Geek Mythology
We were pinned down under heavy fire in the corner of the square, behind a low wall outside the restaurant. They had occupied the hotel that overlooked our position and as shrapnel burst around us our options were looking very limited. My oppo, who had been with me since the beginning, was lying bleeding profusely beside me. I had chosen to be there. Volunteered! It had to be better than staring at a computer screen, on 8 times pay, waiting for the world to end.
The walls of the restaurant were pockmarked from French salvo after salvo. Things were looking pretty bleak, but with our backs to the wall there was no option other than to break cover and see how many of them we could take with us.
It had just gone midnight and the new millennium was underway in France. Back home they still had just under an hour to go before they could indulge in a frenzy of kissing and swapping of cold sores. Many airlines had banned flying, but we knew, if we cared to think about it, that many pilots were still up there nervously staring at their controls. Would they fall out of the sky?
A significant factor in my decision to leave the mainstream IT industry had been the very real threat of a three line whip to monitor the systems as the Y2K bug kicked in, and there was no way I was going to miss ‘being there’ when the new millennium clicked over.
Despite my best mate being carted off to the first aid tent and then ferried down the mountain to hospital in Grenoble, taking part in the annual England Vs France snow ball fight in the Meribel Square in the French Alps, was undoubtedly the best way to see in the new Millennium. It had got as nasty as ever that year, with old jingoistic rivalries springing up as quickly as the snowballs turned to ice. Bruised and battered, we eventually decided on an undignified withdrawal to the warmth and safety of the restaurant, where the girls were having a bra flashing contest. A bitter sweet moment.
As the weary combatants woke up to a monumental hangover the following morning, the budget guzzling secret service of an IT industry stood naked in front of the world, exposed as a victim of its own publicity. No one will ever know if Y2K was an overblown white elephant driven by paranoia, or if for once the IT industry had actually delivered its biggest ever project on time, fully tested and functioning and naturally, of course, over budget.
Either way the greatest ‘Cry Wolf’ in history had been pulled off and as one poor pensioners washing machine in Harrogate stopped mid spin-cycle, the Y2K bug had done its worst.
But the effects have been everlasting. Channel 4 launched its new sitcom ‘The IT Crowd’ last night. Vaguely chucklesome, it acknowledged the fact that everyone gets the ‘have you tried switching it on’ gag now. These days our parents and unborn children know more about computers than we do and the IT boys no longer have sole jurisdiction on those evergreen ‘user error’ jokes.
IT has always revelled in its geekdom. Knowledge is power and for those who would rather not be seen dead on the sports field or in the battle torn streets of Meribel, this has always been their way of taking over the world. The meek shall inherit the earth.
If Y2K started the erosion of the IT pedestal, the pace of development and particularly the Internet has changed it forever. The problem was of course not so much the geeks themselves, they were mainly just harmless types doing what they love doing, whether they are paid for it or not – try and think of other jobs where its employees do exactly the same in their leisure time as they do at work. There aren’t many, except maybe being Elton John. No, the problem was the white collar boys who front the industry. The suits. The IT directors.
Though they meant well on Y2K, and heaven forbid if a plane had fallen out of the sky, but like a bloated public service, for decades they held onto their private dominions and threw smoke at anyone who dared look in.
And the needs for solid IT is as big as ever. Security issues only get more real. The big ERP systems that run the operations need to ruthlessly perform ever more complicated tasks. The bank systems still need to keep our money safe and the airlines need to take concurrent bookings from all around the world. But at the sexy end. The sales, marketing and consumer end. The bit where the people who never really got IT operate, it’s all been changed by the Internet. The programmers are getting younger and younger. The technologies are getting better and better and cheaper by the hour and in reality that only thing that limits us anymore is our imagination.
And so the worm turns, the geeks are increasingly delivering better systems which have now put the advertising and marketing industry under the spotlight. The IT Director who was, possibly justifiably, elbowed in the face six years ago by the Marketing Director, is beginning to regain his dignity, if not his job title. So, boardrooms are reshaping again. Let us hope that everyone has learned a little from the process and realises the benefits of understanding what each other does. It was fun at school, so why not – I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?
Sam Brownfield
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