IT: Once a gateway, now a barrier

First it was a tool, now it's an excuse. What happened to the payoffs? I’ve noticed a curious contrast in how IT is marketed vs what’s actually done in practice. The marketers like to say that IT will ensure access to information.

What I see is the opposite. Information is harder to find; more explanations have to be given to justify access that is otherwise public; and it’s harder to simply show up and read the information that is otherwise freely available.

A few years ago I could read public billboards and signs. Stand there. On the street. Reading them. Thousands would ignore me.

Today, a momentary delay in my pace…and the goons swoon down. Piercing eyes. Those “suspiciousness”-accusations.

Open billboards used to be fun to read. Now they are simply the excuse for greater intrusions.

And it’s not just on the street, but in the office. It sure is amazing how easily they wall off information.

Stuff I used to be able to read without problem. Suddenly it’s behind all sorts of firewalls.

To get access to this information that was otherwise freely available, I’ve got to do more things than I want to mention.

Yet, those in charge like to raise the barriers to entry; all the while affording themselves greater leeway in freely disseminating that which should not be disseminated.

Previously touted as the gateway to information; now if anyone dares request that information they are labeled suspicious;

It was sold as the greater universalizing factor; now that equalizing force is bought, sold, and created on the presumption that “those in the know” are to have unlimited access, while those who “do not deserve to know” are given greater burdens than what was required to simply read the paper-version.

Amazing how much something that is supposed to save time does the opposite.

There are others in this cave.