IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

278 Notes to Pages 206–211
65. Policy on, and evaluation of, AmI research is a continuous process that is
recorded in documents that are continually updated. The quotations used here are
from Information Society Technologies Advisory Group, ISTAG in FP6: Working
Group 1. IST Research Content. Interim Report June 9, 2003 (Brussels: European Commission,
2003).
66. ‘‘You’re Hired,’’ The Economist, September 18, 2004, 20, 21. When an IVR/speech
system does not meet customers’ expectations, they become frustrated and hang up
or ‘‘zero out’’ to a live agent. According to Forrester Research, customer satisfaction
levels with IVR systems fall in the 10 percent range, compared with a satisfaction
rate of approximately 80 percent for face-to-face interactions. What a surprise.
According to industry expert Tal Cohen, companies continue to foist automated
services onto us because if you or I talk to a human being, it costs the company $10
per call handled. Tal Cohen, ‘‘Optimizing IVR/Speech Using Customer Behavior
Intelligence’’ ( June 21, 2004), available on the Technology Marketing Corporation
website (TMCnet) at http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/articles/2004/062104tc.htm.
67. Elizabeth Herrell, ‘‘Speech-Enabled Interactive Voice Response Systems Help
Hold Down Costs,’’ Forrester Research, December 4, 2001, available on the Forrester
website
.html.
at http://www.forrester.com/Research/LegacyIT/Excerpt/0,7208,26227,00
68. Cohen, ‘‘Optimizing IVR/Speech Using Customer Behavior Intelligence.’’
69. James Woudhuysen, ‘‘What Next in IT?,’’ Spiked Online, January 15, 2001, available
at http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/000000005437.htm.
70. Information Society Technologies Advisory Group, ISTAG in FP6.
71. Skill shortage numbers are somewhat unreliable, but the numbers quoted here
were based on a significant research project in seventeen European countries (the
EU member states, plus Norway and Switzerland) undertaken by the International
Data Corporation (IDC) for European Information Technology Observatory (EITO).
See the data tables available on the EITO website at http://www.eito.com/tables.html.
In Europe alone, there is a shortage of 1.5 million information technology workers. A
question arises: Does this mean that every day of the year, 1.5 million days of IT
maintenance and development is not getting done? I have not been able to locate
any study of the effects on our IT systems—and us—if 548 million days of maintenance
are indeed missed each year. Information is available on the Doors of Perception
website at http://doors8delhi.doorsofperception.com/.
10 Flow
1. In addition to the interview quoted from here, the Simeon ten Holt archive
(http://www.simeontenholt.com/)
mances of ten Holt’s work.
contains downloadable extracts from perfor