I have been asked on occasion about what motivates me to contribute to the public debate about issues ranging from identity cards to health to education to the surveillance state. The photo above of my great grandfather's First World War grave from October 1918, in the quiet serenity of the Brie British Cemetery, is one part of the answer, my own immediate family and their future another.
Yes, our society may have many problems, but I treasure the culture and freedoms I have inherited. In turn, I would like to see these improved upon, not eroded. And then bequeathed in turn to future generations. Helping to inform these important debates, helping to reduce the widespread ignorance or misconceptions about technology, technology policy and strategy, and its potential for both good and toxic outcomes, is a critical part of ensuring that happens.
And certainly at times, as some have suggested I do, it would be far easier to just retreat into the mundane comfort zone of the average technologist, happy to talk about the bits and bytes of the latest technology, but never about their wider implications, as if technology can ever exist in some moral, ethical and political vacuum.
I would hope that for anyone aware of how costly it has been to secure our present culture and freedoms, silence should never be a possibility. It has taken too many sacrifices by preceding generations over many centuries of toil and sacrifice to build what we now have, imperfect as it may be, for any of us to stand idly by.
It was Richard Wilson, a former Cabinet Secretary, who apparently once commented that the British have the habit of going into their big changes "as if under anaesthetic". It is only later that people begin, too late, to realise the significance of constitutional changes and tend to wonder why they let such changes happen. Professor Peter Hennessy, the distinguished political commentator and historian, believes that the increasingly "protective state" that has been put into place in the UK since 2001 falls into just such an "anaesthetic" category. As Ed Murrow, the American journalist, commented during a 1946 BBC radio broadcast, the test of an open society under duress is the degree to which it does not tamper with liberty and due process, even when under the most testing of circumstances (such as here in London on and after July 7th 2005). "There was no retreat," as he put it when writing about the Second World War. "From the principles for which your ancestors fought."
So today, 90 years after the guns of the First World War fell silent, is not just about remembrance of times and people past, of the sacrifices they made to enable us to live the lives we now do. It is also about the times to come. I believe we bear an obligation to tackle the many issues that could erode these important everyday freedoms that we take for granted, a duty to continue the struggle to improve our society, not just for a select few but for everyone.
The reality is that many of the most potent threats to our way of life come from the toxic outfall of the wilful misapplication, or blind ignorance, of technology as much as they do overt assaults, such as those from terrorism and the blunt weapons of war. Whilst our struggles today, in areas such as informing the debate about the application of technology to areas of public policy, may often be very different from those of the past, they are certainly no less real or less important.
As the First World War itself begins to pass from living, immediate memory, its lessons and implications for us must not be forgotten. I believe it places a duty upon us, that we should aspire to remember and honour the scale of human pain and suffering that has paid for these, our cherished freedoms.
Set against the bloody, brutal backdrop, of conflicts such as the First World War, standing up to help inform the debate about how we best use technology in our digital age, helping to shine a bright, honest light on the good, the bad and the ugly of technology, does not seem such a great burden for our generation to bear.
If "never again" means anything, it infers a responsibility on us all to contribute to the public debate, to ensure that well-informed decisions are taken, not those based on ignorance or misinformation. Those in our industry who would shy away from these issues should take time today to reflect upon the true price we would all pay for staying silent.
And they should do so again, at the going down of the sun and in the morning.
Technorati tags: First World War remembrance privacy security technology policy