One of the things about the writing of Douglas Adams is that he had a keen eye for what was happening around him and could express it briefly: ‘Technology is stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ You can think about that statement as long as you want and find no real fault with it.

Consider this: We don’t talk about fire technology. We don’t discuss wheel technology unless we’re dressing up a car, and speaking of which, most people are completely oblivious to internal combustion engine technology.

As someone who, since 11, has been working and playing with technology, and who works in technology to this day, I have to admit being a little disappointed with our body of achievements in the last 33 years. OK, personal computer technology is no longer a catch-phrase, and internet technology is a phrase maybe used by the people who the geeks don’t want to work for. Electric cars, sure. But really, as someone who has always been involved in technology – from electrical to electromechanical to personal computing to nuclear to medical to military to medical to financial to document management to internet to…

Well, that’s the problem with defining yourself with ‘technology’. Technology is the stuff still being worked on. It’s not done yet.

Some of us have to get it done, but we miss all too often – a sore point with me, where we write software that doesn’t really do what we want it to do.

More of that over the next week with a few posts based on some of my reading…