A Career in Information Technology (IT)
Considering a career in IT is a little like negotiating the M25 - there are many ways in, it can be confusing and there are different opinions as to the best route - but once you've found your route it is very satisfying. One of the things that can make an IT career both exciting and daunting is the fact that there is an increasing rate of change in all areas of the field. This can make some skills irrelevant very quickly or over-emphasise others, so a well informed choice requires research.
There are numerous employment areas: quality management and standards, education and training, research, software testing, database design, configuration and change management, systems development, web design and so on.
Despite the bad publicity caused by the dot.com crashes of the past few years there are still rewarding careers to be had in IT - temporary slumps in IT recruitment are just that - temporary. Why? Because IT permeates every aspect of our lives and our lives can literally depend on it, which is why after September 11 the issues of risk management and business continuity have been brought to the fore in the business and IT press - and they are interesting and vital professions.
In fact, even if you don't pursue a career in IT specifically, you will still need IT skills. Whether you become a bus driver, an administrator, a doctor, a writer, a meter reader…whatever, IT skills are needed in the 21st century.
In the IT arena itself many are initially attracted by their love of technology from youth - often fostered by science fiction films, books or magazines. The cutting edge of IT today is an exciting place, so let's look at some examples.
Following a slump in interest in the 1980s, apart from in the chess playing computer Deep Blue, organisations began exploiting the commercial possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This has quickly led to speech recognition software and the 'intelligent agents' in web browsers.
Contemporary AI applications include Microsoft's Natural Language Processing Group - which is working on enabling people to instruct computers in plain language and has led to the grammar checker in MS Office. US corporation Cycorp have been compiling a database of 'rules', on the premise that given enough direction a computer will become capable of reasoning. Their technology has been successfully applied to a network security system.
In the opening story of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man two children become obsessed with a room which synthesises 'real' environments; an adventurous portrayal at the time of a virtual reality. In today's cultural lexicon, though, there is no surprise in the idea of virtual worlds, the concept of 'avatars' - virtual representations of individuals - or the act of interacting with a computer generated environment.
The underlying premise of VR today is to create fuller methods for human-computer interaction - there is much more to VR than 3-D entertainment.
A potentially very rewarding VR career area could be in the science of haptics - systems that create physical sensations via force feedback for VR applications. In the medical world haptics can take the form of a force feedback assembly to help train surgeons - vital in a job where it is not only sight but the feeling of making incisions and the pressure required in different circumstances that are needed.
In the entertainment world VR experts are aiming for total submersion interactivity - The Matrix beckons.
What about 'Robotics' , a term coined by writer and scientist Isaac Asimov, most famously in I Robot (1950) a collection of short stories that based their plots around contradictions in the 'Three Laws of Robotics'?
When robots were first used in industry in the 1950's it seemed that the vision of human facsimiles would remain unfulfilled. However, recently the humanoid robot has made a comeback courtesy of Honda Motor Company. In February 2002 the company celebrated the 25th anniversary of its listing on the New York Stock Exchange by having ASIMO, the world's most advanced humanoid robot, ring the opening bell for trading.
Honda's research was undertaken with the aim of developing a new type of robot that would be used in daily life, rather than a robot purpose-built for special operations.
ASIMO (Advanced Step In innovative MObility) is a people-friendly 120cm-tall machine that is able to perform tasks within the realm of the human environment. The latest version walks freely, climbs and descends stairways and slopes and has a top speed of 2 KM per hour. It has an onboard voice recognition function, and it is possible to use voice commands to control its arm and hand motions and locomotion. It can even recognize the direction of a sound source, enabling it to face the direction of its operators' voice, and follow their commands.
ASIMO robots are being leased to several corporations and museums for use in greeting people at offices and events and recently one started working as a receptionist for visitors to Honda's Aoyama Headquarters - although its salary is yet to be divulged.
The foregoing projects have the input of a multitude of IT areas from specialists in software development to the engineers to the project managers. These examples demonstrate that IT is such a diverse industry that there are a wide range of training and qualification paths - so narrowing down your area of interest may be an important first step in deciding on your route. However, if at a later date you decide to refocus your career aims, there will always be a way in for those who have a good grounding in another area of IT.
As your career unfolds you will find ongoing assistance from The British Computer Society (BCS). If you are not directly involved in IT you will likely take a user qualification, perhaps the massively popular European Computer Driving Licence, which The BCS administers in the UK.
If you go into IT, The BCS, formed near the beginning of modern computing development in 1957, is the Chartered body for all Information Systems professionals. Its 39,000 members benefit from an industry benchmark that denotes excellence and integrity and leads to enhanced career prospects. Indeed, The BCS can provide ongoing professional development to make an IT career attractive and successful - and who knows what you may be involved in...
For more information please visit www.bcs.org and www.ecdl.co.uk
Brian Runciman is editor of The BCS Annual Review
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