Social and Economic Technology - 4.6. Promotional Descriptions
Questions and Answers
1. What are the ideological aims of Secotek?
Secotek is a system that to enable much of the work presently performed in towns and cities to be effectively performed in the rural countryside. The principle issues are centred around a feeling of "presence" amongst working teams, and are therefore issues of communication. It is both impractical and unnecessary to propose that complex new "hardware" be built explicitly for the project, so the principle tool of interaction will look like, and will actually physically be, a Personal Computer. However, it is proposed that the expectations and the way the hardware performs be different from present.
2. What does Secotek do for people who HATE computers?
Well, to call a spade a spade, the people using the technology will have to individually each own at least one personal computer, or have good access to one in a telecottage, there is no getting away from that. However, the system will be design with sympathy for this type of person, and the experience will NOT be a technological challenge, with the user wanting to do one thing and the computer determined to do something else. Indeed, the user will actually be expected to exercise much more intelligent control than now, and it is pointless to claim that "anybody will be able to instinctively drive it without training". There will be no pretence that this is so. However, the equipment will reliably behave in a predictable way, and many users will be trained to "drive" it the same way that he/she may have been trained to drive a car. Like a car, drive one and he/she will be able to drive almost any that operate in the same way. Most people do not "hate" cars because they are actually are difficult to drive and require a great deal of training to use. People tend to hate things when they do dot perform to expectation. The same attitude will be cultivated towards Secotek equipment. Secotek equipment will need nothing like as much training as learning to drive a car, and hopefully the training will be free. Also, unlike a physical car, there is no reason why the IT car needs be initially very expensive, or in constant need of renewal.
3. So how will people be trained to operate Secotek equipment?
Hopefully it will be taught is schools, passed from person to person, and adult education courses made available under the general heading of existing educational budget. Support, as necessary for the more involved, will be the same. Secotek will be a publicly owned concept.
4. So with Secotek I will be doing all kinds of work I can't do now?
It is stupidity to imagine that any technology such as Secotek can instantly give you mastery of required skills that you did not have previously. Any job of work that requires training will still require training. There is no short cut to that. If you hated a particular job before, Secotek will not magically make it more attractive, and you must not build up such expectations. (See question 2). What Secotek may do is allow you to become trained into a job without physically being in a pre-designated place, and thus open up work avenue that suites you better, a work avenue, that was previously closed. That avenue may have nothing to do with electronics. This is because Secotek is a communication media to those prepared to train you. It is important to grasp that Secotek would not, in itself, be training you.
5. Will I be able to modify Secotek equipment to my own liking?
The equipment you own will be yours to do whatever you like. The Secotek ethos will be to encourage you to take an interest in it and modify it if you so wish. However, the logical consequences that support may not be available for any modifications you perform should be apparent. Support will assume your equipment behaves in a clearly defined standard way, and you you must work with that concept in mind if ever you modify things but still require support.
6. Surely not many types of work are suitable to be done from home?
There seems to be an instinctive assumption that working using the Information Highway ipso facto means working from home. It does not. Whilst Secotek would support homeworkers, it would not be there to specifically encourage this. What it should encourage is that in each village there should be a village centre cum telecottage cum shop cum mini science park cum mini industrial estate cum place of learning. Village workers commuting to a village centre would revive village life.
7. Each part of such a complex will be too small to be self sustaining.
That is where the Information Highway comes in. No one of the little parts will be self sustaining, but will be, from an organizational point of view, intrinsically linked to a more conventional "big" part, or be part of a big entity distributed over a wide area.
8. Surely there are types of work where the Information Highway will not help.
Agreed, and there are many types of work that will never "take off" in just about any given environment. The number of types of work that could be performed in this way is far greater than may at first be appreciated. Many types of manufacturing could economically take place, even if specialist machinery is required. Instead of concentrating say eight machines in one factory, they would be distributed in eight villages. Policies of "Just in time" ordering would have to change, and there would be more (slow) movement of partly constructed goods. However, the cost of this would be offset my the lack of movement of people. It would follow that, for example, quarry workers would tend to live round the quarry.
These concepts are very futuristic, and whilst in line with Secotek philosophy, have not a great deal to do with Secotek as presently proposed. If only jobs that "cry out" to be done remotely, e.g. jobs that already consist solely of working with a computer screen, could be offered to the villages of a rural area, many economic and social problems would be solved. Therefore, into the foreseeable future Secotek should keep itself immediately practical by targeting specific types of work only. Thus it can be introduced effectively without controversial changes to working practices
User Tour - End of Overview Tour