Restoring the computational balance

Sir Bonar writes:

I think there is a balance in society which has been lost, and I believe we can use technology to restore it.

If we think back 50 years, what we knew about ourselves as a country was held centrally on a single computer installation owned by the Central Computer Agency. Housewives who wished to calculate their weekly expenditure on groceries would use the back of an envelope. Accountants would calculate taxation for small businesses using a comptometer

The “processing balance”, as I call it, lay very much at the centre of society. And perhaps it is no coincidence that these were stable and happy times, when Britain punched above its weight, the police were generally trusted and youth well behaved.

Now, of course, every Tom, Dick and Harry has a device no larger than a ladies’ powder puff which can forecast weather, play poker and map speed cameras while working out new ways to avoid tax. I’ve seen children play illicit simulation games on their mobile telephones. Drug dealers use Blackberries and Twittering to evade law enforcement.

The balance, as it were, has been lost.

Much as we might like to turn the clock back, none of us can do that. To restore the status quo ante, we must go forward.

At the heart of government in the golden era we used to have three secret Lyons Electronic Offices with 8kb of store each. At that time the average man on the Clapham Omnibus (a Routemaster, I might add) had at most a slide rule in his top pocket. In simple computational terms, to restore that balance of power we at the heart of government would now need several thousand times the computational power of 50 million personal computers.

By my reckoning, the technical specification would be a 256 terahertz computer with 512 petabytes of RAM offering 170 teraflops of processing power. Of course it would need no more than 505,000 keyboards and a similar number of VDUs attached (given that Civil Service numbers have dropped so sharply in recent years) and also 505,000 mice. These devices would be attached to the central processor by means of 1,515,000 wires of varying length.

We had a most encouraging meeting with our suppliers over a champagne reception at Somerset House. They’re very positive about the plan, and assure me it is entirely feasible. They’ve just constructed what they call a computational smelter large enough to simulate the various wars the US is now contemplating. And the whole thing would fit into a space no larger than MoD Main Building.

If we were simply to make this one investment, we would then have the only computer government would need. We could replace the chaos of all the different computers in one go. We would invest now, in order to save for years to come. It made an awful lot of sense to me.

Above all I think it would go a long way, by restoring the computational balance in society, to restoring social harmony and cohesion. I predict it would restore trust and deference to properly accountable authority.

I wonder what others think?

Published by Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO on 18/03/08 at 9:41am

Comments

We are delighted to see such forward thinking at the heart of government

ANO
Managing Partner
Andersomover Consultants

Reply by ANO on 03/18/08 at 12:03 pm
He’s taking the mick

Reply by on 03/18/08 at 12:11 pm
In fact the technology has moved on and several of our members would be delighted to supply systems of even greater power that would sit inside the basement of the Cabinet Office”

Bernard Luskies
Secretary General
British Data Proressing Manufacturers Association

Reply by Bernard Luskies on 03/18/08 at 12:12 pm
I think Sir Bonar raises a very interesting idea here. But why not just connect the central data smelter to the existing GSI, or to its successor FLEX? My company has just advised on something very similar for the Chinese government. It has been a great success story. Interestingly, the effects on restoring trust in authority have been very much as Sir Bonar here predicts.

Reply by Gareth Wallis, Enterprise Consulting Ltd on 03/18/08 at 12:22 pm
I note with some satisfaction that Sir Bonar’s propensity for centralisation is second only to his grasp of Artificial Intelligence as evidenced by his insistence on mice and civil servants (in that order).

I am equally heartened by his implied support for the Routemaster and his courageous trust in the British technology consultants and suppliers.

Reply by Adriana Lukas on 03/18/08 at 12:38 pm
Would it not be a better solution to the imbalance which has arisen to redress the scenarios alternatively? My own company, as specialists in this field, would be well placed to produce software for small mobile devices which would be cumbersome to use, tiny in power and inaccurate. A slide rule used to described as a device for multiplying 2 by 2 and getting an answer of approximately 4. We could do considerably worse than that.

Reply by Gareth Morgan on 03/18/08 at 2:54 pm
Sir Bonar is merely re-treading what Transformational Government is doing anyway. The ‘thin client’ mantra (dumb terminals and mainframes) has already been adopted as policy. Without these regular cycles between central/de-central (the ‘rip and replace’ model) it’s very hard for the IT industry to make any money.

Of course, one day maybe someone like Sir Bonar might care to think about how you improve services. But in the meantime this focus on technology for its own sake helps keep the £14Bn a year industry going - and mainframe vendors everywhere will be very grateful.

I presume the rumor Sir Bonar will be retiring soon and taking up a well paid Non Exec position with a leading IT company that leads in the supply of mainframes and dumb terminals is merely gossip-mongering? At least, until the contract has been signed and sealed of course.

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Reply by Samantha on 03/18/08 at 6:42 pm
I fear Sir Bonar may be missing a trick. I attended a fascinating academic-industry “ThrustThink” session the other day, about the very real danger the Chinese may be getting ahead in the race to keep the proles under complete surveillance. Apparently it’s all to do with Kwonton computing and cubits (funny that - I thought they’d gone metric). Apparently just one of these contraptions could keep tabs on all the mutinous malingerers in the country by shuffling cubits of data in a multi verse. Anyway, a crash program is needed, if UK Plc is going to compete with societies who have eliminated crime and bolshie behaviour through such nefarious poetical means. Now where did I leave those secateurs?

Reply by on 03/18/08 at 9:08 pm
This is great news. At last, a forward thinking leader at the top of the Civil Service. The proposal is entirely logical, and a project plan to achieve it, with Sir Bonar as the sponsor, is entirely achievable—on time, too, I might add.

But there’s much more that can be done. A couple of chums and I, all good fellows who have tinkered around with technology since our uni days and subsequently at certain government “research establishments”, have designed exactly such a computational device. What’s more, we firmly believe it can be built right here in the UK, using local manufacturers and sub-contractors, many of which will be engaged to build the unique (and quite complex) sub-assemblies required for a computational device of such awe-inspiring capability. We plan to use the same manufacturing coordination processes that were well proven in developing and building Concorde (but without the damn Froggies!), and we also believe it will be important to ensure a well-organised workforce to ensure no disruption during production, so we’ve already had some exploratory discussions with a number of key union leaders.

Absolutely central to the success of this truly visionary project, and subsequently the ability of the British software and services industry to once again establish its ascendancy in the global IT industry, is the development of the proprietary programming that will, quite simply, bring this device alive and effectively and efficiently use and allocate every one of those teraflops. The work some of the chaps in the lab have been doing on this is simply awe-inspiring, and there is a clear view that the proprietary nature of the work will lock UK business, citizens, and then subsequently the rest of the world into a paradigm shifting, strategic inflection point in computational processes.

We’ve already formed the company—Computational International Ltd—and more than a few of the great and the good have taken founders’ shares. We’ll allocate some to Bonar’s blind trust!

Reply by on 03/18/08 at 10:54 pm
Excellent news, my company QCIC (Quis Computiet Ipsos Computes) will shortly be putting a proposal to the NAO for a very similar, though slightly more powerful, device. This will also incorporate our now familiar ‘Policy Indeterminism Mapping Protocol’.

Reply by on 03/19/08 at 10:17 am
If we think back 50 years, what the state thought it knew about citizens was limited to 24kb of digital information (plus several kilotons of paper records). Housewives were largely numerate, and accountants had an intimate acquaintance with actual figures - no shaping or massaging of spreadsheet abstractions.

The “processing balance” meant that police had to know their patch (some even lived on it) and engender mutual respect, youths behaved like youths but weren’t stereotyped, vilified, profiled and ASBOed for it. And, much to the dismay of the now largely surplus-to-requirements bureaucracy that had been running it, the Great British empire started its long, inevitable slide down the global boxing divisions.

Now, of course, every Rod, Jane and Freddy can use devices that enable them to set up innovative new businesses, keep in touch with friends and family around the world, work and play in a networked ‘global village’ and participate in a democratised media that increasingly keeps states and corporations on their toes (if not actually honest). The bad guys are still the bad guys and, as always, there’s smart and stupid on both sides of the law.

In complex systems there is no balance, only temporary or localised equilibria. Life exists at the edge of chaos, and control is an illusion (or should that be “a dangerous delusion").

Status Quo keeps reforming, and the lads seem to do OK out of the same old four chords - even in a forward-looking world where kids can rip, remix and publish their own tunes from their bedroom…

Reply by Phil Booth on 03/19/08 at 5:23 pm
is tom watson a modern day sir bonar or a real jedi goodie ?

Reply by on 03/21/08 at 9:01 am
We have assessed comments to date on Sir Bonar’s “Restoring the balance” piece. We feel the contributions by Messrs Hogan and Booth are counterproductive, and are therefore best deleted. We’d prefer to stick to constructive debate.

Can you put Sir Bonar’s office in touch with Aussie Morris, Luskies, Buck, and Ano? Sir Bonar would like to meet them over dinner.

We’re rather perplexed by the contribution from Samantha. Who is she, exactly? This appears to contain an element of sexual innuendo which is inappropriate. Can you confirm for us that her company is a member of Intellect?

Perhaps you could let Messrs Morgan and Wallis know we are already pursuing their suggestions.

Sir Bonar’s office has asked me to inform you all he’s delighted with your comments and feedback to date.

Reply by Andrew Kelvin, Press Liaison officer on 03/21/08 at 10:10 am

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