Dear Author of the Good Childhood report,
Following details of the utterly predictable second stage of your idiotic report (that I could have written on your behalf without any "research") into the miseries of today’s youth, please remove yourself from your stereotypically-enhanced, traditionalist yesteryear world for one moment and read this real-life example of sophisticated, super-productive communication between two colleagues. I’ll move onto a discussion of tv and computer games in due course, you morons. But first, please, read and then tell me whether you might possibly want your child to:
- Spend time with their computer; or
- Spend time with you, your narrow mindedness and your badly written Daily Mail?
(Just a note - regardless of the specifically software-oriented context used below, the general communication principles are applicable to all of us now. The person who wrote it is entirely self-taught in every aspect of his revenue-generating skill set – he has no degree, or even relevant ‘A’ levels. The ‘A’ level grades he does have are pretty appalling. He’s never completed a CV or applied for a job in his life. He has never been unemployed and is almost always in the position of turning work away because of time constraints. He loves what he does, he chose to do it, works very hard at it – and it pays him well. He can't imagine not working, or spending his entire life waiting for the evenings, weekends, holidays, his retirement or a lottery win. He also spent a lot of time on his computer when he was a kid.)
“The objective was to re-organise a set of files to facilitate the use of a new piece of functionality in a software project that was being worked on by myself and another developer. This was essentially a throw-away, one-time piece of work: once the changes had been made, the method I had used to make them was essentially redundant and irrelevant. This piece of work and re-organisation, whilst necessary, was not planned - at this point, I had spent a total of about 6 hours working on it.
The issues involved were that:
- it needed to be done as quickly, and accurately as possible;
- as I had done the design work on the re-organisation it wouldn't necessarily make sense until fully implemented;
- implementing the changes involved assessing where the moved content was currently being used and where it would end up being used; and
- it was not necessary to explain the rationale for the changes, but it was important to show the basic steps involved in the process should anything go wrong or should either of us need to do a similar thing at a future point.
Because the changes were being made to a constantly changing project, implementing them on somebody else's work would require concentration. To do this solely via telephone would be impractical as the other developer would first need to be brought up to speed on the detail of the work I'd already done in order to talk them through how to do it themselves. To do it face-to-face would require (aside from actually being in the same room, which we were not - there's about 35 miles between us) me to also first walk them through the design work I'd already done as it would be difficult to concentrate on the task at the required level whilst also engaging with another person.
To get around these limitations and accomplish the task remotely, I:
- uploaded the changes to a source code control / content management system (SourceGear Vault);
- connected remotely to the other developer's computer using SharedView so we could both see his desktop;
- watched whilst the other developer showed me the areas he was currently working in;
- downloaded and integrated the changes (Visual Studio, Vault, Windows Explorer), including those to items that I had only just been made aware of (above), whilst also instant messaging him to point out the key parts of the process (Google Apps / IM);
- tested the changes on a number of deployments (using Virtual PC on the other developer's computer, as well as on my own);
- checked the original objectives against our feature/bug tracking system (FogBugz);
- called the other developer to quickly explain to them the key feature s of the changes and how to utilise the new functionality enabled by the changes; and
- sent the other developer an email that I'd drafted earlier with the detail of the changed areas and a link to a wiki page with full documentation (also FogBugz).
Not only did this process only take about 40 minutes, the entire thing was documented and could be stepped back through if necessary - all the changes were tracked and archived by Vault, the documentation was in the FogBugz wiki and the important communications were stored in email or IM history. The only thing not documented and reproducible was the phone call, which was only a summary of the email anyhow.
None of this required any special networking or bespoke setup, it was done via two Internet-connected computers with off-the-shelf software / services. The whole thing could have been done differently - we could have both stopped working on other features whilst we analysed the requirements, designed the changes, implemented them on a static file set and then tested them, documented them and continued on other features. This would have taken at least a day where neither of us were working on planned features (if not closer to two days, as our skill sets in the area of work required differ and we would have likely spent extra time compensating for that). We would have both been distracted from planned work and for a greater amount of time, but the outcome would have been identical as the objective was both clear and testable.”
We’re in the 21st century, people. You can either accept that fact and equip yourself to be adaptable to your ever-changing surroundings and productive, or you can give up now. You won’t be able to rely on passing some exams or getting your degree to secure that job for life anymore. Anyone who wants to enough can jump through the same externally-defined hoops as you – they just might not realise it quite yet. There is no job for life.
Whilst the authors of this Good Childhood report might claim otherwise, they are clearly detached from the most important and relevant of contemporary issues. From now on you will need to be conversant with the monumental collaborative power that the internet has facilitated – and the enormous paradigm shift that unbounded access to information entails. It’s only going to grow. You need to realise that you can learn whatever the hell it is you want to – or need to. You’re responsible for you. Not the teacher, not the examiner, not the professional, not the employer, not the bloody Good Childhood Report do-gooder. You.
The "bad" news? It’s hard work, and there’s no easy way of cheating. You’re wide open to the scrutiny and comment of everyone else, at every level. The good news? You will get to experience first hand the joy that is equitable participation, true collaboration, the far-reaching benefits of being authentic and giving freely to others, the infinite connections and the many platforms upon which to form them - regardless of age, geographical location or any other boundary. That’s the possibility that computers and the internet offer all of us – whether we choose to use them wisely, productively, carefully and knowledgeably is, quite frankly, down to each one of us.
