The concept of a “computer” for your business has been kicking around since the late 1970s. And yet, most businesses have yet to really grasp the fact that it is a tool and not an end in itself.
Stilgherrian’s excellent post Social Media: It’s about the people, not the tools sparked this post.
I suggest that the continuing focus by businesses on the technological “bits” instead of the human/social “issues” is symptomatic of several conditions afflicting conventional business practice:
- The marketing of computers have always centred around the “bits” that will store your recipes and thus fix your problems. We so want to believe the promise-the-earth marketing without thinking. We want the magic solutions. We want the shiny new toys.
- Vendors dominate much of the technology supply chain. Many IT consultants are locked into selling only a vendor’s products. The focus is thus on selling a set of tools, and not the most appropriate solutions. There is also the tribal nature of buying branded technology – eg: designers must buy Macs – which is leveraged by vendors to good effect.
- IT managers have had to establish themselves as necessary positions within organisations. There is perhaps still a bit of leftover insecurity and thus the need to withdraw into the safety of “talking tech”. And of course, some would use this as a tool to build personal empires and reinforce positions of influence. Making IT a mere tool will threaten much of this power base.
- As Stilgherrian has already pointed out in another of his posts, there are still a large number of business decision makers out there who use the “I don’t understand computers” excuse to offload IT decisions to the IT managers (if they have one) or the marketing department of IT vendors, so they themselves don’t have to deal with it.
- Let’s not forget the brag value of the “bits”. There are still businesses who continue to show off their server room – “look at our big black boxes with the shiny lights, aren’t we a real business now?!” There are still managers who insist on the latest bling laptop purely for brag value. My hard drive is THIS big…
Now if you have read this far, you would have noticed that all of the points I have raised above are fundamentally about social concerns. Even when the technology is the focus, it isn’t!
Anyway, do you reckon a tablet PC is the way to go? Do you? Should I get one?
