3D printing: the business of consumer creativity

The arrival of budget priced 3D printers promises to give the technology a push into the home market, with models as cheap as £150 being affordable for most households.

But there are no signs of a clamour for the machines. If anything’s holding the market back at the moment it’s unfamiliarity and a sense among most people that they have no use for 3D printing. Most have heard of it, but to them it’s something for techies and people who like playing with gadgets, and they haven’t seriously thought about what they would do with a machine. And I’d bet that some of the creative types who have considered it have quickly retreated at the thought of having to get to grips with a complicated software package.

In the short term it could be a source of frustration for the manufacturers of 3D printers, but it points to an opportunity a little further ahead for companies that are ready to help consumers take their first steps into producing their own objects. Selling ready to print designs for products, with guidance on the raw materials to use, could provide a first step for nervous early adopters. But the real potential is in giving them the chance to stamp their own personalities on the process with customisable template designs.

It’s a half-way step that would hold consumers’ hands through getting to know the software while allowing space for them to show their creativity. It’s similar to enabling people to design their own websites using templates, and would add a ‘home made’ dimension to some sizeable consumer markets, such as jewellery, clothing accessories, tableware, models and toys.

Those early steps would familiarise people with the technology and help them get used to the idea of creating their own objects. Then it’s just a little further to those first efforts in fully mastering the software to create from scratch. That’s when the full potential for 3D printing in the home really takes off, as it becomes a tool for consumer creativity.

This is where some enterprising companies can plant an early stake in the market over the next couple of years. Even if the early adopters move on to doing their own thing others will follow, and the prospect of millions of children getting to grips with 3D printers provides the promise of a big market that will thrive in the long term.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk He has previously written a white paper on the future of 3D printing for the BCS.

Ethical robots would be good for business

It’s easy to chuckle at reports that the US Navy is funding research into creating ethical robots. No doubt the first response among many movie fans will be to mimic Arnold Schwarzenneger at the climax of ‘Terminator 2’ – “I know now why you cry, but it’s something I can never do.”

The fact that the military is taking a lead prompts ideas about how a machine driven by artificial intelligence could behave in warfare, or any scenarios in which they would take decisions that could mean life or death to a human. But there’s also a lot of potential for everyday business in the idea of an ethical robot.

Despite robotics having an established place in manufacturing, we’re still a long way from robots – something that looks and behaves more human – making much of an impact in the workplace. But there are plenty of convincing prototypes out there and it isn’t difficult to envisage their descendants carrying out human functions in the next 10 or 20 years.

It’s scary to some, but enticing to businesses that think about the long term effect on labour costs. Installing robots to interact with humans is a natural progression from using voice recognition systems in contact centres or self-service check-outs in supermarkets. Some could also make a case for robots removing the scope for human error, although it would be interesting to see how that would stand up to the first robot malfunction.

No doubt it will kick off new arguments about technology replacing people at work, and agonising over how to resolve that tension while hanging on to the idea of capitalism working for the common good. But plenty of businesses will be ready to go for it, and the more forward looking are going to want their robots to have some ethical capability.

It’s a step towards resolving the problem that faces businesses using those voice recognition systems and self-service check-outs – they annoy the hell out of customers. People resent dealing with machines rather than other people, and usually put up with it because it’s too inconvenient to go elsewhere. Imagine how that can intensify when they’re faced with a robot that tells them their train is late, or takes a customer complaint, or decides they shouldn’t be allowed on a flight. You’re looking at serious anger.

This is where the better staff prove their worth to an employer, in showing they empathise with the other person and doing what they can to alleviate a problem, and even deciding when there’s a decent case to bend the rules. And this usually comes back to a sense of ethics – when it’s right to do what would usually be wrong. It’s the show of empathy and evidence that they are being treated as people that can keep customers on board.

So if a robot can draw on an ethical capability, and convey some sense of empathy with the human, it can take the sting out of any tension and resentment that builds up. You might get a customer who, while not absolutely happy, isn’t going to walk away. It’s not perfect from the customer’s point of view, but if it’s good enough to keep them walking away it will good enough for many businesses.

It’s conceivable that within 20 years some businesses will be marketing their services on the basis that their robots have been created with an ethical capability that makes them more responsive to a customer’s circumstances. It may not convince everyone, but they can sell it as being better than leaving decisions to a machine that doesn’t know when to bend the rules. Ethical robots could give a business an edge in its market.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk

A messy move to contactless payments

I’ve discovered that in a few weeks’ time I won’t be able to pay a bus fare in London without an Oyster card. Transport for London announced earlier in the year that from June it won’t accept cash on the buses, although if your prepaid Oyster card runs out you have the option of paying with a contactless debit or credit card.

Last week I got around to contacting my current account holder, the Nationwide, to ask when it’s going to make swipe cards available. The guy from the contact centre was helpful, but said the building society didn’t know for sure when it would launch the cards, maybe some time next year. It’s aware of TfL’s plans, but swipe cards aren’t high enough up its agenda to prompt any urgent action.

It’s not a massive inconvenience, but it prompted thoughts about whether a move away from cash for smaller payments will be a smooth process.

It will happen. People are already making a lot of smaller payments with chip and PIN cards, and making it possible with a swipe rather than punching in numbers will make it easier for the consumer, and the people in the queue behind. But when? And will it happen without a lot of teeth grinding and complaints?

The UK Cards Association, the country’s leading flag waver for cashless payments, points to a bunch of major retail chains on board and lists seven banks that have issued the cards; but it also acknowledges that a number of big names have no immediate plans to do so.

It’s not urgent for them because there’s no immediate incentive. It can make life a little more convenient for their customers, but the ‘little’ is crucial; a minute punching a PIN number into a card reader once or twice a day won’t be enough to make them want to change their bank or building society.

Retailers are not going to force the issue by refusing to accept cash as they don’t want to turn away customers. Remember that there is a minority, largely older people, who still pay cash for everything. TfL can make it mandatory because it has a monopoly of London’s public buses, but even in this case it has made a concession of one extra journey for people not having enough money on their Oyster cards.

As for leapfrogging swipe cards to payment by mobile phone, it hasn’t really gathered momentum in the UK and there’s a factor working against making it a priority – millions of people who have got used to cards but don’t own smartphones.

There will eventually be a tipping point when so many people are paying by contactless cards that it becomes expected, and all current account providers will have to respond. But this is going to come gradually, by increments, and there’s going to be an awkward period, probably of a year or two, when some people pay with a swipe, and stand in queues grumbling about those who want to but cannot.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk

Chief digital officers step into CIOs’ shoes

A buzz has building up around the emergence of the chief digital officer (CDO) in large organisations. It’s strong enough for communities such as the US based Chief Digital Officer Club to have emerged, and to have prompted organisations to ask what the role involves and what it can do for their prospects.

The second is easier to answer: it should provide a competitive edge as the world moves towards carrying out most of its business digitally. The first is more difficult as the role is still emerging and precise definitions vary; but in general it’s about shaking up the business to ensure that its IT infrastructure and information management are lean, mean and properly aligned to raise the game in operations and dealing with customers.

Sound familiar? A few years ago people were talking about the chief information officers (CIO) as the hot new job in similar terms.

Commentators are making a distinction between the roles of CDO and CIO, which generally refer to the latter as a head of technology and the former as someone who knows the technology but also ‘gets’ the whole business and understands its market. Again, this is close to how people were talking about the CIO role a few years ago, but reflects the fact that in many organisations it has now been shoved back into a technology box. There are CIOs who are up there at board level, helping to shape the strategy of a business and with the authority to make a difference, but plenty are confined to jobs that are much closer to the traditional head of IT.

This came up at a recent BCS Digital Leaders’ Summit, with talk about the fact that, after the aspirations of the mid 2000s, many CIOs haven’t got close to the boardroom. A background in IT, for all the strengths it brings, was almost seen as a disadvantage. Some blame was attached to a traditional failing of IT professionals in keeping their minds on the technology, and not getting to grips with the broader business issues or learning the language of the boardroom. But it can work with the other way, with board members and senior managers too keen to see a techy as no more than a techy. Whatever the reasons, it has left a gap that some are looking to CDOs to fill.

They may well fill it in some organisations, but in the space of 10 years will they go the same way as the CIO? The fact that a CDO needs to know the technology means a lot of candidates will come from an IT background, but this could make those at the top quick to place them in the same techy box.

Or can CIOs change, adding a few more skills to take on the CDO role? Maybe, but it won’t just be about skills, but a more assertive approach and different attitudes from other C-suite leaders.

Then there’s always the possibility that in a few years the gap will still be unfilled and someone will invent a new title for the same job. I hope not.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk

What’s HMRC’s purpose in tax data sale?

The UK government has managed to wave another red rag to privacy bulls with the acknowledgement that it’s looking at plans to sell aggregated and anonymised tax data to the private sector. This would have stirred up protests by itself, but after the recent Care.data controversy over health records it has activists worried that the government has forgotten the sensitivities over personal data that it trumpeted in the run-up to the 2010 election.

There has been a long running argument over whether measures to anonymise data can be 100% effective, and the risk judgement is going to be determined by how much damage can be done by the data getting into the wrong hands against the potential good in making it available. Which prompts the thought, against my ususal instincts, that it could be more dubious to sell off data on tax affairs than healthcare.

Even if you’re militant about privacy, it’s hard to deny that there is a potential good in allowing researchers access to data sets. It gives them more information, a clearer view of the patterns in health issues and a better chance of finding solutions to problems in public healthcare. It’s a big positive to place against any risk that some of the data could be de-anonymised and misused.

Are there similar benefits in placing tax data up for sale? I’m sure that some private companies would find it valuable, but where’s the public good? So far the Treasury has been vague about what any research and analysis could achieve, and it leaves the thought that the idea is being floated mainly to raise revenue.

That might win over some bean counters in Whitehall, but it will make it harder sell outside; a little more money in the public coffers is a short term gain that doesn’t justify the privacy risk as convincingly as long term improvements in healthcare.

This may come to nothing – governments often let a proposal leak out to test reactions then quietly drop the idea – but it suggests there’s an increasing sentiment in Whitehall towards making more anonymised data available to third parties. And as the private sector shows more of what it can achieve with big data, ministers will be tempted to go along with the sentiment. That should keep the privacy activists busy for years to come.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk. He is the author of  a paper on Privacy v Intelligence for the Chartered Institute for IT, available through BCS Enterprise.

Three questions for the UK public about Scottish independence

With less than six months to go to the referendum on Scottish independence, the arguments are getting louder and increasingly bad tempered.

Over the past few weeks Alex Salmond and his Nationalist colleagues have made a sustained effort to frame their opponents’ arguments as those of an overbearing elite who are lying about their intentions in effort to scare Scottish voters away from independence. Yes, most of it surrounds the prospects of a currency union with the rest of the UK, although I’m sure questions of EU membership, defence policy and border controls are also going to stir up some sound and fury in months ahead.

What the Nationalists are not keen on anyone talking about is how the public in the rest of the UK feels about these issues. It suits their case to define independence in terms of Scots asserting themselves against a governing class from privileged backgrounds, rather than detaching themselves from the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I suspect that plenty of Scots would at least take into account the opinions of their UK compatriots. Scotland has retained its own legal and education systems, and there are some cultural differences, but we have a lot more in common. We share an economy and transport infrastructure, study at each other’s universities, generally watch the same TV programmes, listen to the same music and laugh at the same jokes.

Most importantly, a lot of Scots live in England, and a smaller but significant number of English people live in Scotland, with Welsh and Northern Irish also settling across the borders. It’s everyday stuff that has kept us together, and in the event of independence some of this is going to change, and this will affect attitudes on both sides of the border.

One thing the Scots deserve in advance of the vote is clarity around what the people in the rest of the UK, not just the politicians, think about independence.  Just knowing if they want them to stay would be a big issue, along with attitudes towards a couple of the factors – currency and borders – that everyone will notice.

There has been a recent Yougov poll on currency union, but the process would benefit from a large scale opinion poll across England, Wales and Northern Ireland – commissioned independently of the government – asking three questions to be answered with a simple yes, no or undecided:

1 – Do you hope that Scotland votes to remain as part of the UK in September?

2 – In the event of Scotland becoming independent, do you think it should be allowed into a currency union with the UK?

3 – In the event of Scotland becoming independent, do you think there should be a full border and regulation of movement from one side to the other?

Show people in Scotland what the rest of the UK thinks about these and they’ll go into the referendum with a clearer picture than that presented by the Nationalists.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk. He also writes fiction, details on www.marksaywriter.com.

How much do we want algorithms to do?

Yesterday I read an engrossing piece by Luke Dormehl in Wired magazine about the prospects for analytic software in the recruitment process. The gist is that algorithms can be a lot more reliable than people in identifying the right candidate, and that it may not be long before organisations rely on technology rather than human judgement to find the right people.

The idea has an immediate appeal in promoting a more genuinely meritocratic workplace. I’m sure that most of us have been frustrated at missing the cut for a job interview when we know we fit the bill. And plenty of us have employed people who had the CV, references and came across great in the interview, but regretted the choice months later. I’ve had experience of both.

So take out those wobbly human judgements and let the algorithms take charge, and we’ll have the right people in the right jobs. Agreed? I suspect there would be more disquiet than enthusiasm.

A lot of managers won’t like it. Getting to choose who work for you is one of the big plus points of being a manager, and it would dent a lot of egos to tell them a computer is more likely to make a good choice. A lot of potential employees would feel dubious, not wanting their worthiness for a job to be assessed by a software programme. There’s a scary element in its implications for our relationship with computers.

It’s also important to remember a question that’s usually asked during recruitment: will they fit in? If you want a machine to answer that you have to combine the data on the candidate with data on their managers, colleagues, and the priorities and dynamics of the company. Will that be readily volunteered? Will it be accurate? The algorithms get more complicated, and become more vulnerable to any distortions and dishonesties. And we all know they come from both sides of the fence.

It’s part of the bigger question of how far cognitive systems can go in replacing humans, something I touched on in a recent white paper for the Chartered Institute for IT. Cognitive computing can do some things better than people, in terms of processing massive quantities of data quicker and more consistently, and can provide important insights at high speed. But they don’t think like people, making the value and moral judgements on which we often rely, and most organisations won’t want to take those judgements out of many of their processes, including recruitment.

I can see more companies using algorithms as part of their process to find new employees; but I bet there won’t be many prepared to drop those face-to-face interviews and take the decisions out of their managers’ hands.

Mark Say is a UK based writer who covers the role of information management and technology in business. See www.marksay.co.uk