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The Industry Standard Myth

So many times in schools I’ve heard people defend their choice of software for students by trotting out the old “industry standard” argument. They reason that schools should have their students using certain pieces of software because “it’s what the industry uses”.

Aside from the fact that most of the people making these claims are often career teachers who have never worked in an industry outside of education, they often also neglect to condider that not all industries are the same. There is often a bizarre kind of expectation that all students will end up working in the finance/legal world of a bank or a lawyer’s office, or in a narrowly defined “creative industry”, both places where, yes it’s true, you will sometimes find an incumbent piece of software that has been in use there since God was a boy.

If I may tell a couple of stories to make a point…

Story 1

When I was still teaching (computing subjects) one of the tasks I would get my kids to do was to create an instruction manual (either as a written manual or a series of screencasts) for a piece of software they had never seen before, that was not the incumbent tool, in different categories. So for example, for Word Processing they could choose anything other than Microsoft Word (which was our school’s standard WP tool at the time). So they got to look at things like Google Docs, Open Office Writer, Zoho Writer, Libre Writer, AbiWord, Scrivener, and so on.

They were usually quite shocked at

  • the number of alternatives available
  • how good some of them were
  • how much overlap existed between them all
  • that what they were really doing was not necessarily “Word”, but “word processing”

Their usual takeaway was that the only reason most of them were using Word was that it was what they were used to, and that when they started to look around, there were lots of good alternatives.

Turns out that, for the most part, a word processor is just a word processor, a spreadsheet is just a spreadsheet, a video editor is just a video editor, and so on. It’s their points of difference that make them interesting, but if you’ve never tried anything else then you won’t know what those difference are.

Story 2

When my son was in high school he got a new computer (MacBook Air). Thinking that his father was some magical supply of free software, he asked me to install MS Office on it. I said I did not have a licence for it, that I wasn’t about to buy one, and that I did not support him (or me) pirating software. I suggested he install Open Office on it, which he did, and after a week of complaining that it wasn’t Word, he decided he actually liked it better, and still has Open Office on his computer to this day (although he usually uses Google Docs now)

Story 3

A few years ago I was asked to collaborate on writing a book with someone, although I ended up doing the bulk of the writing and editing. It didn’t take long to realise that Microsoft Word was quite ill-suited for writing very long, dynamic documents like a book, so I started hunting around to see what other options might be available. I stumbled across Scrivener, an amazing writing tool which takes a completely different approach to long form writing. It was quite surprising to realise that the commonly accepted “industry standard” tool may not always be the best tool.

My point is that we often just use what we get used to, regardless of whether it’s actually the “best” tool for the job or not. If we never question the status quo, nothing ever changes. (Actually things change all the time, but once we get wrapped up in using a certain tool, if we never look sideways we never notice things changing around us.)

The “industry standard” argument is a spurious one. It makes sense for some kids, at some ages, doing some kinds of work to use the software that “the industry” is using at the moment. But for the majority of kids, at most ages, for the majority of the time, it’s a complete furphy, because really, who knows what “the industry” will be using in 5 or 10 years time.

It’s better to be adaptable, than perfectly prepared for a world that may no longer exist. If I was in industry I’d rather employ someone who knew how to learn and adapt to ANY piece of software, rather than to be an expert in something we no longer use.

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An Introduction to AI and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are driving a ton of innovation in computing at the moment. AI is showing up in nearly every major technology, and seem to give our machines the impression that they are almost human, almost intelligent. But remember it’s called Artificial Intelligence for a reason – it’s artificial. While these technologies might seem mysterious and scary, they are like most things in technology – easy to understand if you have a basic idea of what’s going on.

This video aims to unpack the core idea behind Machine Learning – that if we can provide a machine with enough examples of something then it will eventually be able to recognise and draw conclusions for itself.

Links to things mentioned in this video

Have fun exploring! If you end up making your own experiments in the Teachable Machine, please leave a link in the comments below!

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The 3 – 2 – 1 Principle for keeping your data safe

Memory Stick Collection

I was cleaning out a drawer in my home office this morning and found this collection of old USB memory sticks dating back quite a few years. Remember those days when you thought you were so cool because you had this little storage drive full of all your stuff in your pocket? I recall working in a school back in those days where we actually mandated that every student had to have a “USB”, such was the apparent importance of these things. The intention was for students to keep their personal data safe and secure, but we used to constantly find them left behind in the USB ports of the classroom computers after a lesson. Or they would sometimes mysteriously just stop working. Or the kids would lose them. USBs may have been cool, portable and handy, but they were about the most insecure method for managing data I can think of.

(Side note: I’ve never quite known what to call these things. Calling them simply a “USB” seems stupid to me, because USB – or Universal Serial Bus – is a data interface standard, not a name for a device. Lots of devices might use a USB plug as the connection interface but that’s not the name of the actual device. I’ve owned microphones and printers and cameras and all kinds of things that connect using a USB interface, but we don’t call all these devices “USBs”. That would be silly. If you must use the term USB for these portable memory devices, at least call them a USB memory stick)

Some people seem to feel like their data is perfectly safe and secure if they have it stored on one of these little memory sticks. Let me tell you, for the vast, vast majority of people, letting them manage their own data storage is a really bad idea. The only real explanation I hear for why people feel memory sticks are a secure way to store data is that they “know where their data is”. People actually say that they won’t put their data anywhere that they don’t know where it stored. It might sound good to say that your data is safe as long as you know where your data is stored, but trust me, just knowing where your data is stored has nothing to do with it actually being secure.

As for relying on memory sticks, those things are the least secure way to store your data I can think of. They can get lost, fall out of your pocket, go through the wash, get eaten by the dog, or you leave them in the back of another computer and forget about them, or they simply just stop working for no apparent reason. If you have a few of them it is near impossible to keep track of what’s stored on them. Other than for absolute emergencies or moving a file as a last resort, USB memory sticks, or whatever you want to call them, are probably a really bad idea.

So when it comes to storing data, what IS a good idea then? For most people who never really think much about boring things like secure data storage, the answer is the cloud. Whether it’s Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive or some other cloud service, it will be infinitely more secure than any storage “system” you could come up with by yourself. Once your data is in the cloud it gets securely stored, safely backed up and is accessible from anywhere, on any device.

I know what you’re thinking. “Yes, but I don’t trust the cloud, I don’t know where my data is stored.” Well, you probably have a bank account but you don’t know where your money is stored either, so I’m not sure what your point is. Claiming your data is more secure on a memory stick would be like putting your money in a shoebox under your bed and claiming it is more secure than the bank. Just like money, data is secured by the processes and infrastructure that store it, not from simply knowing where it is. I’ll say it again. For the average person – yes, you – the safest place to store your data, by far, is in the cloud.

But what if the internet goes away? But what if the cloud loses it? But what if the data centre burns down? Or what if I do store it in the cloud, and that free storage they give me now becomes something I have to pay for one day? (How terrible that you might one day get asked to pay for a service you’re using!)

If you really don’t trust the cloud, then at least get a portable hard drive, so you’re not dealing with these dinky little memory stick things. In fact, while you’re at it, buy a second portable hard drive, because you’re going to need to make a backup of the backup, because what if you lose the first one?

Which brings me to my main point. Data security – or keeping your important data safe – is a big deal. The truth is most people wouldn’t really care if they lost that Word file of a resume for a job they applied for 10 years ago. But losing your entire photo collection? Or all your music? Or videos of the kids when they were little? Or letters from your deceased parents? This is the stuff that’s a big deal. This is the stuff that you don’t want to put at risk. This is the stuff that you don’t ever, ever, ever want to have just stored on a memory stick.

So how should you store it? There’s a general principle of keeping data safe. The 3-2-1 rule. Three copies of the data. Stored in at least two different mediums. One of which is in a different physical location. Let me elaborate…

Three – you need to have three copies of important data. One is clearly not enough because if you lose it or it gets destroyed, that’s it. It’s gone for good. A second copy – a backup – is important. But if the data is really critical, the I-really-cannot-lose-this kind of stuff, then a third copy gives you peace of mind.

Two – you need to store the data in at least two mediums. There would be no sense having three copies of your data if each copy was on floppy disks. I don’t know about you, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a floppy disk reader, so having everything stored in one now-obsolete format means you can’t read any of the copies. You might think floppy disks are a silly example. Well how about this? I own a number of computers – mostly Macs and Chromebooks – and not one of them has a port that can read those USB memory sticks in my drawer. Those old memory sticks use a standard called USB-A, but all modern computers use the newer USB-C format, rendering all those old memory sticks now obsolete. Sure I could use an adapter, but the fact is those old memory sticks are yesterday’s technology. You should keep the three copies of your data in at least two different formats because you never know how technology will change and you want to make sure that you’re always using formats that will still be readable.

One – you need at least one of those copies to be stored offsite. There’s no sense having your three copies in two different formats if they are all stored in your house and the house burns down. At least one of them needs to be kept in a completely different physical location. Offsite. Your parents’ house. A friends’ place. Or in the cloud. Somewhere. Just not in the same place as the others.

As it turns out, having your important stuff stored in the cloud addresses every one of these requirements – it’s another copy, it’s in a different format, and it’s offsite. And regardless of how well you think you can manage your own data on those portable drives, putting your data in the cloud puts it into a real data centre which stores it in real time, with real backup processes, real biometric security, real disaster management plans, and real data management processes. I don’t care how well you think you can manage your own data, you’re an amateur compared to the way the data centre looks after it.

If you’re still not sure convinced that the cloud is a safer alternative than that old SCSI Zip drive you can’t seem to find right now, take a look at this video tour of a Google data center.

Should you have all your data only in the cloud? Of course not! 3-2-1! Weren’t you paying attention? Go get yourself a couple of hard drives and set up Time Machine or SuperDuper with a regular scheduled backup. Then after you’ve done that, go upload everything to a reputable cloud service.

But stop relying on those stupid USB memory sticks!