Before computers, Woodstock, Miles Davis, commercial air travel and the post-industrial society, people in western countries went to church, well at least some did. Furthermore, most who went actually believed what was taught, many fervently, passionately and without question And of those that didn’t believe in a religion, many believed just as fervently in the gospel of Marx.
Today most western countries have evolved into post-industrial economies and, with the exception of the USA, have also largely evolved to post-Christian societies in which religious attendance, adherence and belief, characterised by single digit percentages, have largely fallen from the national consciousness. So what has happened to that fervour?
Although I’d defer to expert psychological advice on the matter, there would appear to be an impulse in many of us, perhaps too many of us, to believe in something absolutely with a scatoma to all evidence that contradicts this absolute belief. For such persons who no longer believe in a god, they are likely to believe in something else just as fervently and unable to be swayed by solid contradictory evidence.
Some channel this belief into politics and usually not close to the political centre. Some channel it into quasi-political causes such as environmental or social issues. Although they are largely a nuisance, they can force mainstream political parties to sharpen their policy focus in these areas. Some channel it into matters of health and become obsessive followers of dietary or other health fads. At the extreme this can be dangerous but generally only to the persons themselves. And then there are those in the IT field who channel their obsession genes into matters within the IT field, and here it can cause problems.
When I entered the field of IT during the height of the mainframe era, many practitioners, especially academics, hated IBM with an evangelical fervour. Why? They just did. It was a time when commercial programming was Cobol and engineering programming was Fortran. Yet, although they often covertly used Fortran, academics praised, many to the point of worship, the Algol language, despite many shortcomings including its lack of formatable input and output functions. Then, there was the arithmetic programming language APL, which enabled all but the most arcane of mathematical formulae to be programmed, albeit with a purpose-built keyboard with equally arcane symbols and APL, too, had its fervent devotees. But where are Algol and APL today?
A decade later saw the peak of the minicomputer era and the primary means of connecting terminals and, to a much lesser extent, PCs, to minis was the LAN. At the time, every computer manufacturer, except one, adopted the Ethernet LAN technology. IBM, alone, opted for token ring. Yet there were those who were unswervingly devoted to token ring, even though token ring was not designed for terminal to mainframe communications. But it didn’t end there. Within the Ethernet community, every computer manufacturer, again except just one, had standardised on the TCP/IP protocol and most enterprises used it. However, DEC alone opted for its proprietary and unroutable LAT protocol. And just as with token ring, there were fanatics just as obsessively devoted to LAT.
Whatever the technology, there is a need to differentiate a genuine trend from a supplier-promoted fad and that differentiation is usually borne out over time, not by supplier fiat. Fax machines replaced telex machines. Servers did not replace mainframe computers. PCs with printers did replace typewriters. Mobile phones have not replaced terrestrial phone lines. Ethernet replaced token ring. Windows PCs have not banished Mac PCs. TCP/IP has replaced LAT. C++ has not replaced Cobol.
As has always been the case, IT today is awash with completing technologies applications and architectures, some new, some established, some expanding, some holding steady. Technologies currently generating headlines include cloud computing, voice over IP, thin client, kindle versus iPad and wireless Internet versus broadband. The makeup of the technological smorgasbord in years to come is far from certain, but there will be competing technologies, architectures and products for almost every aspect of IT. Hopefully, their relative merits with be debated professional using secular rational argument, not trumpeted with evangelical fervour.
