The Evil Box

I've been off line for a while - too busy.

I'm back now and enjoying the chatter.

I've been lucky enough to make a living semi mastering a good chuck of this technology and the biggest problem I have run into is lack of understanding by engineering managers.

I've always considered an engineering degree to be a testament to one's ability to have learned how to learn. If we agree that many in our technical profession are only semi-literate where does that leave society as a whole.

Computers are great tools but I feel that someday we are really going to get kicked in the ass hard. It's already happening - the Blackout a few years back - massive data theft from credit card companies and government. Apparently a few years back the US defense system was knocked offline for the best part of a week. What else don't we know?

I think we are living an illusion - we are going down a slippery slope where most people are becoming slaves to the Evil Box and no longer really know what they are doing.

When you had to do it by hand you may not have always got it right but at least you had to have some understanding of what you were doing and someone often checked it.

In Canada we are spending $2 Billion dollars to establish a Gun Registry - basically a database from those willing to volunteer the information to the government. Don't kid yourself - it does not take $2 Billion to create a database and distribute data - the costs are skyrocketing because the money is being siphoned off by bull shitting IT companies scamming the government. This is money that should be going elsewhere.

How do we reverse this process?

How do we get the corporations to reinvest their obscene profits into corporate training?

Should CEO's make hundreds of millions of dollars while the services they provide have the potential to disintegrate at any time?

How do we prevent computers from turning us all into monkeys?

Paul Hawco
Mechanical Engineer
Neill & Gunter (Nova Scotia) Limited
<a href="http://www.neillandgunter.com">http://www.neillandgunter.com</a> <<a href="http://www.neillandgunter.com/">http://www.neillandgunter.com/</a>>

130 Eileen Stubbs Ave, Suite 1 South
Dartmouth, NS, Canada B3B 2C4
Phone 902-434-7331 x1296
Fax 902-462-1660

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Received on Tue Jun 28 11:03:00 2005