Fergus Cassidy

Easy PC

THUMBS up to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for doing some solid research on the prevalence and use of information and communications technology in Ireland.

Firstly because there is now a baseline for future surveys. And secondly, the survey provides a snapshot of how technology is impacting on peoples' day to day lives.

But that's really all it is - a snapshot, a still photograph. There is all the information useful in a photograph, but nothing like the detail in comparison to a movie.

The figure for the growth in home computer ownership got a lot of coverage in the media last week, based on the huge growth experienced since 1998. That year, only 18.6% of people had a computer in their home, while the figures from June of this year have more than doubled to 46%.

That is a pretty amazing jump (although not enough for some), but what does it say about Ireland's road to becoming an information society?

Well it's a positive piece of news for starters. It means that computers are quite a way toward becoming essential appliances or a 'must have' technology. When it's considered that it took radio over 60 years to reach 70% penetration in the US (where figures are available), the VCR 45 years and television 40 years, the big jump in computer ownership is significant.

Unless you're Ken Olsen, president of computer giant Digital Equipment in 1977. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home," he said back then.

Or going back earlier and this quote from the March 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine: "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons".

It's easy to predict the future if it is based on just looking at a still photograph. There have been many, many predictions on what lies in store and those kinds of predictions have been largely extreme in their nature.

Electricity would be too dangerous to have any real value; television would destroy family and social life and also close down theatres; video recorders would ruin the movie business and so on down through the years.

Fear has always been a natural response to technology, the more so if that technology begins to become visible in everyday life. This kind of fear is essentially a good thing, because it makes us think more deeply and question the effects of any given technology on our lives.

The fact that over half of Ireland's households have not got a computer has been suggested by some as alarming, and seem primarily concerned about an emerging digital divide. Where the haves will do very well and have-nots will fall further behind and become marginalised.

This kind of prediction, while well meant, is not really valid in the sense that it places computer ownership and use as the ultimate arbiter of technological savvy. There is a bigger picture with regard to this country's use of technology and avoiding a digital divide.

Ireland is unrecognisable from twenty years ago when it comes to technology. Bank ATMs, cash registers, swipe cards, traffic lights, closed circuit television, medical appliances have all been subsumed into society, even sometimes in spite of the predictions of woe or prophets of doom.

To my mind, the real measure of technological change and savvy is the mobile phone. Heading rapidly for 80% penetration, the mobile is the best indication to date of this country's technological modernity.

No other device before it reached such adoption rates so quickly. It's likely nothing ever will again (yes a prediction).

Mobiles were initially viewed as toys of businessmen, keen to publicly display their cutting-edge status. There would never be any need for 'ordinary' people to own such toys. The humble telephone would always be enough.

Yet, it took less than ten years for mobiles to outnumber landlines in Ireland. For certain the cost of owning and using a mobile was one of the key drivers of their take-up. But it wasn't the only factor.

The boom years had a definite impact as lifestyles changed. New economic circumstances changed various aspects of day to day life, particularly in relation to mobility and time. That aided adoption of mobiles but so also did their reliability and ease of use, which improved dramatically.

The same can't be said about computers. The doubling of ownership in Ireland can also be attributed to some degree to the boom years and being able to afford one in the first place. Wanting to connect to the internet also played a part. But I believe that future CSO surveys won't show anywhere near the same jump in growth for computers. For the next five years at least, there will be sluggish growth, if any.

In 1998, 1999 and 2000 there was an incredible torrent of hype and hubris surrounding computers and the internet. The world's economy was going to be turned upside down and our lives along with it. The boy can't cry wolf again. Computers are amazing devices but they are also the most temperamental, stubborn, deceitful and stand-offish devices ever to be taken out of a cardboard box.

It takes a computer longer to switch on now than it did for a valve television set 40 years ago. In over 20 years very little has changed under the hood, except the speed. Almost nothing has been done to make computers easier to use or more reliable.

As author Bob Cringely once pointed out: "If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside". If computers as they currently exist don't become a lot easier to use they will be replaced by something else.

It's the grey boxes that need to be changed, not our grey matter.