technology destroying interaction and empathy?

I have mused before on this blog about the impact on new technology on human behaviour.

One example was the way in which it affected the behaviour of my own family. TV was one thing, but then add wife and eldest daughter looking at TV and playing with their laptops, while youngest was playing with the computer in her bedroom. When dinner was ready, wife and eldest would pause to watch TV while eating dinner. Youngest would simply grab food and return to her computer.

I am a naturally gregarious person who likes conversation, so I actually found this quite isolating, especially during those periods when I was working from home. Starved of conversation during the day, wanting to talk, I had no-one to talk too. It was much easier to go to the office area and work on my own computer where at least I had some interaction!

At the office, you see something of the same pattern with email traffic. People’s routines are dictated by a combination of their electronic diaries with email traffic. Instead of popping to a nearby desk to say something, you send an email. With modern workflows, you workflow a document to someone for action, send an email to confirm, and then wait.

On Sydney buses and especially trains, a remarkable number of passengers sit there with ear phones on listening or watching their hand held device or talking or SMSing on their mobile.. No one looks at anyone else. Obviously there are exceptions, a group of chatting school friends is an example, but the base pattern described is pretty accurate. Now there is evidence that all this is affecting the way we think and interact, our basic personalities, our very sense of our own self.

Most of the reports I have seen of the work of Susan Greenfield and Bruce Perry and others on this topic appear to be behind pay walls. This is one example that is not. Much of the reporting is also influenced by the very particular slant of the outlet and the purpose of writing. But if we cut through all that, we find certain features.

First, survey results of teachers suggest that children’s attention spans have become shorter as they opt for screen based activities over conventional reading. This would fit with my observations of work environment.

Much more time has to be spent on packaging material, less time is available for developing and testing the real content to be packaged. Don’t get me wrong here. I have always used diagrams. I did so in my final school exams, I do so today. A simple diagram or flow chart can make it easier for people to understand, while forcing simplification of the author’s thinking. It’s the balance I am concerned with.

Secondly, studies of US university students have found that the level of empathy, the understanding of others measured by conventional tests, among US college graduates has declined by 40 per cent over the last twenty or thirty years, with much of the decline concentrated in the period after 2000.

It’s not possible to make a judgement without reading the original research material, but again this fits with my own observations. Empathy is built through interaction with others and especially those who are in some way different from you. If everybody you mix with is broadly the same, how can you learn to interpret and respond to difference?

To a degree at least, the social structures that used to bring people together in face to face situations have declined. The on-line interactions do not substitute, for we have all seen how they tend to group people based on commonalities. Of course this was true of other interactive mechanisms. It’s a scale question.

From this point, the reporting seems to largely focus on implications, building pyramids of conclusions. I will leave that part of the discussion aside.

Hype, technology & the importance of people

Browsing in a second hand book shop some years ago, I found a battered management book. Published at the start of the eighties, it argued that IBM would become the world’s dominant corporation because of its dominance over information technology. Ten years later, very similar arguments were being applied to Microsoft.

Both IBM and Microsoft benefited from a technology shift. Both rode a wave of success. Both remain successful corporations. Neither achieved that long term commercial dominance forecast by the popular management pundits.

The creative destruction unleashed by the application of new computing and communications technologies is huge, dramatically altering the business landscape. However, it is not the first such shift, nor will it be the last.

To illustrate, the invention of the internal combustion engine had equivalent effects and in much the same time horizon as the IT revolution. Over the first two decades of the twentieth century, entire industries vanished as new ones were born. The human landscape was reshaped. How we lived, where we lived, what we ate all changed.

The rolling effects of the internal combustion engine revolution continued for decades. New industries and activities continued to be born. New fortunes were made. The motor vehicle, aircraft, the shopping complex all became natural and apparently fixed features of the human landscape.

If you look at the hype surrounding the internet as the latest manifestation of the computing and communications revolution, there is a huge focus on winners and losers and on the fads, fashion and social implications of the new technology. I am as fascinated with this as anyone else, yet it helps to keep a sense of perspective.

From a practical personal and business viewpoint, the key thing is the way we use the technology to achieve our objectives. We know that a lot of the froth and especially the kit will vanish. That’s just a fact. What is important is how best to take advantage of it all.

My local tennis club is a good example. I play tennis badly, but enjoy the game and the social interaction. Like many of us, I spend far more time in front of a computer than I really should. I need to get out to do something physical and to talk to people.

My tennis club has an on-line presence. I use that to find out what is going on and to make court bookings. They have a simple system that I can use easily. That’s important. However, that’s not why I go back, that’s not why I am such a supporter.

In simple human terms, there are people behind the technology. I am called Jim. If I have a problem, I can call a human. They recognise me when I come to play. We chat.

The technology helps the club because they get more cash up front, have fewer cancellations, make the courts accessible to more people, Yet it works because it helps me as a customer do the things that I want to do without taking away the things that I value.

I think that we all need to remember this when we consider how we might use the new technology to our own advantage. In the end, it all comes back to people.

The role of editor in an on-line world

Two week's ago, I reported (What do you want to know about e-publishing?) on my decision to enrol in an e-publishing course. While I haven't said anything since, the first two sessions have been as good as I hoped. Our tutor, David Henley, is good, while those enrolled are an interesting group including Dexter Dunphy who is interested in publishing his poetry on line. 

I will write something more on the things that I have learned a little later in the course just to help me consolidate my thoughts. For the moment, I mention that Neil Whitfield has put up his own post on e-publishing, E-books and editing–opportunity and hazard.

Over on Facebook, Helen Dale (skepticlawyer), wrote "Helen Dale had forgotten how difficult it is to edit to length for purposes of journalism. She is being reminded - with some force - why she hasn't done any opinion-editorial work since 2002." Helen is no mean writer, she won a Miles Franklin award in an earlier life; I feel for her!

In his post, Neil wonders (among other things) about the role of editing and the editor in an on-line world. All forms of publication, and e-publishing is just another form, have their own rules dictated by the structure of the medium. Because e-publishing is apparently so easy, it leads to real quality control problems. Neil gives one example.

To my mind, editing and the role of editors is just as important in the on-line environment as in print. The form of editing is changing, for the opportunities and constraints of on-line publishing affect the way words are presented and combined with other elements. Yet in a world that contains an ever growing volume of really bad crap, something that I referred to in a different context in Sunday Essay - is the internet drowning in it's own excreta?, a good editor can be vitally important in giving you that edge that allows your work to stand out.

Of course, these things are never clear cut. Some badly written pieces will sell because they appeal to to a particular market. Indeed, a good editor may even be a problem here! But I think that my comment is still true as a generalisation.

Some years ago, I read a biography of English writer Somerset Maugham. For the life of me, I cannot remember the title. That's a pity, because it was a very good book! I do remember, however, the descriptions of the sometimes complicated relations between Maugham and his editor. It was Maugham's work, but it gained from the editing.

As I write, youngest is using an editor to check her first book. It's not the first unpublished novel she wrote, just the first to be edited. Clare is a very good writer, different from her father, probably better than her father, but different. Despite her ear for dialogue, her grammar is so bad that it distracts from her writing.

That comment is not a criticism of her schooling. Clare works in bursts of enthusiasm and, when writing, just writes. It's very much part of her personality. Commenting on her preferred sporting role as hockey goalie, I once commented that the role suits her perfectly: long periods of nothing to do but gaze at the world, followed by intense bursts of excitement! So editing provides a check and a discipline.

Her father, too, could benefit from a good editor. Neil notes that much of what we regular bloggers write is actually first draft. Get it written, get it out. Sometimes that leads to painful results, but it's the reality of what we do.

The world changes if we want to turn our scribblings into something more. Now we have to consolidate, revise and edit. Now we could benefit from an editor, an external critic.

For the moment, the changes that have been taking place in publishing directly threaten the traditional role of editor. Editors are being retrenched as print publishers contract. My feeling is that this is just a transition, that the editor will re-emerge as an important element in the mix. The detail of the role will change, but the core elements will remain.

Postscript 24 July 2012

My friendly unpaid research assistant kvd drew my attention to these pieces by the Sydney Morning Herald's Judy Prisk. She occupies the apparently new position - at least new to me - of  Readers' Editor.

• 11 July 2012 Slow and steady no longer wins the race.
• 25 July In the frenzied world of digital-first news, a quick fix is essential.

I'm writing while eating tea after my return from the latest session in the e-publishing course. Two things stand out in my mind.

The first is the need to flow chart the e-publishing process. I find that this helps me understand. I will do this over the next week or so, get it checked, and then post it here. I should warn you, it won't be flash. My graphic skills can best be described as miniscule!

The second is the limitations in the e-publishing world as compared to either print or the broader internet. There are many things that you either can't or shouldn't do because of the problems they create. Like tables! You must work to the limitations of the medium.

I won't be posting today beyond this postscript. I fear that I need to settle down with some estimates spreadsheets due tomorrow.

Sunday Essay - is the internet drowning in it's own excreta?

Looking back over my emails for the last few months, there has been a rising tide either seeking or offering links. The number of unsolicited email dealing with search engine optimisation is well up, as are emails seeking or offering content.

During this same period, there has been a noticeable decline in links to any of my blogs. Part of the explanation here lies in my failure to maintain current content. However, the pattern still holds even for this blog where I have maintained regular posting.

Over on Twitter, the number of tweets has passed my capacity to absorb them in the time I have. A colleague has actually stopped using Twitter on the grounds that it is no longer possible to find what is interesting within the constant ephemera.

I use search engines all the time. Here I have noticed the same pattern as the constant increase in ephemera makes it harder and harder to find the material I want. There is another problem as well. The constant rise in the use of the internet for transactions purposes, itself something of value, adds to the overall content and indeed confusion.

To my mind, the internet is in danger of suffocating under its own excreta. However, there is more to it than that.

When the internet began, it was rather like shopping in a small town. You knew the street layout, you knew where the stores were. Now the internet has became a mega global city in which no person can even attempt to follow the overall pattern, let alone understand the detailed intricacies.

You shop or eat in that local area directly related to your needs, the things that you are interested in or need to do, putting the rest aside. Even then you have a problem, for the map changes everyday even in your local area. Nothing is stable.

Just as none of us can understand the tax acts in any country or indeed the full scope of the road rules, now we cannot understand the internet.  Then, as always happens with increased systemic complexity, we start to simplify, looking just at the things we most need. In my case, for example, I am going to unfollow certain news outlets on Twitter so that I can better focus on those things, mainly people, that I do wish to follow.

Complexity also increases the demand for training and for professional support.

Globally, demand for html training has exploded because the number of people who need, or think that they need, this skill to manage their own online activities has been growing exponentially. Globally, demand for specific courses from e-publishing to writing in an online environment has also been growing.

Those who make a living from meeting this demand are obviously aware of the broad trends and and responding to them as best they can. And yet, somehow, they are failing.

Take my own case as an example.

In my own small way I actually run an internet business. I normally don't think of it in that way, yet it's true. I have a number of blogs, there are web sites, I write and publish in a variety of fora. I generate a small income stream from ads or donations, receive a variety of what we might think of as in-kind offers. Most of the second I ignore because of time constraints. I have no easy way of assessing them.    

Those who send me unsolicited SEO proposals generally get a dusty response because maximising my search engine position, while potentially useful, is just not high on my priority list. My needs are different.

I actually need assistance in managing what I do. I need assistance in maximising the value of my content. I need assistance in managing and evaluating the offers I do get. I need certain types of technical support. And I need support in areas like e-publishing. I am also severely limited in what I can pay.

Trying to define and clarify all this in the simplest way, I need support that identifies my needs in an integrated way and then defines the best way of meeting them, subject to my own constraints. To the best of my knowledge, that support does not exist.

In one way, I am not a good example because of my cash constraints. In a second way I am, because I am a moderately sophisticated heavy internet user.

I have no doubt that services and supporting infrastructure of the type I need will emerge. And this brings me to my final point.

Both the internet and all the services that support the internet are niching.

This process is still in its early days, but the broad patterns are becoming clear.

People will still use the broad internet, but increasingly they will focus on slices most directly relevant to them. One internet will be replaced by many internets. The internet you know will be different from that I know. The look will be different, the mode of operations different, the language different, the information displayed different.

This fragmentation will come at a cost, including at least the partial unifying element provided by the broad internet. Yet it is, I think, inevitable.        

Sunday Essay - clouds, complexity & systemic failure

Last Sunday in a short note on another of my blogs, Problems with cloud computing - and paperless offices, I commented on the slowness of the cloud computer system: 

It is easy to forget in all this that the concept (cloud computing) is not new. What is new is the scale of application. It is easy to forget, too, that the performance parameters are not new. They are just the same as any other computer system.

I mention this because the single greatest user complaint is simply slowness. Everything just takes more time as compared to either the local WAN or single computer use. The results are quite noticeable.

A week later I would make the same comment but with greater force. It's quite frustrating.

Normal work often requires multiple computer actions.

Say that you are working on a document. You open Word. As you work, you are constantly finding and checking other documents or spreadsheets. This requires new programs to open. Most of those documents or spread sheets are to be found in the electronic records system. Save and auto-save activity goes on all the time.

With a full cloud based system, all the programs are held in the cloud and everything goes via the cloud. So every one of the many computer actions requires a path out and back with external processing .

In theory, this shouldn't matter. In practice, the volume of actions and traffic, the density of interactions between different parts of the system, can slow it to a crawl or even freeze an individual user. The message "unable to save" was a new one to me, but had somewhat dire consequences.

I have written a little about the problems created by rising systemic complexity. A key problem lies in the nature of the dependencies built into the system.

As systems become bigger and more complex, the number of actions or processes dependent on other actions or processes, the number of possible interactions, rises exponentially.

My present work involves process mapping. This flowed logically into a second data base and reporting project. Here the aim is to create a data base that will facilitate both operational work and reporting.

I am not an IT person. My focus is on the business processes that will form the core of the data base. As part of this, I am helping to identify the business rules that have to be translated into data speak.

In a way, it's eye glazing stuff requiring great attention to detail. However, the nature of the work illustrates the complexity point, for even at this level hundreds of relationships have to be specified. In a complex system, you may need to specify hundreds of thousands or even millions.

You can see why things might go wrong, why some new IT or information systems simply fail. You can also see why so many organisations are reluctant to change systems once they are in place. This gives rise to very particular difficulties for staff who then have to work round growing gaps between changing work requirements and the computer systems.

In Aymever Days, I have started documenting our experiences in establishing and running a national consulting business out of Armidale. Computer based systems were already well entrenched, but in our management consulting advice we did try to warn about the danger of entrenching bad systems. Computerisation allowed you to do what you were already doing faster and more efficiently, but what if those processes were inherently inefficient in themselves?

Because of our high technology industry focus, the world we worked in was littered with continuous and sometimes disastrous system failures in either development or application. Murphy's law was a constant presence.

One of the big cultural changes that was taking place at the time was a shift from an engineering to a computing focus.

Engineering people understood complex systems. They designed systems that worked, they had to, but could also be over-engineered with high levels of redundancy. Computer people, by contrast, had a much shorter term focus. They were described as cowboys, get the sale and move on. Technology is changing, go with it. The number of non-working software systems that resulted was substantial.

Of course, there has been convergence as the computer focus moved from hardware to software and systems. But it remains true, I think, that our increasingly complex systems are more vulnerable than in the past, the risk of adverse results higher.

As a simple example, many people love electronic locking in cars. The Australian family recently trapped in their car in full sunlight because of a failure in electronic locking may now have a different view. Passers by had to smash a window to get them out.  

In 1811 a protest movement began In Nottingham, England, against the introduction of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheap, relatively unskilled labour. This resulted in the loss of jobs for many skilled textile workers. Handloom weavers burned mills and pieces of factory machinery and also clashed in battles with the British  Army.

The Government suppressed the movement by force. Many ended up in Australia as convicts.

Those involved called themselves luddites. Since then, the term has come to be applied to all those opposed to the use of new technology. 

I am not a luddite. I am not opposed to cloud based systems, for example, although I am conscious of the risks and problems involved. I am, however, opposed to the blind application of technology. I actually first wrote "new technologies", but of course most of the technologies involved aren't actually new!

Looking back at my writings around this topic, I think that the thing I have struggled most to get across is the way that technology reflects the way we think and structure, but then in return affects the way we think and structure. The result is a complex feedback loop in which technology has moved from servant to master. We are no longer what we think, but what we use.

Last year there were a number of major system failures in the Australian banking system that left millions unable to be paid, businesses unable to use EFTPOS, to pay or collect accounts. The periods weren't long, but reminded many that there were risks attached to the convenience they enjoyed.

People can understand and respond to this type of problem because the effects are quite clear. The general issues associated with growing systemic complexity, the problems with the way that systems and thought interact, are far harder to get across. It is also far harder to do anything practical about them because of the huge investment in existing systems.

Far fewer people today have real decision making powers than, say, thirty years ago, while the scope of those powers has shrunk. Decision processes have become longer and more complicated. Far more Australians are involved in simply ensuring compliance with rules and laws.

In a way, you could argue that I am my own worst enemy.

Look at the work that I am doing - process mapping leading leading to a new data base and reporting systems. Process mapping is, in fact, the hand maiden of standardisation and computerisation.

In one way or another, I have been involved with most of the things that I now complain about. In some cases, I was a relatively early exponent. My difficulty is that they haven't delivered the benefits I expected, while the costs have been far greater.

I would argue, I think, that the biggest and saddest loss in what has happened lies in the way that it has reduced the capacity for true innovation simply defined as applied imagination.

We have replaced a thousand flowers with a much smaller number of larger flowers that have begun to wither. We apply more fertiliser, technology, but without much effect. We put stakes in the ground (rules and laws) to try to hold the flowers up, to prevent them falling over, but then find that more of the same is required.

Perhaps it's not a good analogy, but I hope that it gets across a little of what I am trying to say.  

Dreams past: Collective Wisdom, education & the NBN

This post today is a personal historical piece, However, it is also one that has a certain relevance today in the context of the NBN and other discussions on the application of new technology in education.

The following photo dates from February 1996. The scene is the Armidale Town Hall. The event, a Collective Wisdom Project Demonstration. This was the last major thing I did in Armidale before joining the family in Sydney. The photo shows kids and teachers, set against the backdrop of old and new technology. The bearded chap in the background is Martin Levins, head of IT at The Armidale School. He was the brains behind the exercise. Further comments follow the photo.

Background

In the middle of 1987 I left the Commonwealth Public Service to establish with my wife a new information, training and consulting business in Armidale servicing the electronics, aerospace and information industries. I had been arguing that Australia had a future in these new industry areas, so was putting my personal money where my policy mouth had been.

I met Martin Levins soon after my arrival in Armidale. He was then head of IT at TAS and was driving the school in the direction of new technology. Under Martin's influence, TAS was a very early adapter of new communications and computing technology.

One of the things that we were trying to do was to grow the Armidale base in the new technologies, drawing from University of New England staff and graduates. This meant a big education role, for we had to train our people and popularise the opportunities. As part of this, Aymever combined with Martin and his then business partner Tom Pollock in 1987 to mount in a local pub the first ever display in Armidale of multimedia, the English Doomsday project, itself one of the first global demonstrations of the potential applications that we now take for granted.

Aymever grew rapidly. By the end of 1989, we had seventeen staff, a monthly fees base of over $80,000, clearing $8,000 after operating and start up expenses. We were then hit by the pilots' strike (we had to travel all the time to get business) and by the sharp downturn of 1990. While the Australian economy itself actually bottomed in mid 1991, the business services marketplace collapsed much earlier. Over the first months of 1990, national fees dropped by a third. Our own fees fell from $80,000 in December 1989 to a bottom of $29,000 in March 1990. We bled money, loosing $190,000 over calendar 1990.

We clawed our way back. By mid 1991, revenues had reached record levels, but we were now carrying heavy debts. We then hit a very large bad debt that forced retrenchment and finally led to us appointing administrators in 1994. Even though we had work in place and good prospects of further work, the administrators closed the business a week after appointment.

I mention this history for several reasons. It sets a context for what follows. Further, the rise and then fall of Armidale's nascent high technology and associated services sectors is of itself indicative of a broader Australian collapse. by the end of 1989 there were more than a dozen Armidale start-ups employing several hundred people. All this vanished over the next few years.

Genesis of the Collective Wisdom Project

As a strong exponent of the new computing and communications technologies, Martin developed the idea of a communications network linking Armidale schools - private and public - that would assist sharing of resources and promote new approaches to learning. He had already tried many of the ideas at TAS and had been helping train people in other schools and especially Drummond Memorial Primary School. He began negotiations with Telstra on one side, the University of New England on the other, for UNE had its own ideas and was also negotiating with Telstra.

The next photo is another shot from the Collective Wisdom Project Demonstration contrasting the old and the new.

For my part, I had reestablished as an independent consultant still trying to follow the same dream. As part of this, I was project managing the bid for funding for an Armidale based cooperative multimedia centre under the Commonwealth Government's Multimedia Program.

This was proving a frustrating experience. Beyond a small grant given to all the NSW contenders, we could get no State Government support. UNE who should have played a lead role was in a state of turmoil that came very close to forcing the university's closure. Martin himself was experiencing similar problems in gaining UNE support. The University wanted to do its own thing, but just couldn't deliver anything.

In frustration and knowing that in the absence of something radical we were doomed by metro myopia and the NSW disease, I decided to take the New England CMC concept alive to try to provide proof of concept. However, we needed something dramatic to show that what we had was not just hot air. For that reason, Paul Holland (my then industry analyst) and I joined with Martin to try to support the creation of the Collective Wisdom network.

The Collective Wisdom Demonstration Project 

It was clear to all of us that we needed something to showcase just what was possible. Locally, we needed full involvement of the schools and university. More broadly, I wanted something that might break through indifference in Sydney and Canberra, that we could invite people too and gather support.

In retrospect, the demonstration project we came up with was remarkably ambitious. Remember, this is 1995. It involved:

• An exhibition in the town hall in which hundreds of primary and secondary school kids would combine to create web pages from material sent in via phone from groups at their schools
• To attract interest from locals, an exhibition of education past to contrast
• With the whole thing watched live from a NSW Government Centre in Sydney.

The next photo shows some of the participating kids, these ones from the New England Girls School.

We had very limited resources to do all this.

Telstra was one sponsor, and undertook the required network connections. Because of its own problems, UNE could not help in any real way. Paul and I effectively worked full time on the project for several months, while TAS provided considerable support. This included making the IT lab available for training purposes,  kids were trained at night in the week before to ensure that they had the required skills, as well as the supply of kit.  

The next photo shows some of the TAS boys at work on the day.

The demonstration was a considerable success, although we hit very real technical problems.

One that we did not make public at the time is that Telstra could not get the dial-up network to actually work. Instead of doing it all on-line, we actually had to courier material from the schools to the town hall! 

The Aftermath

Before outlining the results of all this, another photo, this time of the PLC girls at work.

In a way, the results for all this effort were not good.

We did not get Commonwealth CMC funding. Attempts to create cooperation among Armidale schools foundered on a simple practical reality that, with UNE cutbacks and the consequent decline in Armidale's population, all the schools were competing for a diminished student base. Without a strong support base and some cash, the establishment of a network at that time was just too hard.

At a purely personal level it cost me an arm and a leg, for I went well beyond the point that could be justified by any personally rational payback. And yet, and even though it all appears as a few words on my current CV under community, I cannot regret it.

You see, we actually showed what might be possible with the proper application of technology. Fifteen years later as the NBN is discussed in abstract, as a set of theoretical possibilities, I remember the Armidale Town Hall on that day in 1996.   

Saturday Morning Musings - premium, freemium & the dreaded app

In Thursday meander through the blogging world, I mentioned News Ltd's plans to introduce pay for view to the Australian. The links I gave in that post will provide further information to those interested. Since then, the Australian has launched its new web site, with digital subscription launching 24 October.

As I noted in my post, my immediate interest lay in its likely impact on blogging and on my blogging in particular.

On first impression, I don't like the new web site. I am a fast reader and indeed rely on that speed. I used to be able to quick scan the site, whereas the new site slows me down. In fairness, once you dig inside it gets better, but I still don't think that it's brilliant.

Something of the same issue comes up with the new mobile and magazine formats within blogging. I don't like them because they slow me down. 

However, my big problem is the expected one: what content will be free in circumstances where the "premium" content line can shift? I try to be punctilious in not copying in full and in providing links, but there is not much point in all that if readers cannot then access the material.

I use the Australian a fair bit because its reporting is strong in certain areas. The other main metropolitan daily I read on a regular basis is the Sydney Morning Herald. This, too, is going into a subscription mode, with an iPad app already under trial. 

In a comment on Belshaw's World - caught between a tweet and a print place, the Armidale Express's Janene Carey wondered if some bundling of SMH and Express might not meet my needs for certain types of content. That comment raised a new issue in my mind.

I read a lot of media online and for different reasons. I scan media from other countries to try to get a broader perspective. I scan the major Australian media outlets for national or state material. I also scan newspapers across New England to try to provide a broader New England perspective. I use the media as a source of leads, often following through to get the original source material. I am interested in reporting as reporting.

While my writing reflects my own idiosyncratic interests, while I do not pretend to be a reporter as such, I do try to add a measure of value through my analysis, consolidations and commentary. Access to a diversity or reporting is central to that. This becomes more difficult in a world of pay. I could not afford, for example, to take out a subscription to every newspaper in New England, let alone all the other outlets I look at.

The world will not end tomorrow, but the trend and consequent problems are clear.

  Still musing, another problem from my perspective is the proliferation of delivery mechanisms and outlets and the way they affect writing and reading. I mentioned that I didn't like the new mobile and magazine formats within blogging because they slowed my reading down.

The hardware plus delivery systems that can be used to access material continue to proliferate. Take a train trip in Sydney during peak hour and just watch. You will see half a dozen different pieces of hardware in use, each with its particular characteristics. At a personal level I am quite out of touch. I have chosen consciously not to attempt to understand them all, nor to tailor my writing to suit them. It's just too hard!

This is starting to take me in new directions and I have other things to do today. Time to stop.   

Sarah Thorneycroft on universities and innovation

I am just recording this one for later reference. Sarah Thorneycroft (@sthcrft) tweeted requesting comments on her draft thesis mini-proposal linked to a study of ways of improving innovation in higher education. Sarah is a lecturer in Academic Development in the University of New England's Teaching and Learning Centre. She has a particular interest in the application of new technology and is actively involved in UNE's moodle system. Her blog is Mind the Gap.

I have been following Sarah for a little while. However, I had a problem in responding sensibly to her request because my mindset, the mental frameworks that I have developed, are different from hers. There is a risk that my comments might be either destructive or irrelevant! This is not a criticism of Sarah, merely an observation on me. 

I will deal with this later in a hopefully objective fashion. However, in the meantime the issues that Sarah is trying to address are important and I wondered if others might have comments. 

Neil Whitfield, generations & the on-line world

I have been working on the next post in my Greek trip series, this one introducing Rhodes. I do hope to bring it up today. In the meantime, Neil Whitfield had a rather good post this morning, Wikis and weblogs and trolls, oh my!.

I will leave you to read the post, but there were two different interacting elements that interested me - generational change and the impact of new technology. I have written on both and mean to come back to them. In the meantime, I found Neil's post interesting. 

I also note that I have made a slight addition to An afternoon on Paros.

Problems with apps

I was in two minds about posting today. However, a story about Google+ caught my attention.

I have no doubt that Google+ will accelerate Facebook's decline, something that I have written about before. However, Google+ along with other new variants simply makes me feel more out apped than ever.

App, such a friendly little term, a shortening of the old term application. Yet now apps have come to consume the world.

I don't know about you, but my world is littered with old apps that seemed like a good idea at the time. I find them again whenever I do a web search on my own name. There they are, still in existence on the web even though it is years since I last looked. They send me plaintive messages from time to time. Jim, we have missed you! Don't be a stranger!

Even with apps I do remember, I very rarely use them. GoogleDocs, for example, or Plaxo. I joined the first in 2007, the second earlier than that, but have rarely been back. Plaxo was a good way of keeping contacts up to date, but this ended some time ago.

I really need to go through and do some pruning. With apps that I keep, I really need to work out how best to use them, to maintain their currency.  Otherwise, they just become more dead wood. 

My problem is, however, that this adds just another load. Ah well!

Postscript

I see that Google+ has seized 10 million+ users in two weeks. Sounds good, I know, yet there is a long way before this translates into real strength. You see, before I would switch I would need a reason, and being new is not enough.   

Distribute.IT and modern systemic vulnerability

The disaster that befell Australian firm Distribute.IT and its customers as a consequence of a hacker attack is another reminder of the vulnerabilities of modern IT systems. For those feeling morbid, you can read about the unfolding events on the Whirlpool forum. 

As I read the 73 or so pages of comments and updates, I thought of the Distribute.IT folks desperately trying to get their systems back on line.

The Distribute.IT case is just one of a recent set of examples in Australia and overseas that actually threaten the very reliability of the internet based systems on which we now depend.

The collapse in my own system, while personally annoying, is but a small personal example. My thanks to those who have sent me practical advice.

I did try to do a full back up to my external hard drive just before the system went down. That failed, although I think that another back-up of just my documents may have been successful. I should know this later today.

Looking at the vulnerabilities, and I am only speaking as a small personal user, I start with my emails. It's actually quite hard to back up emails. At least, I have yet to work out how! Yet so much of what I do is linked to emails that their loss is a major problem.

A second vulnerability lies in my dependence on the free systems such as Google. While these are quite wonderful, no one can guarantee their longer term survival.

My own technical competence is a specific issue in trying to manage.. I actually know IT and the internet very well, but I am a technical incompetent when it comes to specific computer operations. Sure, I know how to use a dozen different programs, I have created and managed web sites and blogs, I can do ordinary housekeeping, but I am still a technical ignoramus at the purely practical level.

Let me give a simple example.

A week back I discovered a corruption in the heading of some of my history posts, the transformation in the heading of part of the text to some form of skype ad. This is an example. I went in to the post and checked, redoing the heading, but without success. So this is some form of corruption beyond my control. 

This brings me a second problem, the combination of time and money. Some of the back-up and redundancy solutions involve a fair bit of time and cash, two things in short supply just at present. Even at the simplest level, I need help from Google to resolve the skype example, and that takes time.

In all this, I have come to the view that our present internet systems are actually unsustainable. What can go wrong, will go wrong.

When the National Australia Bank system collapsed recently, a large number of customers were left without cash or access to cash. Last night when I went into the local supermarket, their EFTPOS system was down. I had no cash on me, so left without buying stuff for tea.

Now in terms of our just in time world, we have all become so used to internet based systems and the capacity to get what we want when we want it, that we are not set up to cope when things inevitably go wrong.

Normally, this is just an inconvenience. But for some people including the Distribute.IT customers, some of these outages can be absolutely destructive.

Still musing. let me take another example, the growing multiplicity of passwords. To simplify, most of us actually use just a small number of passwords, often storing them on our computers for ease of reference. Yes, both are dangerous, but they do make for ease of use. But beyond this, what happens if you are incapacitated in hospital for some reason and nobody has access to your passwords?

Where am I going in all this? 

Well, I have come to the view that I need multiple redundancies, including the reinstatement of basic paper based systems for system critical stuff. In some cases I am just going to have to take risks because the internet is just so important and convenient. In other cases, I need to be able to operate without either internet or computer.

This actually involves quite profound changes in the way I work.

I am reinstating my cheque book, for example, because this allows me to pay for some things even when systems are down. I plan to carry more cash, income willing, to avoid EFTPOS delays and crashes. I need to put more time into system maintenance. I am actually using pen and paper a lot more.

 I don't know whether or not I am alone in thinking this way, just a troglodyte in a modern world, but I know that I will feel a lot more in control if I do change the way I do things.