More and more information is being stored about each one of us on computers. Much of this information is stored for our own good, e.g. medical records. But a lot of data is stored because some organisation thinks they can make money out of it. Although, we are nominally protected by the Data Protection Act, do we really want all this information stored about us. Why should some company store information about my shopping habits just so that they can target me with their products?

Have you ever considered how various organisations get their information: -

My first introduction to the use of databases was over 25 years ago when I worked for a Computer Bureau. I went into the office one morning to find the reception area piled high with boxes. Being a nosey character, I opened one of the boxes and found that it was full of coupons clipped from Cornflakes packages to claim some free offer. They had been delivered for the Data Prep Section to enter into a very early Consumer Database. It was then that I realised that free offers are invariably a means of generating databases, in this early example about all the database told you about the data subjects was that they liked Cornflakes. Now by combining databases and by asking the right questions the users can draw very precise conclusions about the sort of products we may be interested in. You often find questionnaires in magazines that offer a pack of money off coupons and product samples for completion. I picked up one recently that contained 114 questions ranging from what washing powder I use, to what whisky I drink and quite detailed information about my financial affairs. Given this information the database users would have a complete profile of my household. Do I want them to have this information? Apparently, about 15% of people do return these questionnaires.

Probably the biggest exercise in collecting data about shopping habits is the Store Loyalty Card; I suppose you’ve all got at least one in your pocket. These schemes are probably the biggest flop and the biggest waste of money of any computer system introduced in retailing. A friend of mine who is a leading authority on the use of computers in retailing has been telling me for the last five years that they will all disappear in 6 months. Tesco had this marvellous idea of introducing a scheme of "rewarding loyal customers" for shopping at Tesco by giving them some tiny amount of discount for shopping at their stores. There is nothing new in this idea, the co-op stores had the idea of paying a "divi" fifty years ago, ask your grandparents about it. However, Tesco’s idea was a bit more sneaky than just rewarding loyal customers, they had the idea that that they could build up huge databases of the exact spending habits of all their customers and then target them with very specific special offers. They hoped to pay for all the technology required with increased turnover. The plan completely backfired because their biggest competitor, Sainsburys, immediately brought out a similar scheme. I remember that Sainsburys went into a complete panic, they were so anxious not to let Tesco get an advantage that they rushed out a scheme whereby you had to queue again after the checkouts to have your points added. Nobody gained an advantage, except perhaps Asda who didn’t bring out a card, because the customers just applied for a card at each retailer they used. The database idea was a complete flop, because the retailers gathered so much information that they couldn’t analyse it. Tesco has a database of well over 5 million customers and they know a great deal about people’s private lives. For example, it would be quite easy to discover if someone was an alcoholic by analysing his or her purchases. Now, all the stores want to discontinue the scheme but they are frightened that to do so unilaterally will give their competitors an advantage, so instead, they have extended their schemes. Sainsburys have introduced the Nectar card that lets you collect points with purchases from other outlets and if you use a Barclaycard. Tesco’s Clubcard now extends to opticians and other outlets. An interesting extension of the scheme has been introduced by Sainsburys. They have recognised that one of the major obstacles to people using their web shopping service is preparing the first order. So when you register on Sainsbury’s web site they ask you to register your nectar card and then create a shopping list for you based on your recent purchases.

Of course, the Loyalty Card was only possible after the introduction of a universal bar coding on all goods. The adoption of this system was as a result of unprecedented international co-operation between manufacturers and retailers in 1976, when they agreed to adopt a Universal Product Code (UPC). The UPC is a system for uniquely identifying the thousands of different suppliers and millions of different items that are warehoused, sold, delivered, and billed throughout retail and commercial distribution channels. The code is known as the EAN code and the system is co-ordinated by a truly international organisation, EAN International, with headquarters in Brussels. The code is a series of digits that first identifies the country of origin, then the manufacturer and finally the individual item. The system is so well established that you can actually buy a database giving the code for millions of items to load on to your computer systems. By 2005 all US retailers will have to be able to scan all EAN article numbers.

The UPC has many advantages for the retailer: -

• Easy and accurate monitoring of deliveries.
• Accurate monitoring of sales, down to individual items.
• Improved stock control allows the automatic replenishing of stocks.
• Improved sales information for company management.
• No need to price individual items, prices are stored on the computer.
• Prices can easily be changed.
• Can easily have special offers, such as "three for the price of two" and "buy one get one free".
• Allows the monitoring of the purchasing pattern of a named individual

There are few real advantages for the customer: -

• Itemised bill.
• Often there are discrepancies between price on shelves and price in computer.
• Dubious advantage of having somebody monitor your purchasing habits.

We have some friends who are almost unique in this day and age; they almost invariably pay cash for any purchases. Their bank accounts are limited to deposit accounts, which are extremely healthy, and a current account for use on rare occasions, they don't use Hire Purchase. They have no credit cards or cheque cards and as neither of them drive, no driving licence. A couple of years ago, we were shopping in a large department store and our friend bought quite a lot of clothes. When she went to the cash desk to pay, in cash of course, the assistant suggested that if she opened a Store Account she could have 10% off her purchases. This seemed like a good idea, but imagine her embarrassment when she was refused an account as a credit risk. She had no means of identification, no driving licence, no completed hire purchase agreements and no credit cards to show. Obviously credit agencies see the lack of information as being the same as bad information?

Don’t assume that credit-reference agencies merely keep tabs on financial defaulters, virtually every adult in Britain is on file. About 250 organisations subscribe to credit agencies, the obvious ones are the banks and building societies but the list also includes shopping-catalogue firms, book clubs and mobile phone networks. They have instant access to files on 44m people, 1.3m limited companies and 1.7m sole traders, partnerships and non-limited companies. A Sunday Times reporter, Nicholas Whittaker, produced an article on credit agencies and as part of his research exercised his right to have a listing of his file. He found some disturbing anomalies; AMEX showed him, as having defaulted on his American Express card this was a result of a clerical error. There was a county-court judgement that he didn’t even know existed, his landlord had once threatened to take him to court and had gone as far as filing the papers before dropping the action, but the threat still remained on the file as a negative judgement. Whittaker found it fairly simple to have both these entries removed. The third problem was that Whittaker’s partner had made a mess of her Access account and was trying to keep it from him until it was shown on the report. Since files contain details about everyone at a particular address, enquirers are often given potentially damaging information about their partner’s or grown-up children’s financial affairs.

Personal details of people in Britain are held on a wide variety of commercial databases. They include: -

NDL International: This company likes to think of itself as a "lifestyle specialist". It pulls its information from a wide variety of sources, but also from its own questionnaires attached to product guarantee cards. Its database currently holds around 7.5 million names and at its IT centres in Barnsley it processes up to 16000 questionnaires each day.

CMT: This is a sister company of NDL. It bombards several million households two or three times a year with questionnaires that offer some form of discount off products in return for personal information.

ICD: Also does door drops like CMT, but insurance companies who are looking to add to their own databases usually commission these.

CUE: Claims & Underwriting Exchange. Damage your car or burn your house down too often and CUE will notice. It acts as a clearinghouse for insurance claims. It is also used by the Insurance Companies to check out new policyholders.

Dun & Bradsheet: If you default on payments, end up bankrupt or have a court judgement recorded against you or even complete a Hire Purchase Agreement on time, then this company will have you in its database.

CACI: This company’s database classifies residential neighbourhoods, according to affluence, age etc. It acquires the electoral registers from local authorities, this gives it names and addresses and then pads its data out using census results.

Other database firms specialise in such diverse areas as people with major shareholdings in companies, drivers of quality cars, the elderly etc.

Of course the biggest holder of personal data is Her Majesty's Government. However, outside the Computer Press, little concern was expressed when both the Department of Social Security and the Department of Health announced that they were considering massive on-line databases.

The contract for the DSS database, the National Insurance Recording System (NIRS2) was placed with Anderson Consulting, now Accenture, in May 1995 at a cost of £110 million over seven years. The aim of the system is to allow up to 10,000 DSS staff access to a database containing details of every person in the country over 16. Anderson won the contract by bidding £100 million less than its competitors but retained the intellectual property rights to the system, which it valued at £100m. Under the terms of the contract, Andersen was to take over the existing Nirs system and build a replacement for which it would take responsibility until the end of 2004. If the Government subsequently wanted to change supplier, the rights would then have to be purchased from Andersen. The influential House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned the Government that it risks being held to ransom by its IT suppliers. A member of the committee, Labour MP Geraint Davies pointed out during the hearing: -

Since the system went live in July 1998, it has been beset with problems and delays, which, to date, have cost the public purse some £38m in compensation to pension companies, more than £2m in compensation to the public, and a further £14.1m to clear the backlogs. However, it was reported in August 2002 that the system, which holds the National Insurance records of about 65 million people, is increasingly well regarded by its departmental users.

Potentially even more worrying is the database planned by the Department of Health, this system will hold details of every man, woman and child in the country when it comes on-line in a year or two. The health database involves assigning a National Health Service number to every UK citizen; it will be one of the most sensitive databases imaginable, allowing access to the health records of millions of individuals from a terminal anywhere in the country. This numbering system in effect creates a national identity card. In 1995 health secretary, Virginia Bottomley, refused a request from the Data Protection Registrar to provide statutory safeguards to prevent anyone outside the NHS gaining access to the data. As the law stands there is nothing to prevent NHS data being used by other government departments and the health service would be free to licence the use of this highly personal information to anyone who wanted it.

Perhaps we can take some comfort from the fact that these two government departments appear to be so disorganised that they are intent on doing their own thing as if the other did not exist. The DoH has admitted it has not considered whether it could have avoided building its own national database by using the DSS system. Sadly their lack of thought is likely to cost us an additional £200 million.

There was a lot of concern expressed a few years ago when it was announced that the government was considering the introduction of national identity cards, probably based on a driving licence with a photograph. Lord Parkinson said the cards would "be a very major step and would have serious implications for the liberties of the British people". Lady Thatcher also pronounced on the topic, "ID cards may seem like a harmless mechanism for helping the police, but their introduction will be hard fought". But quite quietly driving licences with photographs have been introduced.

Recently, the Home Office has revived its interest in ID Cards, but it is now presenting them as Entitlement Cards. It is suggesting that they would primarily be a better way for the public to access government and private sector services. The department claims the cards will make it easier for UK residents to apply for benefits, medical treatment, and other government services. The cards themselves will replace existing driving licences and passports. A special version of the card will be available for people who do not drive, and for people who do not wish to travel abroad. The cards, it claims, will also play an important role in combating illegal immigration, allowing employers to tell at a glance whether the person they are hiring is entitled to work in the UK. In addition, they could help to reduce crimes such as money laundering, people trafficking and, most significantly, reduce identity theft.

In order to achieve this, the government proposes creating a huge central database, containing information about 67 million people, indexed according to a new national identity number. Government departments will have access to the database via computerised gateways. If it is given the go-ahead, the project will be one of the most ambitious undertaken in the public sector in the UK, presenting enormous challenges in IT project management and systems integration. The Home Office is considering both basic plastic cards, which would store biometrics information on a two dimensional barcode, and smartcards containing an in-built computer chip.

The government estimates the total costs of the project at between £1.3bn for a plain plastic card and £1.6bn for a simple smartcard. A more sophisticated smart card, capable of storing a wider range of information, would push the total cost up to an estimated £3.1bn.The database will hold a range of personal details, the most notable being biometrics data belonging to the card-holder. The same data will also be stored on the ID card, providing a highly reliable mechanism for verifying identity. Government officials are considering three alternative technologies - fingerprinting, iris recognition and facial recognition. Each has its own merits, though iris recognition is regarded as the favourite.

The government's proposals have raised a host of questions about the right of individuals to privacy and anonymity, and genuine concerns about the compatibility of the scheme with human rights and data protection laws. The Information Commissioner has been consulted by the government on the proposals. He hosted a conference on the 15th January 2003 at which the Home Secretary and other interested parties outlined their positions. Although the Commissioner has yet to provide his formal response, the conference has helped define the key issues in data protection terms and will help to formulate his final view.

The Commissioner has already released some thoughts on the issue. He believes that this is a matter of great importance as the proposals have the potential to define the sort of society in which we want to live. We should approach the proposals with great caution. There are undoubtedly significant risks in terms of privacy, accuracy and use. But it would not be right to dismiss all notion of an identification scheme as inevitably contravening data protection or privacy rights. For any such scheme to proceed in a way that adequately addresses data protection and privacy requirements it is inevitable that these safeguards will need to be robust.

But there are also fundamental practical questions that need to be addressed, not least whether the scheme will actually work and, if it does, whether the benefits it offers justify its high price.

While the risk of being impersonated by a crook a remains small, it is not as uncommon as it used to be. Increased use of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATMs) and electronic fund and data storage have created new opportunities to steal someone's identity.

Criminals might want to empty your bank account or they might want to create a new personality for themselves to commit other crimes. Unfortunately, much of the advice from the banks on how to minimise in this risk is impractical. Identity thieves are reportedly able to buy credit card numbers on sale on the Internet with alarming ease, along with personal details stolen from confidential databases.

There were 53,000 cases of identity theft reported in 2001to the UK Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System with a total value estimated at about £1.2billion a year.

A House of Lords European Union Committee report last year highlighted more than 1,000 cases where passports, driving licences and national insurance numbers had been issued in the names of children who had died before the age of one.

The September 11 hijackers also used multiple names and stolen identities. Four innocent men in Saudi Arabia came forward shortly after the atrocities to say that their identities had been stolen by the hijackers.

Last year the Government announced it was planning to make identity fraud a new criminal offence, allowing police to target suspected fraudsters even before a stolen identity has been used. The Home Office also said it was planning to create a database of stolen ID documents so that checks can easily be made online. Similarly, the banks and credit card companies have talked about making more difficult, but still refuse to take the simple step of putting photographs into credit cards, Now that these can be physically embedded in the card, just as they are with new passports, this might seem a justifiable expense.

But Barclaycard said: "You don't have to look like someone to steal their identity. Also once someone has got all of your personal information, they could make applications for credit with all of your details, but simply send in a photo of themselves. "On top of all that, tests have shown that photo ID on cards suffers in the same way as signatures, people don't bother to check them."

When I opened my first bank account probably before any of you were born, banking was an entirely different business. I could only get money by cashing a cheque at my own branch, and after 3.00 on a Friday afternoon there was no way of getting cash until 10 o'clock on Monday morning. Even then each cheque I used would cost me two old pence Stamp Duty. If I was going on holiday and wanted to cash a cheque while I was away then my branch would make a special arrangement, by sending copies of my signature, with a local branch for them to cash my cheque. Yet, there were certain compensations, I could pay for any value of goods with a cheque without identification or producing a bit of plastic, the shopkeeper would rely on his own judgement as to whether I was a good risk. When you visited your branch the staff greeted you by name, and if the bank knew that your salary was going to be paid direct to them a few pounds overdrawn at the end of the month was no problem. Now charges are automatically triggered and they will even charge you for a letter telling you that you are overdrawn that pushes you further into the red. If I wanted a bank loan I had to put on my best suit and go and see the bank manager, and he would decide whether I got my loan or not. Now I can arrange a loan over the phone by talking to some faceless person who will feed my details into a computer that will then decide if I get my loan. No wonder the crime of identity theft is growing

The high street branch is becoming less and less important and the banks are relying more and more on electronic funds transfer, EFT and automatic teller machines, ATMs. The banks no longer need branches to carry on their business; all of the high street banks have invested in telephone and Internet banking. Banks usually occupy prime positions in town centres and selling them off is seen as an important source of revenue. You’ve all seen the TV advert where the local bank has become a wine-bar. Many banks don’t even let you talk to your local branch anymore. You talk to a nameless, faceless person in some call-centre that could be a 100 miles away or even the other side of the world. India is making a major effort to capture the world’s call-centre market; I was reading somewhere that you can even specify what regional accent you want the operators to have. The branches that remain will become more and more a loss leader, kept open to give the banks an opportunity to offer us lucrative additional services, such as insurance, mortgages and pension schemes.

With EFT there is no longer any need for the banks to have their head offices in the City of London. One of the reasons that the City came to be a financial centre was the need for the head offices of all the banks to be within walking distance of each other. The process by which cheques get paid is called "clearing", in this process cheques have to be exchanged between the various banks. Originally this was done by messengers walking from bank to bank. EFT has removed the need for this close proximity, computers can be sited anywhere in the country or even the world. This is also one of the reasons for the sudden explosion in the number of Building Societies becoming Banks, when the clearing system was so important it was monopolised by the clearing banks and building societies could only gain access to the process through a clearing bank.

Who derives most benefit from the advent of plastic cards the bank, the retailer or the customer?

The biggest advantage to the banks has been a major reduction in operating costs. The number of cheques that are handled by the banks has been reduced considerably. There has been a significant decrease in the number of branches; cash machine can be sited anywhere, e.g. in a supermarket. These two factors have reduced the amount of capital tied up in property and caused a major reduction in the number of staff employed. The banks feel that their security against fraud has been improved with the use of cheque cards and PINs, although they are still working on alternatives such as fingerprints, veins in the wrist and blood vessel patterns in the eye. The banks have also made access to credit much easier with cash advances on Access and Visa cards, the interest is of course a useful boost to their profits. When debit cards, such as Switch, were first introduced, the banks made great play of the fact that there would still be the traditional three day clearing time built into the process, it wasn’t long before this was quietly dropped and transfer in many cases is now instant.

There are significant advantages to the shops in using Electronic Funds Transfer, have you ever thought why so many retailers are anxious to offer you a cash back service when you pay with a Switch Card. In a full on line system such as operated by the major stores funds are transferred immediately this means that the revenue from bills paid by debit cards is earning the store interest while cheques and cash are still sitting in the till. The on line systems also of course check your balance before the payment is authorised.

The poor customer gains least of all from the introduction of EFT are less than to the bank. The customer has increased convenience, there is access to cash at anytime, payments by debit card are not restricted to a cheque guarantee limit and there is easier access to credit. But he loses the delay in the funds being taken from his account and most of all he becomes an account number not a person.

In 1949 when George Orwell wrote his book "1984" the idea of "telescreens" and " Big Brother" seemed so far fetched as to be almost a joke. But now only just over 50 years later it is virtually impossible to go about our daily lives without living a trail of data. Every time we use a mobile phone our location is recorded in a database, everytime we make a payment with a plastic card or use a loyalty card we make an entry in a database. There are now thousands of CCTV cameras recording our movements and the technology exists to scan the images for a known face and follow that person from camera to camera. Our telephone conversations can be monitored and scanned for a particular phrase or word. E-mails can be intercepted and a complete record of our Internet browsing could be recorded. In this country these techniques are only used to protect society from criminals and they are particularly relevant with the heightened threat of terrorism. In other parts of the world, they could be being used to monitor people who disagree with the government. The technologies exist; who decides how they should be used?

Much of the advanced diagnostic and treatment equipment used in the modern health service could not function without computer systems.

In diagnosis the techniques used for soft tissue scanning such as computerised tomography, radioisotope imaging and ultrasonics rely on computers for producing their visual output. Tomography in particular uses advanced mathematical techniques to produce cross sectional views of the body from an external scan.

Computers are extremely important in radiotherapy used in the treatment of cancer. The radiotherapy treatment is as damaging to healthy tissue as it is to the cancer and computer systems are used to control the angle and shape of the electron beam to maximise the exposure of the cancer while minimising that of the surrounding tissue. The computer is also used to calculate and control the intensity of the beam. In a recent case a number of patients received the wrong dosage because of a technician's failure to realise that an important change had been made in a new release of the computer software. In the previous release of the software certain manual corrections had to be made to the dosage calculated by the computer, when a new version of the software was installed the technician was not aware that the corrections were now included in the computer calculations. When the corrections were also applied manually the dosage given to the patients was wrong. In this field there is not a safe error, too low a dose can be just as damaging to the patient as too high a dose. The high dose will cause unnecessary and perhaps fatal damage to healthy tissue; too low a dose will fail to destroy the cancer.

Email has become one of the most widespread ways of communication in today's society. Probably, between 610 billion and 1100 billion messages are sent each year. Worldwide, there are approximately 500 million mailboxes. While in 1984, 90% of the world's e-mailboxes were located in the U.S.; at the end of 1999 this proportion dropped to 59%, and is still falling. But, what proportion of the email we receive is useful and how much is "spam".

To me the last quote is the most telling. There is a wealth of information available on the Internet and yet whenever I do a search on a subject in my own fields of expertise, I find that there is a lot of wrong information, that is if I can afford the time to wait for responses. Also, sadly, we are told that the most frequently used word in web searches is "pornography". We are told that some of the most technically advanced sites are the "porn" sites.

I have never understood the attraction of chat rooms; I like to hear a person’s voice when I chat. It is far easier to know if someone is genuine when you can hear the different intonations in the voice than having to rely on "smiley faces" In certain cases they are positively dangerous particularly where children are involved. Yet, the other day, I was talking to a friend of mine who spends a lot of time in chat rooms. She is a lady in her forties, very attractive and intelligent, who for various reasons hasn’t been out of the house for the last five years. I asked her what was the attraction of chat rooms, I suggested that they were frequented by really unsavoury characters. She agreed but said she could handle any unwelcome advances. She then went on to say that, when you have spent so much time on your own seeing very few new faces, talking in the chat room was a lifeline. She now has friends from all over the world, nice interesting people, and she can find someone to talk to whenever she is lonely.

Financial experts are appalled at the number of ". com" companies that have sprung up with enormous paper valuations and yet they are unlikely to make a profit in the foreseeable future. But of course, Amazon surprised everybody last year by announcing a profit.

Forecasters are still saying that the Internet will bring about fundamental changes in our way of life, but I can’t say that I have noticed any earth shattering changes. We can bank on the Internet; we can order our groceries on the Internet and have them delivered to our door. I hate supermarkets, so I suppose it would be very nice to have the groceries delivered. But, I haven’t tried it out yet and do the supermarkets really want us to shop on line. I don’t think they do, it’s the old story that if one company offers a service the others are frightened to let others gain an advantage. Delivery services are expensive to operate. The supermarkets would much rather use technology to cut staff and a lot of development is going into automatic scanning of the contents of a trolley.

Moving away from supermarkets to other forms of shopping, I’m not the most enthusiastic of shoppers, but when I do decide that I want something, I like to be able to handle the product and I like to take it home with me. I don’t want to wait two or three days for it to be delivered, and yet I have succumbed and bought goods on the Internet. Will we all stop going shopping? Is this the thing that is going cause us all to stop using our cars? I don’t think so.

The increased power and availability of computers has allowed much more complex operating systems to be used in many critical areas but the consequences of failures of these systems can be life threatening.

These systems are used by such organisations such as the motoring rescue organisations and emergency services. They can be extremely sophisticated with such features as displaying route maps on a monitor in the driver’s cab and automatic location of the caller from the telephone number. A good system can save vital minutes in the dispatch of a vehicle and in it reaching its destination.

The London Ambulance Service (LAS) is the world’s largest ambulance service covering an area of just over 600 square miles. There is a resident population of about 7 million people, but the daytime population is much higher. In 1992 the emergency service was dealing with up to 1600 calls a day, the target was to dispatch an ambulance in 3 minutes and attend the incident in 14 minutes. With the manual system that was in use the dispatch target was met for less than half the calls and in 45% of cases it took longer than 14 minutes to reach the incident. Late in 1990 the LAS decided to look for a computerised dispatch system. A specification was prepared and an Invitation to Tender was issued in February 1991 with a completion date of January 1992. Although, the response was good many firms commented that the timescale was too tight, but a supplier was found who offered to meet the deadline. After many problems the dispatch system eventually went live at 7.00 a.m. on October 26^th 1992. Initially while the call rate was low the system appeared to work, but as the load built up things started to go wrong. The system to eliminate duplicate calls didn’t work; neither did the system to monitor ambulance status, this lead to the allocation to incidents of ambulances that weren’t available. The overload on the system was made worse by people at incidents calling to see where the ambulance was. It soon became clear that the system was in chaos and some 30 hours after the system went live the LAS reverted to a semi-manual system using only part of the new software. Less than a week later this failed as well and the system was abandoned. It was alleged that up to 20 people had died as a result of ambulances taking up to 3 hours to reach incidents.

Virginia Bottomley, health minister at the time, was forced to announce an external inquiry into events on Monday and Tuesday 26 and 27 October. It was then said that there was no evidence that people had died as a result of the delays. The repair cost was estimated at £9m. Investigations unearthed a catalogue of errors, the system had been implemented against an impossible deadline and neither software nor hardware had been properly tuned or fully tested. Staff, both in the central control teams and ambulance crews, were not all fully trained and management had underestimated the difficulties involved in changing the deeply ingrained culture of the service. It was stated that too much emphasis was put on price when awarding the contract. In November 1992 the chief executive of the London Ambulance Service resigned.

Aircraft Control Systems

Many modern aircraft, particularly military aircraft, are designed to fly so close to peak performance that they are inherently unstable and can only be flown using computer systems. This gives tremendous performance but places complete reliance on the computer programmes, if something goes wrong these aircraft can literally fall out of the sky. The newer commercial aircraft have no mechanical links between the controls and the control surfaces and engines, they use what have come to be known as "fly by wire systems" the links are all electronic. A computer programme decides what is the relationship between a certain control movement of say the throttles and the alteration in engine power. The programme also decides whether this is a sensible action to take at that point in the flight. In 1988, Air France's new European A320 Airbus crashed into trees at an airshow near Mulhouse in France. Three passengers, a woman and two children, were killed. Although the pilot was dismissed and stripped of his licence, he claimed he was misled as to the aircraft's true height by a bug in the software. In 1994, when another Airbus, this time belonging to China Airlines, ignited in mid-air killing 264 passengers, the inability of the pilots to read some of the system read-outs and interfaces was cited as a cause.

The UK's new air traffic control system finally went live at Swanwick in 2002, 15 years after it was conceived and six years after the first promised date. The system took longer to plan and build than it will be in operation.

That fall far surpassed the one-day loss of 12.9% that began the stock market crash of 1929 and foreshadowed the Great Depression. The Dow's 1987 fall also triggered panic selling and similar falls in stock markets around the world. In searching for the cause of the crash, many analysts found fault with "program" trading by large institutional investing companies. This is where computers were programmed to automatically order large stock trades when certain market trends prevailed.

In response, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) restricted some forms of program trading. The NYSE and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange also instituted a "circuit breaker" mechanism in which trading would be halted on both exchanges for one hour if the Dow Jones average fell more than 250 points in a day, and for two hours if it fell more than 400 points.

Six years later Taurus, the planned automated transaction settlement system for the London Stock Exchange, was cancelled after five years of failed development. Losses are estimated at £75m for the project and £450m to customers.

We’ve just touched on a few examples of computer systems that affect the lives and well being of the general public. Please, for the sake of my old age, remember that in a few years time it will be you who are responsible for these systems.