I have been in IT for almost 38 years and have seen lots of changes. When I first started in IT there was no internet, no emails, no emails and no Facebook :-)
We have certainly moved on since then and in some respects I would not like to go back to those days. However I just wonder if we are going too far with technology.
I think back to when my children were little and we played actual games, communicated and had fun. I am now a grandpa and have a grandson - I am now amazed at just how much “stuff” he has…electronic sterilisers, electronic games, electronic sleep suits, electronic alarms etc etc. Call me old fashioned but I just wonder if we are going too far with technology. British Airways have just had a major computer problem which meant that hundreds of flights were cancelled - they did not have any manual backup procedures.
Many of us use our phones for online checkin for flights - call me old fashioned but I always print a hard copy of my boarding card because I was told by security that if my phone died then I would not be allowed to board the aircraft because I did not have a boarding card (even though it was on my phone).
We now have the “internet of things” where most of our domestic appliances can be used with an application on our phones. This is amazing and can be very productive. My daughter has just bought some light bulbs that connect to the internet and she can now turn her lights on via Amazon Alexis. This to me is so lazy but more importantly there are security implications. You can now purchase a “wifi kettle” this links to your wifi and via an app on your phone, you can now boil a kettle…absolutely amazing :-)
However I heard a presentation recently where a person “hacked” into a person’s computer and retrieved data all because they had a “wifi kettle”. Maybe the moral of this story is that we should just get up and turn the kettle on manually and then we would also do some exercise :-)
If you want to hear more about this then come to my course on Mobile Testing at Bouvet.
Lloyd Roden
