Season's greetings

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone from the IT Skeptic.
[Warning: socio-political rant follows]

This is the time of year I pause from throwing rocks and shovelling scorn, long enough to acknowledge that everyone I deal with in the ITSM world, on either end of a debate, are real people who almost always are acting in good faith with the best interests of us all at heart.

So thank-you everybody for wanting to advance Information Technology. Thank-you for contributing to the ITSM community. Thank-you for being good sports when I give you a hard time.

We in IT fulfill a leading role in making this planet better and better every year. My only faith is optimism, which I am evangelical about. I cannot understand why we - as in Western culture - are so miserably pessimistic in the face of all the contrary evidence. There has never been a better time in history to be alive, and I expect the future to be even better. Life's great. I for one have no intention of deliberately making myself miserable to serve some misplaced sense of guilt over being one of the luckiest guys in the history of the species.

And I also firmly believe that the way to ensure it is even better for my son and the 2 billion other sons and daughters is to (1) advance science, (2) progress civilisation, and (3) grow the world economy. IT plays a big part in all of those.

This may seem ironic coming from such a technology Luddite as me, but I don't see a contradiction. Technology improves our world. Irrational exuberant embrace of technology is dangerous or just foolish (e.g social media, BYOD, Cloud, corn-ethanol, hybrid cars, nanotech, Justin Bieber ...)

The threats to our future come not from technology or even climate. The threats come from fundamentalism, the rejection of rational thought, and a failure to embrace humanity as it is. And most of that is driven by ignorance and superstition. If only

• all countries (especially the Islamic world but I'm looking at Christians here too) restricted the ability of a few sick radicals to brainwash their children in the name of religious schooling
• the USA - leader of the world's culture and mood - spent money on better schools for all its citizens instead of guns and jails to protect a frightened middle class
• all armies invaded with teachers as well as soldiers
• all the religious leaders had as much guts, wisdom and humanity as the Dalai Lama
• all schools taught more history, economics, science and civics - and less bleeding-heart post-modernist claptrap - so that our kids actually knew how the world works
• we paid teachers (and nurses and cops) what they are worth
• we chose to admire the wise and learned instead of drug-addled warblers and pin-brained thespians....

...then we could have an even happier Happy New Year one day. Oops, I'm throwing rocks again.

For now count your blessings, listen to the voices of optimism for a change. I wish everyone a great 2013.