Ok – before I start this, some political positioning: from what I have seen (completely from the media) it does not appear to me that the trouble that has been witnessed in London and elsewhere in the country in recent days is anything other than aggressive, male thuggery. I don't believe that it is some sort of explicit political statement, nor directly the result of poverty or spending cuts.
However, whilst we wait for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, it is not enough for us to wring our hands and blame mindlessness, the individual or “the parents”; we need to understand what is going on in our society that means that groups of people can feel that they can act in a way that is such an affront to our societal norms (whether that's the looting, or allowing their kids to be out on the streets). Oh, and sticking them all in jail is just going to train them up for proper criminality in later life…
So, given all of that, there has been a lot of commentary on how technology and in particular social media and the BlackBerry Messenger network have been involved in the organisation of the criminal activity in the past five days. Now first of all, it is worth reflecting that the role that new technology has had is probably equal or less than the role that traditional media has had; in particular, 24 hour rolling news loves a photogenic story, and there is little as photogenic as a burning building. The £5 trillion lost on the stock markets in the past nine days (apparently amounting to £600 for every man, woman and child on the planet according to the BBC News last night) doesn't have great imagery so doesn't get the commentary.
Undoubtedly, though, new technology has had a role in what's gone on. And it provides an interesting example of the sorts of ways in which the simple (and dare I say it, intelligent) use of commodity, collaborative services can run rings around the big, process-centric technology of big organisations. The past 20 years has seen London, in particular, become the most CCTV-surveilled city in the world. Law enforcement has been systemised, de-skilled and dehumanised. Policing has become a matter of data monitoring and monitor monitoring with increasing use of face recognition software and other technologies to production-line the activities of keeping the streets safe.
The net result? A few kids, disaffected and probably never having come into contact with a police officer for good reasons can run rings around the whole, heavily technology-invested, “crime prevention” system with a couple of tweets and a few BBMs.
There are a couple of things that I conclude out of the events of the past few days; first of all, that we need to think long and hard about mechanising law enforcement – the evidence that it reduces crime has always been patchy (it tends to just redistribute it), and the last few days have shown that, when push comes to shove, it can't prevent it either (sure – perpetrators can be caught, but the jails are full so one only knows what's going to happen there); and secondly that a little bit of collaboration (whether to riot or to clean up afterwards) can be much more cost effective than heavy, processized technology implementation, and we should all consider how that might impact our own businesses now and in the future.
Discuss…
mmitII 