Sympathy For The Devil
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled…,” says Robert De Niro as he delicately peels the shell from a boiled egg with his overlong china white finger nails, “…was to convince the world he didn’t exist.”
This satanic verse is taken from the 1987 film noir Angel Heart which also featured Lisa Bonet, just for reference you understand, doing the hokey-pokey while blood poured through the ceiling above. It came to mind when considering how the Internet has duped us into believing that it is a mainstream tool that can be deployed by, well, just about anybody.
I remember when I first got the Internet. On the phone at my desk in London talking to a banker in New York, my internet penny dropped as she told me that she had just posted a document to an extranet folder we were both staring at. As her words bounced off a satellite above, her document simultaneously raced under the Atlantic to a nearby server and appeared on my screen. Bingo bongo I was hooked! Nowadays my damascene moment is run of the mill. The wonder of it all goes largely unappreciated throughout suburbia as every teenager and Internet convert publishes their profile to MySpace and sits back to admire the instantaneous fruits of pushing the Enter key. Meanwhile mother has mastered email, father has built his own genealogy site and wives everywhere are hawking their little darlings’ red wellies from last year on eBay. Upstairs 10 year olds are swapping shaving tips in chat rooms and under the stairs ignorant terrorists are encrypting secret messages using advanced encryption technologies and sending them to their ignorant terrorist friends.
All this familiarity and assimilation of the Internet into our lives has a knock on effect. In the office above the garage Internet entrepreneurs are downloading “enterprise” e-commerce software for $900 under the impression that can launch their e-shop and start making their fortunes within hours. Small companies turn to middle size agencies to build them their web presence. The agencies take them on thinking they can make a modest but quick buck and then watch helplessly as their margin is bled as their small clients become the most demanding. Middle size companies employ bigger agencies only to find the planned delivery date is as illusive as rocking horse poo. And the bigger companies employ the biggest agencies and all too often find that a fountain and expensive modern art in reception doesn’t equate to an Internet development capability worthy of its name.
So what is this trick that the Internet has slipped in though the back door? What has happened while our backs were turned and we counted the digital shillings? Simple, we’ve forgotten that it is all about technology, technology, technology. Agencies can go on all they want about creative thinking, customer touch points and consumer propositions but underlying it all, on the web, is technology. Take the parallel of a car. Twenty years ago there was little that couldn’t be fixed under the bonnet with a hammer and a Haynes manual. Lift the hood on your BMW these days and try and do anything but change the oil and washer fluid and you are taking your warranty and your children’s ride to school in your own hands. Building websites back then was much the same, it was Janet & John. These days it’s Stephen Hawkins. Although tools and methodologies of development have improved allowing for the creation of {nerd alert} distributed object oriented-code {end nerd alert} so has the way they diagnose a problem with your BMW. They plug it into a computer. BMW engineers have to clean their finger nails before they go into the garage, sorry, laboratory.
So as certain types of websites require more and more technical complexity, so the level of not only technical know-how but just as importantly process that controls, validates, checks, checks again and improves what is being built. But this is very difficult for agencies who live in a deadline driven world. If the ad featuring the URL has been printed and is hitting the shelves on the 16th then the website must be live on the 15th. On the flip side the techies live in a process driven world. If the project plan says three weeks testing and for whatever reason that cannot be completed until the 26th, then to hell with the 15th go live date and the press ad. Neither side is entirely right. Many things may have contributed to this very real situation, but an insoluble truth remains. To utilise to the best possible effect the technologies that underwrite the Internet, not only must the best professionals be employed to put it to work, but the management of it must truly get to grips with why the Internet has become such a fantastic user experience, invest in what they lack and look hard at out how they manage their digital processes and clients. The bottom line is the technology is bloody complicated, it changes every single day and you can’t craft it with a child’s hammer.
Meanwhile in agencies up and down the country internet development teams are being rapidly bolstered by a hire here and a new computer there. There is a new revenue stream but business goes on pretty much as normal. Better the devil you know…
Sam Brownfield
23rd November 2006
Leave a Comment