The 1996 report "The End is Nigh" , on how to avert the impending Y2K Skills Crisis, included a section (8.5.3, starting page 141) on how a tax free training programme might work. This section was drafted specifically for the then Shadow Chancellor, now Prime Minister. It needs updating but the basic principles remain the same.
The key was to stimulate employer-funded investment in training by reducing national insurance and income tax for those following professionally recognised and monitored skills development and updating programmes. Those funding their own training would be similarly able to off-set costs against tax.
The recommendations included checks against abuse akin to those used successfully for the Millennium Bugbusters' Programme. These were then ignored, very expensively, for the ill-fated Individual Learning Accounts: a great idea, but implemented without industry strength quality control - and with predictable (and predicted) consequences.
The main reason the concept was not adopted beyond a few unpublicised, Treasury-mandated, regional trials, was that departmental officials hated the idea of tax incentives as an instrument of policy. It was a direct threat to the hierarchies of committees and funding agencies that had step by step increased their stranglehold on the UK education and training industry since 1917: when Lloyd George laid the foundations for a centralised, standardised, silo'd public service - fit for the age of rail.
The main change since 1996 is the sheer scale of need today: to retrain those millions whose skills have already atrophied or will no longer be needed in 2010. That need goes well beyond the ICT industries whose skills needs I was addressing n 1996.
Were I writing today, I would include a need to mobilise the Trade Unions and reputable associations of small firms in supporting local training programmes to NVQ level 3: the missing link in the UK skills chain.
I would also call for a cull of the education and training quangoes, with authority passing to those Sector Skills Councils which have demonstrable support from the industries they serve.
]]>Reviews and postponements of big public sector ICT projects are politically popular but are now hitting industry cash flows hard. When spend restarts ministers will almost certainly wish to follow private sector good practice with incremental, rapid payback projects within strategic frameworks. You can help shorten the transition period.
There is serious confusion as to what is legal in this area, let alone what is good practice: for example with regard to organising low cost, innovative, socially inclusive, service delivery in co-operation with voluntary organisations and charities.
There is, however, much guidance already available, including from the Audit Commission, Digital Inclusion Team, Intellect, the National Audit Office, the Office of Government Commerce and SOCITM. But this is, too often, not brought to the attention of those who persist in following decades old, slow, high overhead, procedures, in the belief they are following Treasury/European "rules".
EURIM (the Information Society Alliance), is therefore organising a call for existing guidance to be rapidly reviewed, rationalised as necessary, and promoted.
Please e-mail me c/o eurim@eurim.org if you would like to join the exercise.
Please include details of existing material that you think is good. Please also comment on any obstacles that need to be removed. It would be most helpful if you could indicate which problems you think need legislation and which can be addressed by better guidance on the alternatives that are already available.
The exercise is also likely to include a call for radical contract simplification, copying private sector "effective disputes resolution" clauses instead of trying to predict the unpredictable: so that what funds are available can be devoted to working together to overcome problems rather than bankrupting all sides.
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Why did it take so long?
What are the lessons from the apparent ease with which spam can be largely eradicated by reputable ISPs working together to enforce their conditions of service?
Should it change the nature of debate on duties and responsibilities with regard to malpracitce over the Internet?
Is Ross Anderson correct and the current situation is the result of faulty economic incentives?
Can it be corrected by leaving the Judiciary to apply the same law on-line as off-line: voiding opt-outs under the excuse that the Internet and/or E-ommerce are new and/or different and/or too complex" and letting the restoration of traditional duties and responsibilities take their course?
Tomorrow morning I hope to make some of these points to a Forbes CEOs breakfast.
I suspect they will like them.
But will the information security community?
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The apparent success of the Washington Post exercise indicates that argument to be very much weaker than at first appears. It does, however, add force to the need to move from rhetoric to to action with regard to "Internet Governance" - including the accountability of those who will be driven by their financae directors and shareholders towards gobal commercial partnership in reducing spam, malware and "unauthorised file sharing" in order to also reduce the need to invest in additional switching and transmission capacity.
To the "credit crunch" and "data crunch" perhaps we should also add the "traffic crunch"
]]>Indeed they trust their own MP rather more than officials (whether in central or local government or the NHS).
I suspect that if this question had been split between those who have had personal dealings with their MP and those who have not - then many would (deservedly) have trust rankings between Doctors and Judges, at least on the part of those who know them.
I need to spend more time digesting this report but my first conclusion was that the public is surprisingly rational in its decisions about those they trust - given that they place telling the truth top of their priorities.
I was, however, intrigued to note that the women and the young (18 - 34) were more concerned that politicians should spend public money wisely while men were more concerned over taking bribes.What does that say about older men?
As for the story about electronic voting in Finland - I remain intrigued as to why those promoting such systems are so vehemently against printing a simple confirmation (still within the confines of the voting booth) for the voter to place in a sealed ballot box to enable a clear and credible audit.
Whether it is the result of intellectual arrogance or evidence of fraudulent intent, it stands in the way of enhancing democracy while preserving the secret ballot.
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The huge literature on democratic disengagement in the past decade bemoans the state of democracy where fewer and fewer identify with political parties, fewer vote and increasing numbers have negative views of politicians and the political process. A clear and reasonable vein of assumption runs through the literature; that mass engagement is not only desirable, but that citizens would participate in greater numbers if things were better. If politicians and policies more responsive to citizens needs and people felt they could make a difference - they would all suddenly participate in their droves.
But the reason that engaging "real people" has been so slow is essentially the same as the reason for the widespread decline in party membership and voter turnout in recent years. This is established knowledge. Hibbings and Theiss-Morse (in their book Stealth Democracy): assert that American citizens prefer to be politically disengaged. The last thing people want is to be more involved in political decision making or to provide input to those assigned to make the decisions on their behalf, or to know details of the decision making process. In fact people's most intense desire for the political system is that decision makers be empathetic and, especially, non-self-interested, not that they be responsive and accountable to people's largely nonexistent policy preferences. Of course the book goes much further. This research as well as wider empuzzlement with citizen attitudes informed Sussex University's Centre for Parties and Democracy in Europe application for an Economic and Social Research Council research project grant, to investigate citizen attitudes in depth.
Whilst Hibbings and Theiss-Morse don't go as far as to argue that these preferences are linked directly to the huge socio-economic transformation of America during the last half of the twentieth century which has re-shaped citizenship norms, there are good reasons to think this. The expansion of mass education, improvement in living conditions, increases in leisure time and restructuring of employment have added to the political relevant skills and resources of the average American and Britain. But, why when one of the most consistent findings of research that the better educated and higher socio economic classes are more likely to vote more often, be active in their community, and to be knowledgeable about politics - have people actually become less inclined to take part in conventional political activity - particularly voting?
One of the best explanations, which resonates in Britain is the post-materialist one. With relative affluence comes relative apathy. And, the major ideological battle of the twentieth century won, people are less motivated to one common cause.
This explains what so many people critical of political parties can't seem to understand - "political parties are just too similar, there is no choice between them - why bother voting." Well, yes they are relatively similar. But this is a completely rational response to the electorate becoming more similar. Parties reflect electorates.
But as we saw this week, people may not want to be involved everyday, but they will participate when they feel they can make a difference and when they feel an incumbent must go. Barack Obama certainly used the internet to his advantage with reports suggesting that his website my.barackobama.com, attracted more than 1.5 million members who organised themselves into 35,000 separate activists' groups. The Director of The Institute for Politics, Democracy and The Internet at George University in Washington went as far as to say that whilst: "no-one's going to say Obama won the election because of the internet - he wouldn't have been able to win without it." This is the power of E Participation.
But it is not all positive. Hazel Blears has reportedly told a Hansard Society conference that blogs are mostly written by "people with disdain for the political system and politicians".
Herein lies a huge problem, whilst the internet will probably, in time, lead to a renaissance in democratic participation. What kind of participation and who participates are big questions. E Participation might not be catching on fast and it is certainly not a panacea for a decline in voting. But, it is the domain of the young and would seem, on the face of it, to have massive potential to reach those traditionally left behind, hardest to reach communities, to whom politicians and political processes are most distant and whose fundamental economic needs have not been met by the tide of affluence mentioned above.
We urgently need to harness the internet's power for the good of all social groups - not just because it is desirable for a democracy to be socially inclusive, but because of the very real danger that if we do not, it will remain the political tool of elites and become the political tool of extremists. In this respect we lie at a juncture - if we do it right, we can combat social exclusion, if we do it wrong we will embed, exacerbate and make social exclusion much more dangerous.
Perhaps the single most important move government can make to ensure that E Democracy is nurtured is to ensure that it is taught in schools. Young people grasp technology quickly - and even the vast majority of 'hard to reach' social groups go to school, as least for a time. Teaching them how to be involved will enable them better, whatever their social trajectory may be, to engage with the E environment in a way that suits them, for their own benefit later in life. Critical to involving young people is a body of research showing that whilst many are involved in some kind of political activity, this is typically single issue and sporadic in nature. We must somehow help foster a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of issues. This is a place where new forms of participation may flounder. Political parties have been very effective at bundling issues and policies for citizens, it remains to be seen how this can happen as their membership declines.
I have been tasked to organise a work stream under the auspices of the EURIM Public Service Delivery Group to look at how to involve the hardest to reach groups not only in participation, to help set objectives, but also in monitoring and reporting the practical delivery of the policies that result. The first stage will be to organise a response to The DCLG Community Empowerment White Paper
]]>I used to be a sceptic, regarding PETs as another way to sell cryptography and the extra hardware needed to run it. Now I have come to appreciate that there are as many variations of electronic PET as there are of physical pet. From yappy puppies which demand all your time, and more, while devouring important e-mails (or routes them straight to delete) to cats which will quietly rid a farmyard (network) of mice (spyware and anything else that was not explicitly authorised) in return for an occasional cuddle (updates on what you do wish to permit).
But PETs have to be used as part of holistic approach to information governance if they are to prevent "compromises" like that reported in the Daily Mail.
And it is a matter of culture not cash.
Barnardos, Citizens Advice and the Salvation Army are loath to divert more than they have to from looking after the most vulnerable in society but have information security that is "fit for purpose" - unlike many of the government departments and agencies they deal with.
The mass deployment of PETs need not be expensive but their effective use depends on human beings, from the top of the organisation to the front line, and especially those in ICT and the ICT supply chain. They have to have the equivalent of PGP, "pretty good paranoia", not just the technology but the attitude of protectiing other peoples' data as they would their own and their families'.
The time has come for HMG to stop patronising the "third sector" and instead pay them the going rate for consultancy - especially on how to motivate clever techies and complacent bureaucrats to take a holistic approach to combining economy with efficiency and trust.
P.S. The advance papers for the EURIM Directors Round Table on Information Governance are being placed on the website as they come in. There is some excellent reading there and I do not envy the member of my staff who I have tasked to produce a 4 by A4 summary of the key points. The deadline for submissions has passed but we will take late submissions if they raise points not already covered.
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When you visit the site you will note that the consultation workshops are already under way. I attended that in London yesterday. It was great fun as we teased out each others prejudices in a very well stuctured process. We came perilously close to concensus but our consensus might well be very different to that of some of the other groups being consulted. The response to the on-line consultation will therefore be important.
Those who originally commissioned the consultation appear to believe that the way forward is that your annonymised records should be usable, provided that heirarchies of committees and regulators have given permission to regulated academic researchers - but might be allowed an opt out. Pharmaceutical companies and insurers would not be allowed access
I happen to believe almost the opposite. I trust pharmaceutical and insurance companies more than academic researchers, The former can be seriously damaged, even destroyed, by a major breach or error (e.g. thalidomide - whose side effects would have taken even longer to detect under the massively expensive and bureaucratic testing and approval regimes of today). The latter will do almost anything for publicity that will lead to research funding (e.g. the papers on the supposed link between mmr vaccination and autism).
My I believe that my data should only be available if I sign up to "guineapigs - r-us.org" - with my GP's practice collecting £5 when I do. The consent form is quite simple
- No, no, never (but GPs still collect their £5)
- Not unless ... its a condition I might suffer from ... nice Dr so-and-so says its safe ... etc.
- Yes - and let me know anything from research that affects me, so I can take action
- Yes except ... if it involves aninals, feotuses, that problem I asked you to keep confidential etc.
Once I have "joined", I get my number/password/security device and can visit the website: to volunteers for research panels, join patient groups, make donations to medical charities, get discounts on health care clubs and insurance, etc. etc. - but my data is owned by me, under my control and I decide who sees and uses it: the approach of PAOGA and its clients, rather than that of the Secretary of State, who claims to "own" my medical record.
It is a pity that Paoga is currently rebuilding its website otherwise I would also comment on the difference between their approach and that of those running "conventional" social networks.- but I am now rambling about my own prejudices.
The most important point is to visit the consultation website and given them yours. Then tell your friends to do so, Tell your enemies as well. This really is, at least potentially, the msot important consultation of the year. It needs a big response.
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Meanwhile Google, Garlik, Phorm, YouGov and others supposedly make voting unnecessary, because their analyses of our traffic can tell anyone who will pay what they want to know about us - including how we will vote on what?
Or has the fear of surveillance taught us what Chinese and Russian peasants have known for millenia?
Keep your subversive thoughts to yourself. Tell them only what they want to hear, including over the 'net - because everything you do is being recorded for posterity?
But that would be sad - given the hopes of twenty years ago that the Internet would usher in an age of creativity based on freedom of thought and expression.
I much prefer to look forward to the age of sousveillance when we use the technology to hold our lords and masters (commercial as well as political) to account rather than of surveillance when they use it to keep us under control.
And given recent allegations regarding the editing of postings to its blogs - is the BBC, last survivor of national broadcasting operations of the 1920s and 30s, part of a devolved and democratic future or a centralised and censored past?
Mark Byford, Deputy Director General of the BBC is one of the speakers on the 11th November.
Either way, the physical debate on the 11th November is likely to be a great one-stop catch up opportunity..
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The banking crisis has also drawn attention to the relevance, accuracy and timeliness of the information used to make policy decisons. Those at the top were clearly unaware of the risks being run within complex computer-based operations. The regulatory and compliance regimes relied to much on tick box methodologies which also failed to reveal those risks.
Meanwhile the Audit Commission (not to be confused with the National Audit Office, the NAO) has reported on the breathtaking inaccuracy of some of the public sector records and reporting systems they audit: including in health and law enforcement. Performance related pay leads to systematic distortion, not just random error. We have forgotten the reasoning behind the Northcote Trevelyan report which led to a public service ethos that was once the envy of the world.
Tony Collins' recent article on Labour's Unlucky 13 IT projects quotes an NAO report that the main "lesson" from one was "don't build IT to support existing ways of working but re-work and simplify processes first". I remember my father telling me that, shortly after I got my first job in 1969. It was the core message at a workshop he had attended at the Civil Service College at Sunningdale. Recently I wrote an article for one of Sunningdale's current publications, Transformation, on "Why do we never learn". That article was itself an update of a presentation I had done five years earlier for Kable, making points that friends in the NAO had long wanted said by some-one else on a public platform.
The "rules" for good information management and governance are not in the least new but seem to need re-learning by every generation .The good news is that the audience appears receptive. The Directors Round Table on Information Governance being organised by EURIM on 24th November is already fully booked, save a few plaes in reserve for those who submit advance papers to aid the discussion. This will be less on what needs to happen than on how to ensure that it does happen (e-g. don't just buy ever more expensive e-nappies to combat fear of e-diarrhoea but stop trying to combat data obesity with e-laxatives)
The aim is to re-set the political and regulatory agenda and the conclusions will then form the basis of the "business plan" for the EURIM Information Governance Group in 2009 - 10
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Is it the socially transmitted dictatorship of the blogogracy (that new oligarchy drawn from the IT-literate members of the semi-hereditary political tribes that rule most societies)?
Or can the growth of social networks really bring about a democracy of the masses, akin to that which Chairman Mao laboured to create, in the teeth of opposition from most of his party, including the city-dwellers and intelligentsia who felt, like Stalin (and too many ICT suppliers), that the peasantry (alias users) should know their place and do as told.
I also liked the phrase: "Parliament will look at the issues in the context of a European Framework"
Was that a belated recognition that the real debate is taking place in Brussels? Are the recent comments by the DCMS Secretary of State to the Royal Television Society about a level playing field between television and the Internet merely a recognition that the UK is now implementing a directive (Audio-Visual Media Services) designed to protect broadcasters against change?
I listened to comments on why the state should not invest in Broadband, how we should take our time over debaes on spectrum and how the asymetrical business rates which helped destroy communications competition "were a complex issue".
I wondered what we could learn from how China is seeking to build a truly socially inclusive information society, not just urban broadband but GSM masts spanning the Gobi desert, enabling peasant, worker and municipal co-operatives to trade nationally and even internationally. Is building on their success our route out of global economic stagnation?
One of the challenges posed at the conference was how to make a success of the global Internet Governance Forum by producing results before the 2010 deadline that was set in Tunis: including recommendations for "enhanced co-operation" - whatever that might mean.
So what might be the areas for "enhanced co-operation" be?
I left with three ideas buzzing round my heard.
1) Anglo-chinese co-operation (others may join but we should not wait for them) to not only bring low cost mobile access to the backwoods of Africa and Asia but also trusted financial services, to help villagers to trade their way out of global slump.
2) Reform of the domain name registry system to make it harder for criminal websites to migrate around the world ahead of attempts by law enforcement to catch up.
3) The UK to take a lead in bringing multi-national business together, working within existing legal frameworks, to organise the global co-operation that governments cannot.
We tend to forget that London is the world's most multi-cultural city, where children from 50 or more races may live on the same housing estate and attend the same school. In most other supposedly multi-cultural cities, children grow up within their parents' chosen ghetto.
Teaching others will help us to both learn how to handle our own problems better and repair the damage done over recent months and years to our global trading position. It needs to begin by learning how our children use the new technologies to organise their social lives across cultural boundaries without their parent's knowledge as well as along the lines of their respective family, clan and caste diaspora with their grandparent's approval.
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What happens to the systems of banks or brokers who go into administration?
The personal details of formerly high wealth individuals may well be the most valuable remaining asset.
Will the administrator sell these to the highest bidder?
Will the equipment also be sold to highest bidder - who will can costs by not cleaning it before selling on or exploiting tax breaks for charitable giving?.
The chief executive of Computer Aid is trying to get work done to ensure that equipment is not simply dumped by those claiming to be acting for charitable purposes. As part of this there is a petition on the Number 10 website. The Prime Minister has other priorities at present but action to protect personal electronic banking records needs to be part of the small print of rescue packages and negotiations with the Icelandic government and others.
]]>A mash-up of crud should, however, be flushed away - not used as a basis for policy formation.
We need to rediscover some old disciplines if we want the data used for policy formation, let alone that used to support service delivery, to be fit for purpose, as opposed to the consistent but misleading fictions that commony populate public databases of personal data or organisational performance.
Some of the fictions are systemic: to help those with a vested interest in its inaccuracy - to claim benefits or subsidies (including by inflating local population estimates), or meet targets (e.g. claims of service delivery), Others are random: e.g. statistical returns or personal data submitted by those with no interest in whether it is accurate or not.
Forty years ago I was taught that unless data is collected from those who have a vested interested in its accuracy it probably has a 30% per error rate. I was also told than unless it is used and validated regularly its accuracy degrades by at least 10% per annum.
Recent studies of criminal and medical records have shown that error rates of 30 - 50% are still common. An exercise last year by a credit reference agency indicated that half those for whom they had records no longer lived at the address given on the electoral register and half those on their records were not on the register at the same address. No wonder they had lost interest in having access to the registers of a "banana democracy".
This is not a new problem. In 1973 - 4 I was project manager for the ICL-DTI-DoE computing strategy study to aid the formation of the Regional Water Authorities. This included looking at the billing and rating systems of almost very major utility and local authority. Hereditaments (alias properties to be served) rarely changed (save that houses turned into flats and vice-versa) but the churn of the occupants ranged from 2.5% p.a.in leafy suburbs to over 400% p.a. in city centres. The main difference today is that the people churn is even higher. Hence the growth of operations like Experian, with credit reference but one strand of secure and trusted information management - under governance routines that put others to shame.
Data on businesses also has to be published and maintained if it to remain accurate. A recent exercise using BERR business database, showed it to be rather less accurate and comprehensive than Dun and Bradstreet.
Biometrics may be a mature technology but human biometrics are unstable when it comes to the risk of false negatives - from watering eyes affecting iris scans to "wear and tear" changing the fingerprints, especially of the elderly. .
Meanwhile attempts to realise the "savings" from holding data once and once only, can ignore the reasons it is not the same on different files. When trying to merge part number master files in my first employer I learned that supposdly identical components had different mean times between failure. Fudging over such differences has been the cause of some very embarrassing recent product recalls.
It is not only politicians who need to rediscover the disciplines of information governance.
The Directors Forum on Information Governance organised by EURIM on 24th November is therefore likely to be most interesting. We are currently seeking advance discussion papers that cover not just what needs to happen but how to bring about the changes of political and regulatory processs that are necessary to identify and encourage good practice, not just tick-box compliance. The pressures of organisational survival in a post crash world will make this event even more timely than expected. Three days later, on the 27th, I am due to chair the morning session of "A fine balance", a workshop on the potential of Privacy Enhancing Technologies organised, by the Cybersecurity Knowledge Transfer Network. I will be asking the organiser to suggest that participants look at the advance papers on the EURIM website to help put their technologies into the application context of today - not that of a world of trust in technology solutions that has evaporated.
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At a recent CIO round table (reported in Computer Weekly 7 - 13 October) I said optimisation was not a safe approach. Safety is about least risk solutions, including decoupling that which was previously been integrated, so as to reduce the risk of domino effects, whether along supply chains or across interlinked systems.
In a blog early last month I said we had crossed a watershed: data losses, service interruptions in the long haul internet and changing terms of trade with India and China meant that outsourcing and offshoring were ceasing to be attractive for mission critical applications.
As with Shackleton's crossing of South Georgia after his epic boat vopyage, the way down the other side of the watershed is fraught with danger. His team was intoxicated on a mix of determination, exhaustion and adrenalin. Provided you have a Shackleton in charge that mix can get you through crisis, but the long haul of recovery requires that and more..
So what is my advice for CIOs in large organisations:public or private?
1) read Machiavelli, "The Prince" - especially the section on Mercenaries
2) look at the behaviour of your suppliers in helping you weather this storm
3) look at your organisation's behaviour towards suppliers in helping them weather this storm
4) consider whether you really are in a genuine long-term strategic partnerships - willing to fight, and if necessary risk death, for each other
5) then look at your relations with your peers in your own organisation
6) now decide whether to join the fight to save the ship (or beach it and build a new one from the wreckage), to join with those trust and grab a lifeboat (or buiild a liferaft) or to jump and get it over with.
If you decide to join the fight, read your Shackleton, his own words, those of his men, those of his backers, those of his biographers - and then his own words again,
If you decide to jump I would pass on some of the tips from my RNR survival training: the bit that came after damage control, firefighting, knowing your way the ship upside down in the dark etc. , with instructors had been sunk at least once during Worlld War 2:
- jump feet first is usually safer but you die more slowly if do you hit wreckage
- if the food runs out - cook human flesh as for pork
- if the rum runs out - filter admiralty duplicating fluid through six layers of burnt toast.
My father, who survived a Japanese prisoner of war camp despite having been given up for dead twice, also advised spending any spare time from survival in looking for plans B, C, D and E - they might not be realistic but the exercise kept your spirits up.
In future blogs I will be more positive because a full-blown depression really is a time of more innovation and change than even the most giddy of booms. The world changed far more, the spread of the automobile, wireless, household electric goods and even diet improvements, in the period 1930 - 37 than in the period 1920 - 7. The bigger long-run challenge is to prevent protectionism and recrimination turning into persecution and re-armament,
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It set me to wondering who was out of touch with who when it comes to discussions about e-democracy. Over a decade ago I learned of automated US e-mail campaigns responded to by equally automated services. This year in Birmingham I was struck by a shadow minister commenting on the possible consequences of the false sense of intimacy engendered by mass messaging to social networks. Most of those who sent genuinely personal e-mails to him were retired.
Meanwhile the young gossip via social network sites that they increasing access via their mobiles - and take little interest iin politics - on-line or off.
So who reads the political blogs that appear to obsess the Westminster village.
A quick scan of postings to some of the most popular would suggest they are a sad bunch of scatological misogynists, unrepresentative of the (female) majority of electors. It is said that many more read blogs than post to them - but the reported audiences of even the most popular are still modest compared to claimed newspaper circulations or TV audiences.
I also noticed an interesting split at the party conferences.
The audiences at events on Internet Safety were, on average, younger and prettier than those at the new media events - the latter had male majorities in line with that of the current UK ICT workforce. More-over the women tended to show more understanding of how the young of today explore the full range of converging technologies to find what they are told to avoid.
It reminded me of what I learned when helping the Women into IT campaign which raised entry to the industry from 11% in 1988 to 18% in 1994. Women are more interested in how the technology can used cleverly to serve people simply than in people having to learn how to use clever technology to do simple tasks. That campaign confirmed my view, formed during debates in the early 1980s on the cabling of Britain, that the killer applications for the on-line consumer world would be a mix of inter-active video-gossipping, gaming and user generated content. Most of the rest would be big corporations trying to eat each others lunch - particularly the content for which they claim the intellectual property rights.
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