What I have to say about Information Technology and the New IT Management Educational Paradigm Views from an Educator, Inventor, and Hacker

In a recent lecture, I addressed the students' need to have a better point of view about Cybersecurity and Information Technology. First, I told them about how I feel about Information Technology as it stands in the modern world. That part of the lecture went like this.

One of the problems in the Information Technology field and related fields is that, for the most part, the removal of fun from the job and its replacement by prosaic and characterless logic. The more one looks at how things are going, the more it is plain to see that there must be some revolution or resetting. Unfortunately, many IT leaders are only concerned with the way things look now, not with innovation and forward-thinking. The problem is that innovation requires imagination and creativity. Imagination and creativity necessitate that one does not look at the present situation but looks at future possibilities. Doing such, I believe, is beyond the ability of some so-called leaders to actualize, not because they are not competent or intelligent, but because it is not one of the talents bestowed upon them.

OK, I know I may have offended some, so let me pose it this way. I was once in my favorite bar, and these two young female Asians talked about music and how it's just like any other subject, and once you know the formula, the rest is easy. So, this older man sitting in a booth next to them handed one of the girls some sheet music and said, play this; she pulled out her sax and played, and it sounded OK, nothing to write home about, but OK. So, he asked the other girl to play it, and she pulled out her trumpet and played; there was not much of a difference between the two besides the differences in the instruments. Then he played it on his sax, it sounded so much better, and people responded by clapping. At this point, he said, you two understand the notes and what they mean so that you could play the music, but you do not embody nor have knowledge of the feeling, the soul, the heart, and the body of the music. You can't express the emotions of the piece, so your audience can't feel it. You both are excellent masters of your instruments, but you are not musicians.

I feel somewhat similar about many IT people in the field today, they are masters of their tools and techniques, but they have no feeling behind their work; they lack the sensitivity, the heart, and the body of IT. They know the part of IT they are interested in but fall short of understanding why they are in IT or got into IT in the first place. Most of these people picked IT as a career; IT did not pick them. My statements are not a dig against such people, but it is an observation of the present state of IT.

Then I told them about how I feel that certifications have become too specific when dealing with IT; it is as if people were picking and choosing what sections of IT are relevant in today's world. The specificity of certification is creating what we used to call the "H key" technical expert. So the situation would be the person who comes in and tells you that they only work on H Key problems, and if you were having issues with the C key, you would have to call a C Key expert. So the problem is not the certifications; it is usually the person who has the accreditation thinking that the certificate allows them to be or feel all-encompassing.

These two situations are just a way of looking at things that are open to debate.