jamesdeakin.com

I’ve a confession to make. I don’t like technology. Well ok that’s not quite true. What I’m interested in is what we can do with technology. It’s the use value that excites me. As a boy I used to read scifi and watch star trek, star wars, Blake 7  and tomorrows world etc. As I watched I thought about what technology could enable, I dreamt of the positive changes we could make to peoples lives and the obstacles we could remove. It was about what we could become through technology. Since then I have seen many things which were science fiction become reality. We need to be careful about the use we put these innovations to. I’ve seen our technological dreams put to good and bad use. I’ve seen them abused by the selfish and the fearful as well as put to good use improving people’s lives by the courageous.

We have a role in this. Brands respond to consumer pressure and the internet has made their behaviour public knowledge. Where this has happened corporate behaviour has been forced to change for the better. It’s up to us to decide if we end up in a utopia or dystopia.

I’m often amazed at the way that microprocessors have changed our lives. Moore’s law has continued to be relevant far longer than even he though. But it’s not your computer that interests me particularly or even your smart phone. Microprocessors are everywhere.  So That makes me wonder how much processing power does contemporary life require? I thought I would figure it out using myself as an example. I’m going to measure it in terms of MHz (processor power). Here is what a quick look around the house showed up:

Computer Core i5: 2.5 GHz x 4 cores
2 old computers   2.1 GHz each
Smartphone: 1 GHz (underclocked to 800 MHz)
Tablet: 1GHz dual-core
Spare mobile 15 MHz  (long battery life for emergencies)
Camera 300 MHz

Here’s where things get interesting:
Fridge 10 MHz
Cooker 10 MHz
Dishwasher 10 MHz
Washing machine 10 MHz
kettle (ours has a microprocessor) 5 MHz
Microwave 10 MHz
burglar alarm 5 MHz
Printer 10 MHz
Scanner 15 MHz
Stereo 10 MHz
Guitar tuner <5MHz (at a guess)
Clocks
Calculator

Stuff I don’t have but people often have
Sky+ box   166MHz (if its an old one)
TV 10MHz (this one is a guess)

There is probably lots missing from this list and its already a huge amount of processing power.

Thats 17683 MHz or 17.6 gigahertz
3.58300 if you exclude the computers
583 MHz if you exclude the smart phone and tablet

In my view the creative technologist role is a response to a client need. Businesses must exploit the opportunities modern technology affords them. Especially in marketing where technology is continually transforming the way people communicate and relate to one another. Agencies need people who understand marketing, business strategy, creative and the mediating technologies. This is what a creative technologist is. Attempting to construct a strategy or produce creative work across media without those people involved results in missed opportunities and ideas that sound great in principal but fall flat in practise.

People like me have been performing this sort of role within agencies for a long time but I has been hard to get recognition and be empowered to really make a difference.

One challenge for agencies it to figure out where these people fit. Are the part of the creative team, strategy, technical or something else. My answer to the “where do I put them” question is that we need to break down the silos and work together. The key is that CT’s have to be involved from the start and empowered to act. If there isn’t a CT on the pitch team you probably missed a trick.

I saw a brilliant TED video by Simon Sinek which had a profound effect on me. You can watch it here http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/848.

It reminded me that knowing what gets you out of bed in the morning, what motivates you is very important. Some how I had forgotten that along the way.

I believe in making things better. I believe that it is possible to improve our own lives and those of the people around us. That is what I take to work with me every day. Its what makes me frustrated when others take the easy route at the expense of everyone else. Its what makes me rejoice when I see people do things for others. Its what excites me about the Diaspora project http://www.joindiaspora.com/. Its one of the things I have always loved about the free and open source software and its what attracted me to the web back when I was in Art college.

Recently I realized what is missing from programming languages. What, why and who. 

All we have is how. When you fire up an IDE or open a file in a text editor all you get lots of how. 

Stuff like. 

If(camera.isavailable == true)
{
    camera.snapShot();
}

You have to figure out the what from the how. You read that and you realize that there is some object called camera and that it has a property that says if it’s currently available and that if it is that it should execute its snapShot(); method. None of that explicitly tells you what the person who wrote the code was trying to do, you have to guess. 

Why does he want to take a snap shot? you would have to read a lot of code to know for sure and in some cases you might not be able to tell even if you read all the code in the whole app.

Why is even worse. There are lots of times that I have been left wondering why a developer tried to do something In a particular way. Often that cost me and the projects I was working on lots of time. 

Who is in most cases non existent. Ok a good IDE usually puts the name of the developer at the top of the file but if you have just been sent a load of code you have no idea who John doe was, where he worked what he was doing on the project.

So all of this is left to documentation and we all know how often that is inaccurate or simply not available.

Isn’t it time we developed a language that had who when how what and why as an integral part of the code? Time for a language that is truly self documenting.