IDF 2011: Intelligent devices won't kill off IT support

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With increasing talk of intelligent devices that can do everything except feel pain, you could forgive skilled IT workers for worrying their services might not be needed in the near future. Intel has news for you.

Far from being surplus to requirement, we might not actually have enough people to look after increasingly sophisticated devices, according to Dr Genevieve Bell, Intel’s director of user experience.

When asked if smarter devices spelt the death of the IT department, Bell responded: “That’s profoundly unlikely. When devices [users] manage get smarter, the constellation they belong to doesn’t… We could actually end up with a deficit of people who know how to manage and operate and maintain it.”

Technology can be like a backpack full of baby birds all saying ‘feed me, feed me, feed me’

Speaking at the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco, she added: “Many middle class homes in Cairo had a guy in once a month to look after the garden and then a guy to [do the same] for IT. That was the price of having technology… [Historically] the best maids in China could cook three cuisines. These days, the best maids know how to troubleshoot the network.”

The devices will have less reliance on us and be of more use, but they will still need someone to watch over them at a high level.

“Who are the panel beaters of the computing continuum?” added Bell.

Our relationship with computing devices also has to change in the future. At present, it’s still quite co-dependent, according to Bell.

“We do an enormous amount of looking after our devices. It’s a very demanding relationship,” she said. “The next generation is shifting that – from a relationship where we do all the caretaking.”

Bell described one of her friend’s feelings about the demands technology places upon us. Sometimes technology is so demanding it’s “like a backpack full of baby birds all saying ‘feed me, feed me, feed me.’ Sometimes she wanted to zip up the backpack and throw it in the water.”

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