Our bank details and tax returns are protected by a sleepless army of alpha geeks
Decisions, decisions. A member of my household is currently considering whether to take a new job. It is well paid and interesting, and he would be working with a small group of like-minded alpha geeks. The company is on the up, and he is being offered share options. The downside is that the job comes with a pager.
Even geeks resent technology sometimes. After all, it is not only doctors and underpaid personal assistants in the fashion industry who must be at the beck and call of their pager nine-to-five 24 hours a day. There are no GPs or midwives in my social circle, but that does not stop our drunken dinner parties being interrupted by emergency calls. The health and status of server farms, like that of pregnant women, is not dictated by the time of day.
It has happened to me, but, thankfully, only once. OpenDemocracy had run a spoof piece about the incumbent Hungarian prime minister that had rankled his supporters and detractors alike. From one of these groups (we will never know which) a lone coder emerged, subjecting the website to a week-long overload of automated requests, known as a distributed denial of service attack. Thus, at midnight on a Saturday night, as I was escorting two inebriated friends home on the night bus from Islington, I found myself on my mobile reassuring a frazzled server manager in Reading that his work was for a good cause.
I know how lucky I have been after spending time with one particular pager-endowed friend over the Christmas period. We were enjoying a couple of glasses of cider at my local pub for just two hours, during which time his pager went off no fewer than six times. As head of information technology for one department of a major investment bank, this man has a life that takes place against a constant narrative of technical glitches.
The pager is a small device, but a pernicious one. On the ski slopes of the Sierra Nevada, over after-dinner coffees at an intimate restaurant, even on the loo, the device will send messages reminding my friend that work is not far away. The machines upon which a large part of the economy relies, and for which he is responsible, buzz away in his absence, patiently awaiting his return to the grindstone.
The computers that store your bank details, your tax returns and health records, are tended by an army of system administrators comparable in size to the British infantry. It's worth reminding yourself, the next time you log on to transfer funds, that the health and security of the networks, both open on the internet and closed in the intranets of companies that manage millions upon millions of pounds worldwide, are as important as the health and security of the nation. This will certainly be a reality that our household can no longer ignore, if the dreaded pager turns out to become its latest member.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
