Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 06/82 - checked

June 1982

All this stuff going around about Information Technology Year makes one wonder where it is all likely to lead. What exactly does the future hold in the brave new world that we are constructing - or appear to be constructing (I sometimes get the feeling that it is in fact constructing us)?

The question is an interesting and important one, for, while there seems to be overall agreement that we need to exploit Information Technology, there seems less clarity about what bits of the stuff are, or may be, needed, and exactly why they may be needed. These are important aspects because there is the considerable danger of a variety of boats being missed, either because the technology has been adopted far too keenly for its own sake, or has been adopted not at all because people have been frightened off.

Such topics very often form the subject for debate at lunches or dinners populated by the cognoscenti of the computer and 'Information Technology' industry. The arguments are usually pretty erudite, and fully consider the subtleties that are inevitably involved.

For the average person in the street, however, such debates might just as well be in Swahili. It is an observable fact that among the non-computer-oriented populations of the world, the concepts and applications of computers are very poorly understood. Not only that, they remain poorly understood, no matter how much verbiage those 'in the know' try to lay on them. It is only when something specific happens to one individual - often an inconsequential event of no particular value to others - then suddenly that individual makes the transition from 'non-understander' to the state of enlightenment. It's all rather like Zen Buddhism.

Information Technology is now suffering from this encumbrance. IT (if you'll pardon the word) is important for a wide range of strategic, productive and life-enhancing reasons that are too complex to fully enter into here. But any coherent use of it will come from its natural adoption by users, rather than its imposition by a necessarily small body of planners, no matter how 'correct' they may be. To be effective as an integrated part of our future, Information Technology should have the natural feel, the 'oneness', of a place like Castle Coombe, not the sterile 'correctness' of a high-rise building estate.

But to get to the former, as wide a cross-section of the population as possible has to participate in the design and implementation of the Information Technology infrastructure, and if they don't understand the subject that becomes very difficult. Hence, of course, Information Technology Year, 1982.

This aims to publicise and support Information Technology in a wide range of applications and areas. In some it has already done well, especially where there is an existing and definable user interest - for example in business-oriented applications.

It has also been involved in pushing the subject in other areas where the acceptance has been somewhat slower, but where its long term impact is liable to be far more significant. One such area is the use of IT in the home.

It is now necessary that, for a short paragraph, I come clean. I have had some involvement with this myself, having done some work on the showing of 'IT in the Home' at the Ideal Home Exhibition. This was a project to try and demonstrate some of the ways Information Technology may change the way we live. It was designed to promote interest, and maybe pose some questions, for only through lodging questions in people's minds firmly enough that they wish to seek an answer will there come any understanding of what IT is all about.

I would not dare attempt to assess the success of the project, certainly objectively, for as one of the team involved in its development I am, for better or worse, too close to be objective. There are some aspects which bear some consideration, however, even from a subjective viewpoint.

The main ones are those already stated: getting people sufficiently knowledgeable to contribute to the design of the IT system, and what actual products they are likely to come up with.

The application of IT in the home is a nebulous area at the best of times, where only one or two specific applications come readily to mind. At the Ideal Home, where the IT project was given extensive bed and board in the show homes of Barratt Developments, these areas were satellite communications, the office in the home, and energy management. Even then, it was only the Office in the Home concept - in this case based around a brand new ICL Personal Computer (nee Rair Black Box) coupled to a Prestel interface developed jointly by Johnson Microcomputers and B&B Computers - where the issues were fairly clear-cut.

The technology does and will allow more people to work either part-time or full-time at home. The demo at the Ideal Home simply showed how.

But even satellite communications, a subject which at first sight is fairly understandable, has some extensive grey areas, both in terms of telecommunications and telephones, and broadcasting. The same can be said for energy management, where the enhancements that are now possible to the simple control systems of today often require great gobs of lateral thinking for their implications to be fully appreciated.

And appreciation is the problem. There is an ancient law (or if there isn't there should be) that says that people will not accept a new technology any faster than they can see a good reason for having it. Once people see the reason, then they usually become very adept at thinking up entirely new uses for the technology, whatever it is.

To achieve this, however, poses considerable problems for, though publicity helps, it also hinders many people. It just creates an awareness of something 'out there' that they do not, and firmly believe they cannot, understand. In the long term the solution would appear to be the provision of ways in which people can see IT in action and make use of it themselves. In days of yore there must have been considerable doubt about the railway or electric light until their uses were appreciated. Our trouble, in terms of some of the obvious strategic requirements of exploiting IT, is that we do not have the time to wait for that appreciation to grow. Unfortunately, there seems no way in which the process can be speeded up.

As that appreciation eventually grows, however, the home will become a goldmine of potential applications of IT-oriented products - from the banal to the truly ingenious. There is so much scope for the lateral thinker in this area, for that classic phrase 'we have the technology' is to all intents and purposes now true. This means that at last the technology actually becomes secondary to the application, that the end makes use of the most appropriate means, rather than the means dictating what end is achievable.

For the Ideal Home Exhibition we tried to produce such an application. Whether we succeed is arguable, but the end result created some interest if no thing else. That result was the 'Talking House', a system whereby the home owner would be able to interrogate the home using a telephone.

One thing this exercise demonstrated above all else is that, despite the propaganda, things can be achieved very quickly in the UK. The idea was simple enough ( a classic 'back of a fag packet' design). Build a computer system that would respond with speech to the sensed input from a telephone keypad. In that way, the house could be interrogated about itself. A typical Q and A would be, for example, about the current temperature. 'The temperature is one-eight degrees', the house might say. To change that, key in the numbers - a simple and direct 'communication'. From that simple concept to the finished article on the stand at the show took just under three weeks. A Comart Communicator became the basis of the system, which was connected, with some burned midnight oil and the odd oath by Ross Electronics and Millenium (the engineering team), to a Texas Instruments Superspeaker speech synthesis board. All that was missing to make it a real product rather than a demonstration was the interfacing to such items as the central heating controller.

In the end, the most interesting aspect of the exercise was to observe the reactions of the public, especially after the media (and in particular the radio) latched on to the obvious gimmick aspects. Some just thought it silly (and maybe they were right). Some thought it sounded extremely odd for 'a tape recorder' and failed to comprehend the idea of speech synthesis. Some could see how it could be used - extended even - but then they tended to come from the electronics industry so understood anyway. Some just came to listen because it had been on the radio. Some, like a blind lady who came especially to hear it, could obviously visualise much greater scope for its application in the home.

This was just one potential product for the home. It created interest and in some cases real appreciation not only of its specific details but also of what it represented conceptually. It is highly unlikely that it will ever become a real product. It is to be hoped however that the appreciation does become real.

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