Boring and uninteresting

You don't have to be paranoid to know everyone's after you. Paranoia, at least this side of a formally diagnosed illness, is simply a feeling. I say "simply" knowing full well that it's much more than that. Truth be told, I tend to think that what we feel is often more significant and important than what we know.

I know that there are lots of folks who "feel" that they can't live without their personal technology (laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.) and there are a whole lot more who feel that they have nothing to hide. After all, most of us lead such boring and uninteresting lives that ... well, who really cares whether I was at the movies or the mall last night, or whether I stopped in this fast-food joint as opposed to that one? In general, I agree. Who cares? More specifically, I would say that eventually, the wrong people.

Information can be a powerful tool, or a powerful weapon. As my friend Julius used to say, abusus non tollit usus; that is, just because something is abused or misused doesn't make the thing itself bad. In this regard, information are like guns. They can be very helpful and provide a lot of "feeling safe". But, in the wrong hands at the wrong place at the wrong time, they can be deadly. You just have to know that about guns, and the same holds true for information. What is more, if you have a gun, chances are very high that you are going to use it at some point, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, seriously or frivolously. And the same thing holds for information.

Personally, I'm not all that comfortable with third parties -- be it the government or the shop around the corner -- having, storing, and what's even worse, manipulating my personal data. I'm not paranoid. I know they have it and I know they use it, but I'm not convinced they need it. It's at this point that too many people say, "Well, I've got nothing to hide, what does it matter?" or "Who could possibly be interested in my boring life, so who cares?", but I'm a firm believer that if you don't need it, you needn't have it.

My point is that it is data about me. All the little bits and pieces than everyone is collecting is being shared with everyone else who is interesting in collecting, and the next thing you know, others know more about me than I do, and they're not willing to tell me what they know. At that point, I say it's time to rethink this data or information-collection thing. If it is information about me, why shouldn't I have a right to know what it is and what's being done with it? If they are using this information, say as a corporation, to generate profits, why am I not receiving royalties? If it's the government, why shouldn't I know what they have and who has it and what it's being used for? In other words, when do the rest of us find out what apparently so many others already know?

Like I said last time: I'm not saying we need to opt out of society or go into seclusion. I'm not saying that we need to fear either corporations or government, but we do need to be aware, and since we are involved, I believe we have every right to know. What I'm making a pitch for is more personal involvement and awareness. It is personal, so let me be personally involved.

At least you should know

While most of us like to think we're hard-boiled enough to know what's happening, the real fact of the matter is that most of us are still quite naive. I'm not saying naivité is a bad thing, but too much of anything can be less than good in the end. By the same token, knowing a whole lot of little things and not putting them all together can be just as bad. Technology, though not bad in and of itself, can be used to do lots of things that aren't in our best interest. Quite often, little "perks" are included to distract us from the bigger issues.

For example, collecting bonus or payback points or whatever they're called just tell retailers more and more about our purchasing decisions. The "old" system of figuring out what you bought and offering you discounts on name-brand products is really old. Since you voluntarily give them your information, they can link you to what you buy. The next new twist will come, I believe, when they've refined face-recognition. Anyone who has been tagged in a Facebook picture has their face charted and plotted, but this is perhaps the harmless side of the passport photos that are required these days. Frontal shots without smiles are required now not only for passports but also for driver's licenses and other identification documents. Why, because it makes it easier for the face-recognition software to work and refine.

There are two aspects of this I find interesting. On the one hand, they (whoever "they" are, it doesn't matter) know what we look like. They don't have to know our name, that's secondary. Anytime you are "seen" by a video surveillance camera ... and these are popping up everywhere, though in some countries (e.g., the UK) more than others (e.g., Germany). It is becoming ever easier to recognize you. On the other hand, a number of retailers have installed cameras to monitor what customers actually look at. Do you scan the top shelf in a grocery store before taking something off the bottom? Do you tend to pick from the middle? In neutral terms, "they" are merely trying to determine you search behavior ... or whatever. It won't be long till retailers know who you are and what you generally look at as well as buy. We're all going to be receiving more offers than we might like.

Smartphones have taken on new dimensions as well. In addition to GPS tracking and signal triangulation, newer models register how many steps you take, in which direction, how often you take it out of your pocket or purse and more. This is all getting transmitted to "someone". Some have incorporated face recognition so that they not only know how often you look at it, but soon they will also know to whom you are showing it as well.

Now think about it all for a moment. Think about the different pieces of the puzzle, and you quickly realize "they" know a lot more about us and what we do than we like to think.

Am I trying to instill fear or get you to stop using your phone? No. We can't live without our devices and they can be very useful too. What we need to think about, however, is what kinds of information do they need to know about me, individually. How much of this should "they" be allowed to collect? How long should "they" be allowed to store it? At what point is my privacy (and security) being violated? These are more relevant and important issues than you might think, and if you are interested at all in either your privacy or security, you may want to give it all just a bit more thought.

Those still haunting Brussels blues

Don't worry, you'll be off the hook soon. I promise: this is the last reaction from Brussels. And yes, I managed to find my carbonnade, and Belgian beer is still excellent, so there are still things that are right with the world. But, still ...

Just missing the motivation boat is not the only blunder that "the industry" has allowed itself. There was the constant drone at the conference that not enough women were getting into the industry. One large, international telecommunications company gave us samples of one of their latest marketing gags: nail polish; one a light green (Mint) and one deep magenta (an important color for the company). (I need to add here, that MINT is the German form of STEM, not everything translates perhaps as well as we would like.). I have a bottle of each on my desk right now. I'm still marveling at them. This is how you attract young girls to become interested in getting into telecommunications, I suppose. I'm glad to see that in our emancipated world today, old stereotypes have been eliminated so completely. It just goes to show you, though, just how out of touch organizations can be.

It amazes me how out of touch most organizations are. I'm not picking on any one in particular; the one just mentioned is merely an example. The young are not, at least as far as those at the conference were concerned, all that motivated by glitter, glamor or even so-called prestige. Another young participant stated quite clearly in the plenum that the companies up front talking the loudest and making the biggest pledges were simply not offering him the opportunity to follow his technologically relevant bliss, the were more of a hinderance than a help. This is in harmony with the notions I mentioned last time. What is driving the young technologically savvy these days is being able to do one's own thing together with others while remaining true to what is good and right and that benefits others (that's the real "Hacker Ethic"), and that is, I'm afraid we all realize, antithetical to the maximization-of-profit ideal that so many -- particularly these large, globally active, mostly American corporations.

It is quite the dilemma, I will admit. Most people, the vast majority of people, inside or outside this industry, here in the West, work for companies that are small or tiny. Too often, they are simply looking to survive while the really big players are wallowing in their wealth. This means that what's making the world go round is not their riches, it's the blood, sweat and tears of the little guys. But it is there that the ideals that seem to resonate with the young people seem to be.

You can make it about technology, and you can make it about growth, and you can make it about money, but that doesn't make it real. If you want to attract youth to the the hard, tough, demanding world of STEM, don't try to make it fun or attractive or lucrative. Make it worthwhile. Go ahead. I dare you.

Those haunting Brussels blues

No, I'm not obsessed, either with Brussels or the blues, but I do have a bit of this and that I have to work through yet. Here's another notion that's been haunting me for the past couple of days: STEM.

Once you get even a little close to any kind of bureaucracy, you start getting overwhelmed with acronyms and abbreviations. I guess bureaucratic days are so full that they just don't have time to speak in full words. STEM stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics", and it alludes to those disciplines of learning and study that we need to emphasize if we are going to remain competitive as an economic area and if we are going to advance as a civilization (whatever that means). We simply don't have enough people getting into these areas and over the day-and-a-half in Brussels there was a lot of urgent debate and a lot of wringing of hands, how we were going to accomplish this. I don't know about you, but I find the whole issue rather odd.

STEM is supposed to be about hard science, mathematically rich disciplines of technology (whereby I think IT is most often meant, as if there weren't any other kinds) and engineering. I suppose it's only physicists, mathematicians, technologists and engineers who get anything done. OK, it is an American neologism. I suppose that explains a lot more than we might like to think. Young people are apparently not all excited about entering these fields. They are perceived as too hard, too demanding, too complex, or are they simply uninteresting? The surrounding discussions remind me of those I've heard from church representatives regarding the lack of attendance and participation of young people in church. Their answer is make it more "attractive": more singing, dancing, role-playing, play-acting ... whatever, so that it will be "fun" to go to church. Yes, if we could only make STEM more "fun", then wouldn't young people flock to it in droves? Well, to be honest, no.

The world in which we're called to work these days is anything but fun. Employers think that so-called smart technology can make you accessible 24/7, so now your employer has access to you 24/7. If you come up with a good idea, it belongs to the company, not to you. When you enter the workplace, you leave your conscience at the door and sell your soul. I, for the like of me, can't figure out why young people aren't lining up for that. By the way, once your current skill set is no longer productive, you're out, and by the way, we're not going to pay for your development, personally or professionally, you have to do that on your own, especially on your own dime, and by the way, I'm going to pay you well, but not nearly enough to make repaying those student loans too easy; nothing worth anything should be obtained too easily. Yes, that's the world I'm inviting you to, so why aren't you beating down my door to get it? Yeah, I don't understand it either.

One young panel participant near the end said that he got into technology because of three concepts he had gleaned from the book The Hacker Ethic which he referred to as freedom, challenge, and impact. I took this to mean that he was driven by wanting to do things that may not be easy but needed to get done in such a way that others would benefit and, as is often stated so blithely, that the world would be a better place. I found it fascinating that the motivators weren't anything related to STEM. Those things are just means to a much bigger -- may I say, softer -- end.

I really have to ask myself. Who's not getting it?

Brussels blues deja vu

It was an interesting day-and-a-half, not exciting, not surprising, but interesting nevertheless. There was a lot of "high-level dynamism", as it was called, or hot air, as it could be understood, and there were a lot of serious and sincere individuals who showed quite clearly that they wanted to find a solution to a problem ... unfortunately a problem that probably does not exist.

The real problem as I see it doesn't have anything to do with a skills gap or getting more people into work. It's about big IT companies pitching their wares so that they appear more important than they really are. The biggest round of applause of the day went to a question from the audience asking why the big-company certification programs are so expensive. The answer was that we get national governments to pay for them, so it's not an issue. Not an issue? Our tax euros are at work again, giving money to people who don't need it for a problem that probably doesn't exist. Or, how about the day before when an economist in the crowd merely asked what's the answer to the supply/demand equation? No response. You can't expect the "industry" to make things more attractive to potential employees, just because they are needed. No, I didn't think so. It would appear we're seeking solutions to a problem that doesn't really exist.

Throughout the day-and-a-half, I heard of project after project that was being implemented and what unmitigated successes they were. But we've still got a problem. The participants were allegedly key players in the technology revolution that changes everything, but none of these projects had been heard of by others, so I have to ask who's using the technology for what? This topic has been on the table for at least 15 years, it was interrupted once when the "industry" imploded (remember that dot.com thing?) and once they got their bearings again, they started crying wolf that without qualified personnel, the industry in Europe was doomed, Europe was doomed. I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being told that if we didn't do what they wanted this time, there would be hell to pay. And I suppose there will be.

For me, one of the most telling moments of the conference was when a well-placed individual from one of the largest high-tech companies in the world, and particularly in Europe, stated with unmitigated candor that in his company alone, within the next two years, over 10,000 people were going to lose their jobs if they did not re-skill. Yes, there is a skill gap, in this company at any rate, and it was also clear, that this company didn't feel the slightest necessity at all to do anything about their own employees. They are their employees, I suppose, when they are helping deliver profits, and they're on their own, when it looks like they won't be able to.

Yes, the next round of give-me-what-I-want has kicked off. Now, who is going to rise to the challenge? Who's going to make the necessary sacrifice? We know who isn't, so now it's up to either government or potential employees to react. Do we have what it takes? I hope not.

Brussels blues, redux

Perhaps I shouldn't be blaming the technology. Perhaps the real source of my aggravation is not the industry looking for a handout (I mean, they could say "no", but who says no to a free lunch), but rather the unmitigated nonsense that passes for rational argumentation. There is more at stake here than just "jobs". Although it may not seem so at first blush, the issue lies much deeper.

Over the past few years, I've been involved in a number of IT-industry-related projects, all of which have been funded by the European Commission. We have received funding for these initiatives because they have sought to narrow the gap between skills that are needed in the industry and those that potential employees are in possession of. It's been a matter of providing people with the right knowledge, skills, and competences for the positions that exist and will exist in the industry. Sounds noble, I know. And it is, in a sense, but the longer I deal with the matter, the more I am coming to believe that the cure is worse than the illness.

The big general push, both here in the EU and in the US is getting the right people in the right jobs. Across the board, people are pushing for a closer cooperation between education and industry so that the matches are better and more long-lasting. Both here and there, a lot of criticism has been raised against the education sector, be it public schools, vocational education and training, or (so-called) institutions of higher learning: find out what industry wants/needs, and give it to them. And that, my dear friends, is precisely the problem.

The key word describing this is "employability". We have to make people more "attractive" for the employer. Why? No, I don't want to hear about how the employee will be more productive. Employees have been more productive than ever for the past 40 years and all they have to show for it is higher rates of unemployment, lower wages, and highly exaggerated management compensation. No, I don't want to hear how the employee will deliver higher quality. Insisting that one person do the job of two, insisting on unpaid overtime "to get the job done", to push for ever higher margins all have nothing to do with quality. The customer gets the quality that is possible at the lowest cost of production, period ... at least that's how it works in consumer markets. So that's not it either. No, I don't want to hear about how the highly skilled workforce is what drives the economy forward. High-skilled means higher pay. High-skilled means the worker knows what s/he's doing and when you're cutting corners. High-skilled means ... well, trouble.

Oh, I hear what industry says they want, and they want lots of it, especially if the government is willing to subsidize it so they they don't have to pay for it themselves, but at bottom what they want are ready, willing, and ably conforming drones to do what they're told and to go away when they are not needed any longer. We might say it's about training and education and skills and competences, but what it's really about, in the end, as always, is money.

Brussels blues

Yes, I'm off to Brussels again. This time for a two-day conference. I go there often enough, I'm starting to like the place.

Don't get me wrong, it's not Brussels is bad in any way. In fact, if it's anything, it's nondescript. It's not an exciting city. It doesn't have the zip and pizzaz of a New York, it doesn't have the emotion of a Paris or Rome, it doesn't have the bustle of a London. It's a city of bureaucrats, for the most part, and well, they're not the most fun-seeking group of folks on the planet. But, as is so often the case, once you get to know it better, once you get a look behind the facade, once you start seeing it more through the eyes of its own denizens, well, it can be an attractive enough place to be.

When we think "beer", most of us think "German", and some connoisseurs will think "Czech", but one shouldn't underestimate Belgian beer. The Belgian monks knew their stuff. What you will find in Belgium beer-wise is for the most part, robust, hearty, heady, and varietal. The biggest problem you have is choosing: light, dark, ales, pilsners, flavored (they brew a cherry beer that is only served in small glasses ... it's not something you chug-a-lug all night long). There are a variety of traditional and modern establishments available. Of course, what would be a trip to Brussels without a bag of fries? Just ask anyone, the Belge invented them. Double-fried, with mayonnaise (might as well enjoy them like the locals). I find they're great from the nearest street vendor. This isn't a sit-down meal. But, speaking of which, don't leave Brussels without at least one serving of carbonade, a thick beef-stew made with dark beer. Have it with fries if you want a double-dose, and if you're adventurous, do a dark Leffe with it (or whatever beer it was made with, if you can get it), for a taste-treat you won't long forget.

Yeah, there is a tasty side to Brussels, that is true, but unfortunately, I'm not there for the food. As I said, it's for business, two days, an overnight, and an organized dinner, so I'm going to have to do without what's good this time around.

What's the conference about? Another one of those oversized, overhyped, over-regulated kick-offs for yet another digital initiative. Please forgive me if I'm not overly excited about it all. While I'm no Luddite (well, not in the strict sense of the word, but having dealt with digital technology from as many angles for as many years as I have, you really can't blame me for being less than ecstatic about its possibilities), pushing IT is not going to save our economies. Yes, we have 26 million unemployed folks here in Europe. Yes, we have a shortfall of close to a million IT jobs, but, do we really think that shoving more money at an industry whose primary contribution to the economy is eliminating jobs (if a computer can do it, it eventually will) is going to help? Do we really think that they are going to create more jobs than they eliminate? I have my doubts, needless to say, so I'm off to Brussels to see how they want to try and justify it this time around.

Who knows, maybe the conference organizers will go "native" for their dinner. At least that would make the trip potentially worthwhile. I'm not getting my hopes up, though.