The public cause takes priority over individual needs according to Lieutenant D’Agosto of the New York Police Homicide Division. Okay, so he is a made up character from the Prendergast series by Preston and Child but is he really speaking the truth?
Life is complicated, at one end lies totalitarianism and at the other liberalism. Does society need total control or does it let everybody do what they wish? Each of us leans towards one end of the scale or the other. Of course, as always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle yet the situation is more complicated as each of us is controlling in some aspects and much more free in others.
So does the public cause take priority? No, not always. There are some things that the public may want but that will not be good for them in the long term. Take poverty for example. Most people will agree that it is a bad thing yet few are happy to give up what they have hard earned for someone who may, from their perspective, have brought their situation upon themselves. As Zobel de Alaya, chairman and chief executive officer of Ayala Corporation said however, ‘We all pay for poverty and unemployment and illiteracy.’ Defining what is good and what is not for the public cause here is very difficult.
We all suffer from something similar at work though on a much smaller scale. Do we control every aspect of the user’s interaction with the technology we supply or do we take a much more liberal attitude and give them what they want?
In one direction lies lockdown and totalitarian control while in the other lies anarchy and a breakdown in interoperability and security. The users may want absolute freedom to install and use whatever tools they like yet in the end will be grateful that we don’t let this happen.
All of life is a balance.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 