Technology for society

(Eighth of a series)

MANY years ago, when I was the Director General of the National Computer Center (NCC), I predicted that in the future, most innovations in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) will be based mainly on Internet Protocol (IP) and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

Fast forward to today, most of global communications are based on IP, including of course Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Up ahead, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming the next big thing, but lo and behold, Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) is one of the popular programming languages that are being used.

Well, I should have predicted that Long Term Evolution (LTE) will come back from the dead just like what Captain America did, but never mind that, because radio packets never died, and believe it or not, even the high tech sounding Global Packet Radio Service (GPRS) still has packets breaking up and reassembling like the Power Rangers.

By now, the old cable box used by Community Access Cable Television (CATV) providers to distribute pay-per-view (PPV) content has practically become obsolete, but what has not become obsolete is the Programmable/Addressable (P/A) architecture that it popularized.

I could be wrong, but that architecture as I remember it was also Interoperable/Interchangeable (IO/IC). By now, I hope that the humbugs who always brag about having the latest technologies and are so hot about throwing away old devices should wake up to the reality that there is really nothing new in ICT anymore, except perhaps in the new ways that we would deploy old technologies.

Soon enough, they would realize that the radio frequencies that their new devices are using are as old as the Earth itself, and that wired was “cool” before, just as wireless is even “cooler” now.

It’s not much of a prediction, but I think that sooner or later, many existing and extinct technologies will eventually be absorbed or revived by the broader context of the so-called Internet of Things (IOT).

As I see it now, these would partly or fully include telemetry, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Building Management Systems (BMS), Management Information Systems (MIS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and even Customer Relations Management (CRM).

For all intents and purposes, it could be said that anything and everything that is being read now by a sensor, meter, reader or the like will eventually be absorbed or taken over by IOT, and that could include most readable marks or images such as Optical Mark Readers (OMRs), Optical Character Readers (OCR), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Near Field Communications (NFC) and Quick Response (QR) codes.

Whether we like it or not, IOT is already here and we have to figure out how it could be used for the good of the people. As it usually happens, policies are needed in order to provide the legal basis for the implementation of technologies.

That is not enough however, because policies have to be translated into programs, plans and projects. That is so because in theory, no projects could be implemented if there are no plans, and plans should always be in the context of programs, rather than stick out on their own.

On a grander scale, policies have to be expressed in terms of congressional laws, but short of that, executive orders would also serve the purpose. Generally speaking, we have to do better than before, because so many technologies have come and gone in the past, without having been used because of the lack of a policy framework.

In theory, it could be said that what is good for the government is good for the people, because the people are the ultimate beneficiaries of government services. That said, there should be no argument about the reasoning that helping the government eventually boils down to helping the people.

In other words, at the risk of being redundant, it could be said that one sure way to help the people is to help the government.

To proceed with that trend of reasoning however, we need to agree on a reality check that almost always, the government or the people who are running the government are always short of budgets, meaning that they could not always buy what they need to buy in order to have the necessary technologies to be able to serve the people better.

If not that, they are constrained by procurement rules that would prevent them from buying what they need, or buying what they need at the time that they would need it.

At the risk of sounding too optimistic, I really believe that the private sector would be able to add whatever the government lacks, by way of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.

I have seen this happen before, and that is why I believe that it could really be done. Aside from CSR, there are also Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) that could also add resources.

As I see it, CSOs are broader groupings that could even include Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and cooperatives. We could classify under this category all the civic organizations such as the Rotary Clubs that are directly helping the people. On top of all that, we could add the Official Development Assistance (ODA) programs that are being offered by foreign governments.

All in all, the combination of CSR, CSO and ODA efforts should be able to complete the whole picture. (iseneres@yahoo.com/PN)