It comes as a surprise the first time you are driving along in a new car and the dashboard lights come on by themselves, or the windscreen wipers start up, or the car helps you turn that tricky corner. But the greater level of intelligence of our cars shown in these autonomous systems is just the outward manifestation of the latest model of innovation.
When the Model T ruled, the average car was a marvel of the era of mechanical engineering. Japanese cars first got traction when they offered the goodies of the electronics era in the form of the push button radio and two speed wipers.
Today we take for granted the engineering and the electronics and are deep into the era where software is the key to the customer experience and value adding.
Software accounts for a greater and greater proportion of value in today’s products. In a car it works with us when we apply the brakes, helps us maintain the right line and stay level when driving through a corner, and controls myriad systems from air conditioning to valve timing.
The days when you could rig up a block and tackle in the garage and remove the engine and perform some useful function in repairing it are long gone. The new vehicle diagnoses its own problems and communicates it back to a service centre without you even lifting a finger.
Communications is of course the twin of information technology in the modern innovation system.
It is thus surprising to find that 12 per cent of Australian businesses don’t use a computer, and 19 per cent do not use the Internet according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Fully 70 per cent do not have their own web presence.
Australia has its leading edge users, but it defies belief that there are businesses out there less connected and less computer savvy than the average 10 year old.
Rather than worrying about 12 students, maybe the government should provide the troglodyte 12 per cent with a laptop of their own. Or maybe, they should just wait for them to go out of business.
Peter Roberts comment also appears at www.brw.com.au
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Comments
The pot is 88% full, not 12% empty.
A friend of mine has a newish Alfa Romeo. It has suffered a strange electrical drain for the past month, meaning that he has to use jumper leads from another car to start it every morning. It's been to the garage, two auto electricians and finally, after being stripped in search of the problem, it's been decided that it's the central computer which is losing one amp which he'll have to have replaced at a cost of two thousand dollars. More technology is not always better. " The new vehicle diagnoses its own problems and communicates it back to a service centre without you even lifting a finger", well, yes, sometimes. More often something in the computer system goes wrong and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it and the garage can't fix it either, they just have to drop a new black box in at major expense. The idea that having a car you can't fix yourself is a good thing is bizarre. The customer doesn't want 'value adding' and an 'experience', he just wants the stupid thing to start every time. If you want to drive a car properly, the first thing you do is turn the traction control off.
The amazing thing is that 88% of businesses do have a computer, not that 12% don't. I would guess that most of that 12% are sole traders of one kind or another, providing a specific good or service. If they've chosen not to use a computer it's because they don't need one or because the time spent in learning to use one would be better employed elsewhere. They've made a rational economic and personal decision and, if it's the wrong one and their competitors are so much more efficient because they've got a lap top, then the market will sort it out. It's amazing that people were even able to feed and clothe themselves before 1990 isn't it? Dickens was a better writer with a fountain pen than Dan Brown is with his desk top.
Cars are an integral part of modern society, should the state give everyone a car who doesn't already have one? What about a plasma TV? It's stunning that 81% of businesses use the internet, not that 19% don't. How much of that 'use' is chatting, downloading porn and browsing Myspace I wonder as I've seen surveys criticising the amount of time wasted at work by social networking, surfing and 'answering e mail'. What good, exactly, is a web presence to many small businesses? People in business are rational, if they decide that having a web site is more trouble than it's worth that's their choice. You know what would be a better idea? Teaching every kid in school to touch type. That would save a lot of time in the future.
The only people who are never out of a job are tradesmen, electricians, plumbers, the kind of guys who get their hands dirty but drive a really nice car on the weekend. They don't need computers because they're too busy earning a living. Australia needs a few more of them, and, if my cricket team is any guide, there's a hundred thousand Indians in Sydney doing all the computer stuff already. It is absolutely not the state's role to tell businesses how to run themselves.