Get IT Done - And Yet IT Does Move

Galileo Galilei used these prophetic words to describe the dynamic world of information technology. OK, while I admit he was really talking about the Earth moving, it was prophetic, nonetheless. Information Technology does move.

We tend not to notice the river of technology rushing past. Most of us are carried by the current and don’t perceive the speed at which it rushes. Only by climbing out of the stream do the changes become dramatically apparent.

As an illustration, IT has opened the world to entrepreneurs. Consider a business of the 1950s. (For this discussion, let’s carve out any businesses so large that they could afford time on a mainframe.) In the 1950s most businesses sold their products to a small, local client base. Businesses didn’t need to track their customers, they knew them. They were their neighbors. While it has been said that neighbors can eke out a living by doing each other’s laundry, it is more advantageous to diversify. However, in the 1950s, that was easier said than done.

Can you imagine tracking and managing the customers you have today with just typewriters and paper? Documents were typed in triplicate using carbon paper and put it a file. With a hard copy on file, you may be able to find it when needed, assuming superior filing skills. But that information could only be shared by physically sending the paper records as this was before adoption of Xerox machines (1959) and Fax machines (1964 from Xerox Corporation as well). Additionally, and perhaps most importantly (at least to geeky me), those paper files where not searchable in any meaningful manner. Understanding basic facts about your clients was daunting, “How many customers live on East Street?” or “Who purchased the most of a specific product?”

Information analysis and dissemination were seemingly insurmountable challenges. But we have since moved from Rolodex to database, from “snail mail” to electronic mail. With the introduction of databases, networks and email, employees now have power to manipulate data and see patterns not visible at the transaction level. No longer does client communication need to be sent exclusively through the US Postal Service in hand-typed envelopes. Today, you can easily support clients on the Pacific Rim from your kitchen table. As referenced in an earlier article, the business of crime fighting also got a major boost from IT. It wasn’t so long ago that criminal guilt or innocence was based on a trialby-ordeal and not evidence. “If he drowns, he is innocent. But if he floats, he is guilty!” Today our jurisprudence is based on evidence.

Evidence was pretty basic for a long time (“Look! He has blood on his hands!”) but just after 1900, the Western world adopted fingerprinting which I will add had been used in China perhaps as early as 300BC. Police departments began using fingerprints to track suspects. While this may seem like a gamechanger, please consider the limitations of the day. In a paper-based society, piles of fingerprint cards [or microfiche] would be manually compared against a sample from a crime scene. Imagine the weariness induced by eyeballing thousands of swirls per hour. It probably wasn’t such a big deal in towns with a small population but in large urban areas it was a Herculean task. An effective national “database” remained a chimera. Today a fingerprint can be compared to millions of stored images in seconds.

IT has impacted other types of police work as well. It was Information Technology that enabled the unraveling of DNA. Now the process is so fast and inexpensive that the authorities can identify suspects based on minute traces left at a crime scene. And to use DNA, they don’t even need a sample from the subject directly. We now can identify suspects through the DNA that their extended families kindly provided to DNA ancestry services.

IT does move. And we move with IT.

Think About IT!

Tony Keefe, COO, Entre Computer Services www.entrecs.com