Just as the Model T Ford commoditised automobile travel, so did the stand alone personal computer (PC) commoditise computing.

With hindsight, the revolutionary PC, to be honest, was a design nightmare! The PCs were big, ugly, error prone, irritatingly loud and even had horrible text interfaces which required amazing memory skills to perform the most basic tasks. But it was cheap and we had one at home.
Pretty soon, we started networking these computers and the Local Area Network (LAN) was born. So started file sharing in the office. We then started networking these networks. Hallelujah! We had the internet which, by the way, is now just 25 years old.
John Gage of Sun Microsystems proclaimed in 1999 that “the network is the computer”. This, to me, is the most profound statement in computing history. Think about this: we exist in a cloud-centric world and do so in ever increasing terms. Then Cisco popularised the term Internet of Things (IoT), which morphed to the dizzy “the Internet of Everything (IoE).” Cisco, the largest networking infrastructure company in the world, is now having a conference appropriately titled: The Internet of Everything.
We now have a connected society, where literally every gadget can talk to one another. It is possible to programme your microwave to respond to your phone call to start defrosting or you may task the washing machine to start two hours before your get home. You could do either remotely but sadly we have forgotten how to talk to the person next door. On the positive side, we can now talk to distant relatives and friends and to people we have never met.

But things can go horribly wrong. Italian clothing company Benetton tried to use the following ingenious trick to determine who their buyers were. They inserted electronic radio frequency tags (RFID) on their clothes and did not disable them when customers checked out. They then placed RFID readers outside the store and surreptitiously videographed the unsuspecting customers.

There was, naturally, a public outcry and the project hastily abandoned with egg on their face. Imagine if I could tell you what colour underwear you are wearing (or not) and if you had not changed the said apparel since yesterday? Homework time: Google the phrase “I’d rather go naked than wear Benetton”. Why do I feel that many readers will do this assignment?

Cisco pioneered a full educational system to teach networking to university students with attendant support. While other computer multinationals looked at training as yet another revenue source, Cisco dutifully stayed on the academic route and developed a massive infrastructure for online exams, content for the e-learning platform and focused training for academics. They hand over this package to participating institutions for free. They invested rather than received money from these acclaimed courses.

I am happy to inform everyone that Alfie Hamid of Cisco has nominated Durban to host the Southern African Cisco conference. This means more than 250 academics from Sub-Saharan Africa will be converging in Durban and its surrounding conference facilities during the last week of May.
Needless to say, we plan to give these visitors a resounding Durban welcome – and remind them we indeed are the Sunshine City, especially given the recent negative views of our beautiful South Africa.
Alfie Hamid is a man with a magnificent beard. And he is smart to boot. This man’s name starts with C and ends with O. Alfie “Cisco” Hamid literally crisscrosses the continent cajoling universities to adopt the Cisco programme. He eats, sleeps and lives the brand, although I confess the sleep bit is my conjecture. What moves my cheese about Alfie is that he is gentle, peaceful and well-meaning but at the same time a frightfully focused person. He remembers personal things because he actually cares. Enough of the funding pitch, seeing that I already landed the conference.
When I meet people like Alfie – who espouse all good things and incite warm fuzzy feelings – I inwardly complain about the unfairness of life: I am short, ugly, not too bright and sometimes have tiny tufts of hair resembling a beard, so how did he get this beard? Then again, I suppose I have this column…
Let this hugely technical conference be a positive reminder to us that we in KwaZulu-Natal don’t miss out on everything. The world comes to us… sometimes.
Now, after this story, will Alfie fund us more equipment to train even more KwaZulu-Natal students at the Durban University of Technology? I wonder if I should be tactful or should I just ask him publicly? What do you suggest?
Pictured: Colin Thakur is the Director of the iNeSi e-Skills CoLab at the Durban University of Technology. He is a digital activist keen on upgrading the e-skills of the nation to enhance the quality of life. He lives and subscribes to the mantra One-person-One-connected device. Also pictured is Cisco’s Alfie Hamid.