[kictanet] Regulation of ICT Industry or Practice?

[JImmy Gitonga]

Dear Grace,

Thank you for working with my rope analogy and by qualifying that what I
was talking about is the “knowledge of machines”.

As you can see, we now have two ropes to weave and untangle here.

The rope I alluded to, the ‘Knowledge of machines’,starts somewhere in the
19th century with analogue computers, through the silicon revolution, the
Mainframe, the Minicomputer, the PC, the mobile phone and the tablet. As
for the networks, we have come from wired electrical networks to digital
signals of Ethernet, wired as well as wireless communications all combining
into an amorphous “Cloud” where everything is defined in software and can
be offered as a service. This rope is ever so quickly building on what came
before that the “software engineer” has to continuously update his/her
skills or else …

The rope you are alluding to is where ICT meets established structures,
especially in education. The Internet in particular has unlocked learning
in such a grand scale that ivy league universities can only sell their
brand and the alumni network to attract top minds. A lot of that knowledge
is in ICT, both software and hardware. Anyone can now challenge an industry
by unleashing ICT on it. Finance especially banking and payments,
transportation, hospitality, medical diagnosis and practice, law; all these
“industries” are suffering since the scarcity, a lot of it artificial, is
being done away with, lowering the cost of doing that particular business.

It is interesting that my rope, “practice” is extremely hard if not
impossible at the moment to regulate with examination and certification.
Cloud computing courses are barely 2 years old at Masters level and they
are building on Distributed Systems knowledge. These have yet to trickle
down to Undergrad, though I see PaaS, IaaS and SaaS are being introduced at
this level. However I stand to be corrected on this. And all these are
behind the cutting edge that revolves around passion and self-learning. No
one can regulate that.

Your rope, “industry” is completely in flux especially as you noted, with
the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The innovation is in bringing ICT in
most part, to disrupt established modes of business by bringing speed,
accuracy and efficiency to bear. And there is iteration on the disruption
as the ICT practice itself evolves and is replaced by newer technology. the
“home” as well as the “shared economy” are changing lifestyles as we watch,
with the collapse of malls begins in the US of A and is bound to spread
across the world as online consumerism takes over. Who can regulate that?

Whew!


With the best regards,

*Jimmy Gitonga*

On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 4:57 PM, Grace Mutung'u <nmutungu at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear James,
> A few responses inline
> >
> > There is no contention on the need for hard working, innovative "ICT
> practitioners" passionate about their craft.
> >
> > What is in contention is whether this is the right time to bring in
> regulation to the industry, not regulation of the practice. What we don't
> have, because the ingredients forming the industry are still changing
> rapidly is an ICT profession. Will there ever be an all-round ICT
> "professional"?
> >
>
> This is not the premise.  There is a whole new world where we do not even
> have questions about " the profession ". Because these barriers are being
> eliminated everyday by alternative thinking.
>
> > Looking at human medicine, the human body is not changing, so one can
> standardise the medical profession, with known practices and various
> specialisations once the basic learning is done.
> >
> > It that it?
> >
>
> But even old professions are being affected by disruption.  Let me give an
> example of the law. The protectionism around it is decaying. Because people
> have realized that you do not need seven years to "know" the law. The long
> study is about prestige,  rites etc. You can learn it by yourself and use
> it,  case in point,  Omtatah.
> And Kenyans are now questioning these things,  what is the intent,  who
> will benefit most?
> And it is the thing about children born in the digital period. They
> question tradition and form their own supercultures.
>
> > We need to accept that ICT is in everything now. And it is entering
> mission-critical, life dependant places. And for a doctor who wants to
> carry out a remote surgical operation, the ICT professional helping him set
> up the equipment on local and remote site better be qualified in something
> beyond passion and innovation. Those don’t cut it at that point.
> >
>
> And the important qualifications in your example is knowledge of machines.
> Never mind whether someone stepped into a tertiary class and obtained
> papers. They could be self taught with a bit of apprenticeship etc
> But leave alone ICT,  AI is coming.....who will need regulation then...
> Man or machine?
>
> > The Wright brothers had no flying license. The pilots today do.
> >
>
> And today, planes can fly without pilots.
>
> > I liken it to weaving a rope. At some points all the strands have to
> come together and form the rope. Are we looking at the quality of the
> strand or the strength of the rope? If it is both, then there are two
> different mechanisms at play.
> >
>
> We could be in the era of unweaving the rope. Deconstruction of ideas that
> have protected certain quarters in society. At some point strands have to
> separate.
> Depends on how well woven the rope was.
>
> Regards,
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20161202/82f2f615/attachment.htm>