DaChispa

It is astonishing the amount of technical change I have seen in my working life. I vividly remember the first time I was introduced to email. Suddenly I could get messages to someone immediately and scheduling meetings was easy. Human behaviour was still much the same challenge though – to ensure that I could schedule meetings using the ‘new’ technology, I had to take some draconian measures to ensure that everyone’s diary was up to date. This largely involved booking important meetings based on what people’s diaries said. If they were incorrect, they had to cancel the un recorded meetings – people soon got the message.

However, the more times change, the more they stay the same. Administrators still manage their boss’s in tray – electronically now – and I still see the same sort of problems, for example:

- chasing down the corridors has been replaced by the blackberry call
- piles of paper waiting to be filed has been replaced by Word documents hidden away on C: drives or personal storage devices and not in electronic repositories
- the paperless office is still a ways off – people still like to print papers to read and annotate – although environmental changes of attitude are having an effect

However, technology is at the forefront of automating for bad human habits – electronic filing is increasingly becoming seamless and the introduction of better e-readers might spell the end of the reign of paper. Time will tell. I recall that I had a great deal of difficulty introducing the first PC network into one company – few outside of the IT department could see the benefit. It seems crazy now, but who is to say what current pre-conception will be seen as short sighted in a few years time.