Saturday, September 05, 2009

BBC technology coverage

@ruskin147 Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC Technology correspondent, asks What makes a tech story? (With some good answers by DisgustedofMitcham2 and others.)

For my part, I think the BBC should offer a strong thread of the political aspects of technology. Politicians often seem to make naive and simplistic decisions about technology (e.g. databases for everything). Are they being conned by the big software vendors and system integrators? Or are they merely falling into the common trap of expecting technology to magically solve all sorts of social problems? (See POSIWID: technology.)

For that matter, when a large vendor generously provides loads of kit to schools (for example), is anyone looking the gift horse in the mouth? What is the political agenda of technology firms?

A lot of this sort of thing is excellently covered by Computing and The Register (as well as my blogs of course), but I think the BBC could perform a useful service bringing some of these stories to a more general audience, explaining both sides of the argument in a fair and balanced manner, as well as helping to educate the political class about how (and how much) technology really works.

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