Current technology thinking
WiFi, Thomas Cook, Domestic Mesh Network, Oxford Alumni weekend, technology driving the demise of democracy. Here are some current observations that all relate to how technology is changing our world.
WiFi is increasingly absolutely mandatory when my family books its holidays. This is not because of a work addiction but our whole lives are increasingly tied to calendars, data sources, entertainment, maps, restaurant bookings and guides to name but a few. Most locations we go to have average room/villa solutions which work OK most of the time. Rather unexpectedly when we holidayed in Skiathos recently, we stayed at Hotel Elivi which has a sort of campus-scale location spread across a number of beaches and about 50 physical buildings. It must be at least 50 to 100 acres. Now it is a while since I had any real IT accountability – maybe 25 years – but I hadn’t come across a single wi-if login that had excellent coverage across a location like this. It was marvelous. Logon once and decent FREE WiFi and internet wherever you were onsite and a little offshore as well. May all holiday destinations take note. Faultless.
Talking of holidays it is a shame to see Thomas Cook collapse after such a long time but the warnings must have been clear for many years. Carrying a stores inventory that big, and being a jack-of-all-trades in an era of targeted specialization must have been a high-risk approach even before Brexit and Sterling collapse took their tolls. To me it re-emphasizes, if it were needed, that you can not wait these days. In business you are competing in time ferociously and there is not a decent interval to reflect. To achieve this you need constant flows of data and a systems build capacity of high agility. Your business model must be flexible and your entire organization must be looking 360 degrees for sources of disruption or opportunities to disrupt. All the time. The old-style call-in McKinsey for 6 months isn’t that optimal any more. I don’t know TC in proximate detail but I am sure it will be a 21st century case-study very soon. It seems to have missed the 21st century.
Moving on from holidays I have also invested in a new network at home. My house is a little higgledy-piggledy with walls which in places the Chinese would envy for robustness. Wi-fi has always been an issue. Now it isn’t. A well-informed friend took us through an upgrade to a domestic mesh system from Linksys. Now (like holiday) we have a single network and login that covers all buildings and levels and garden without devices logging out/in/out as one moved about. An absolutely simple implementation that even I found frankly easy. No issues or unexpected circumstances. Technology is really moving on. In previous years a network replacement would have been the source of Freddy-Kruger shaped nightmares. I hope we now have all the tech power we need now until we stop caring!! If anyone needs WiFi extenders and power-line adapters then get in touch!!
At the weekend, my better-half and I attended the Oxford Alumni “Meeting Minds” event. You get to listen to top quality lectures and discussions from those who really know. We kicked off again with the Oxford Analytica morning discussion. Experts on Russia, China, Economics, South America, USA, Europe, Brexit, Persian Studies and maybe one or two more all spoke. There was also a “note-taker” who, in no time at all, produced a discussion-synopsis which was nothing short of miraculous. The reason why I thought of telling you all about this is as follows. These people read. listen, watch and analyze every sort of data available to them in whatever format it emerges. They then produce insight from that data based on whatever intellectual process they deploy, including daily open discussion. That is sold to governments and corporates around the world for significant money. Its going to be a while before that can be replaced by AI, but it does represent roles that will be “last to go” in an automated world. It is not the data gathering that is most critical but the analysis and leaps of judgement – the real intellectual dexterity. This doesn’t decry the scientific, logical, deductive process at all but is very refreshing to see human power in a technologically driven world.
Two other lectures we attended were focused on the state of the American constitution and of course the relationship between Britain and Europe. This next observation may well therefore disaffect half of you readers. I apologize in advance.
President Trump appears to have a weak grip on truth in his personal and political lives. He uses social media to broadcast his opinions and decry other opinions as “fake news”. The proliferation of channels of news and data in the world is so extensive that we no longer know what “the truth” is nor where it resides. In the UK with the damnable Brexit chaos, much of the problems have been caused by lies, mixed communications, spin and PR distortion, and the facts of what is going on and what will happen are veiled. Technology has afforded the world the opportunity to massively complicate debate and discussion. It is a force for good and at the same time a force for bad, and both camps are using every nuance of it. We have thus lost our collective grip on any moral reflection and inherent sense of right and wrong. The genie really is out of the bottle and will probably never get back in. China, North Korea and Russia all use communications to control their cowed populations. God knows what the damage to the western democracies will be when we cannot identify the truth in an open world. Which is worst? How shall we manage debate when every fact has at least two variants at the same time? Its like Quantum reality – two states at once!!
More to come when I get over the recent Supreme Court judgement that Boris has been a bad boy. I at least have recent copies of Wired to read as a change!!