Having been a brilliant consultant for most of my career (the part of my career enveloped by daylight, that is) I just have to sit back and laugh heartily at all this “debate” surrounding “election automation”. Organisations and, in this case, entire societies that seek to use technology to metaphorically squeeze a lard-ass into a tight pair of Diesel-branded jeans hoping (in that dysfunctional way that they regard “hope”) to look cool are a consultant’s wet dream.

Technology vendors are essentially not contractually obligated to ensure that their clients use the technology they sell properly. They are, on the other hand, contractually held to installing the technology as per the client’s documented requirements.

As such; tough luck to most buyers of today’s technology products is what I say.

The principles applied to buying and applying technology are essentially the same whether it involves a multi-million dollar monstrosity of an application or a ten-dollar pocket calculator. The functional requirements you have in mind when buying a calculator could be summarised in one statement:

Fast and paperless resolution of arithmetical problems.

But then we quite easily take the concept of arithmetical problems for granted because arithmetic has been so effectively and deeply-ingrained in us (most of us at least) over decades of formal education.

We get arithmetic. And as such, a pocket calculator is a superbly potent tool in the hands of the average elementary school graduate.

So here is the really interesting question:

But do we as a people really get the whole idea of “elections”?

The above question teleports us back to Fiesta September of 2005 when the singular essence of the underlying issue at the time was quite simple:

We Filipinos remain utterly incapable of holding ourselves accountable for the quality of the bozos we elect.

The events leading up to September of 2005 highlighted the essence of our character as a self-described “democratic” people:

:D A people who pinned their hopes on the democratic process of impeachment (a process than can have many outcomes), yet bizarrely expected only one acceptable outcome.

:D A people who elected their representatives to Congress by popular vote and then deny that these officers of the Legislature represent the will of the Majority.

Buying the latest whiz-bang technology (not to mention the half-wit expectation of getting it up-and-running in time for the 2010 Fiesta Election) is the kind of brainwave reserved for morons.

Even more moronic is the whole effort to debate the infinitessimally-small technology component of the whole debacle of Pinoy-style “democracy”, given that we do not get the whole point behind it all — holding ourselves accountable for the choices we make.

It’s simple, really™ — though not for the small-minded.

============
Join us on Facebook!

Fatal error: Call to undefined function p75HasVideo() in /homepages/39/d169067170/htdocs/voices/wp-content/themes/NewFV/single-default.php on line 57