{"id":918502,"date":"2026-07-09T05:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/cw60-reflections-of-an-accidental-technology-anthropologist\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T05:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T10:12:27","slug":"cw60-reflections-of-an-accidental-technology-anthropologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/09\/cw60-reflections-of-an-accidental-technology-anthropologist\/","title":{"rendered":"CW@60: Reflections of an accidental technology anthropologist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"Computer\n<\/p>\n

On 22 September 1966,\u00a0 the launch issue of the world\u2019s first weekly technology newspaper was published \u2013 today Computer Weekly is the UK\u2019s oldest business IT title. What’s changed the most for you since then? Here, our security editor, Alex Scroxton, looks back at how a fascination with people watching became realised through technology.<\/i><\/p>\n

Whisper it or my editor<\/a> will hear, but as a child I was never very enthusiastic about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM<\/a>). Chemical formulae and complex physical concepts hurt my brain. Quadratic equations? Don\u2019t ask.<\/p>\n

The cantilever bridge I built out of ice lolly sticks in design technology class collapsed under the weight of a single Hot Wheels car. Computers? That was just how I played video games – anything that happened inside the noisy beige box was somebody else\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n

So, I was very happy to ditch the STEM subjects the minute it was practical and legal to. I threw myself at history and modern languages instead. I spent three years studying social anthropology – American friends would say cultural anthropology – at a plate-glass university on the south coast of England, reading Frantz Fanon, Claude Levi-Strauss and Karl Marx<\/a>, drinking tea and working weekends at a local arthouse cinema.<\/p>\n

At the turn of the 21st<\/sup> century social anthropology had an image problem, and we passed many long hours in seminars trying to absolve ourselves of blame for the sins of colonialism. This meant pith helmets and uncontacted Amazonian tribal societies<\/a> and obscure circumcision rituals were out – baseball caps and council estates and rave culture were in.<\/p>\n

Although I didn\u2019t know it at 20, anthropology was reinforcing a lifelong fascination with people-watching and finding out why humans do the dumb things they often do.<\/p>\n

However, after stumbling into IT journalism in 2005 simply because someone was daft enough to pay me for it, I never really thought that I was applying it to my career.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/i>The Eureka moment<\/h2>\n

Until September 2019, that is, when I stumbled blinking out of the world of networks and broadband, and into the world of cyber security.<\/p>\n

Security professionals unlucky enough to be interviewed by me will recall I like to throw in a very particular question: what was your lightbulb moment \u2013 when did you realise cyber security was cool?<\/p>\n

For many, particularly older Millennials of a similar vintage to myself, it\u2019s the day their computer caught a virus<\/a> from a floppy disk swapped in the playground. However my lightbulb moment \u2013 and I\u2019m sure he won\u2019t mind me saying it \u2013 was a conversation with Don Smith of what was then the Secureworks Counter Threat Unit, now part of Sophos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In October 2019, I found myself at the top of the Gherkin in London for a media roundtable event where Don and his colleagues shared new intelligence on a notorious ransomware gang called GandCrab<\/a>, whose members had some months earlier announced their \u201cretirement\u201d from the ransomware scene.<\/p>\n

Not so, Don explained. Although in their goodbye message the GandCrab crew boasted melodramatically of ransomware being proof that you can do crimes and get off scot-free, behind the scenes the ringleaders were already working on a new strain of ransomware, which was to become known as REvil, or Sodinokibi.<\/p>\n

Just a few months later, REvil made national headlines in the UK following the ultimately terminal hack of currency services business Travelex<\/a>, then in the summer of 2021, its hit on Kaseya brought it global notoriety<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Photo\n <\/p>\n

\u201cDo you not sometimes get the feeling that technology is, frankly, a bit out of control?\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Alex Scroxton<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My fascination with cyber criminal gangs and cyber professionals \u2013 the difference between them is often more a matter of luck than anything else \u2013 stems from their motivation, their subculture, their laptops covered in stickers<\/a>, the socioeconomic conditions that breed them. It\u2019s all classic social anthropology.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

<\/i>Standing in the way of control<\/h2>\n

The application of social science to technology is a question I\u2019ve flirted with in interviews<\/a>, but this is Computer Weekly, and social anthropology has never been our core mission.<\/p>\n

The question I want to ask is, why shouldn\u2019t it be? Why aren\u2019t we doing anthropology in technology? As a Computer Weekly reader who is very probably a technology professional, you might reasonably ask why technologists should care about that?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t fret. I\u2019ve got an answer. Let\u2019s start with another question though. Do you not sometimes get the feeling that technology is, frankly, a bit out of control?<\/p>\n

Consider datacentres and artificial intelligence (AI). Since 2024 I have lived in Washington DC and just across the Potomac River, in the city\u2019s suburban hinterland, there are hundreds of datacentres<\/a>. Even if you\u2019ve never been to northern Virginia, you\u2019ll be familiar with the names of these places \u2013 Ashburn, Reston, Sterling \u2013 you see them on the Cloudflare dashboard or DownDetector whenever there\u2019s a big outage. And for good reason, over two-thirds of global internet traffic touches these hyperscale facilities.<\/p>\n

However, datacentres do not make particularly good neighbours. For the people who live here, their presence is already leading to spiralling electricity bills and the threat of regional water scarcity<\/a>, and the advent of AI only serves to compound these problems.<\/p>\n

The uncomfortable truth at the heart of the capitalist system is that it only works if it continues to expand and make money – fundamentally, AI is just the latest means by which this is happening. But it is a bubble, it will pop, of that we can be assured.<\/p>\n

Absent this correction, it is my belief that technologists \u2013 and I include very many extremely smart people working at the companies I cover every day in this \u2013 are trying to do too much too soon with AI, applying it to any and all possible tasks, even those it has no business doing, without stopping to consider the human impact.<\/p>\n

Consider the vast amounts of AI-generated slop<\/a> threatening to overwhelm the World Wide Web. Horrible art. Dodgy videos. Soulless music. Garbled half-truths. Dangerous advice<\/a>. Outright misinformation.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t need it. You don\u2019t need it. Nobody really wants it. AI slop not only endangers core human faculties, such as the ability to create for ourselves or think critically, but it is rapidly rendering the web basically unusable.<\/p>\n

Wasn\u2019t the web meant to be a digital utopia, heralding the sort of future seen in Star Trek? Its creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee<\/a>, deliberately decided never to patent or charge royalties for it, foreseeing it as a free, open and universal platform.<\/p>\n

Thirty-six years later, with the web chopped up and monetised and surveilled by tech companies and governments, with addictive, parasitical social media platforms sowing division and hatred that has led to the radicalisation of millions, I think we can agree it is a long way from the vision of its creator.<\/p>\n

I have read stories about the path we are walking today, and it doesn\u2019t lead to Star Trek but to 1984<\/i> and Brave new world<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t seek to blame Sir Tim for this, nor do I seek to suggest social scientists could necessarily have solved the problems the web created, but I can\u2019t help but wonder at what might have come to pass had there been a few more anthropologists involved.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\n

<\/i>What fools these mortals be<\/h2>\n

We humans are amazing creatures. There is nothing else like us on our home planet, and there may be nothing like us anywhere else<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is a daunting realisation, but I find comfort in the idea of life actually being the consciousness of existence itself \u2013 that is to say, we are the universe and the universe is us. Carl Sagan perhaps articulated this best<\/a> when he said: \u201cThe cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the beginning, the universe sought to know itself through art, through belief, through custom, through ritual \u2013 the things social anthropologists get excited about.<\/p>\n

In those days, because it did not yet know any better, the universe made up stories to explain why the seasons changed and why the moon and the sun came and went as they did. These stories live on in lore, myth and religion.<\/p>\n

But the universe is curious, and in time it figured out that these were just stories. It learned what planets and stars actually are, and about gravity and magnetism. It learned to harness steam, then electricity, then the atom. It created Sir Tim and through him the web. It built itself our world.<\/p>\n

Let there be no doubt – technology will continue to shape our world and enhance the universe\u2019s knowledge of itself. Nobody knows where it will end up and that\u2019s why we keep pulling on things like AI, because something new will be on the other end of the rope. Slop and carbon emissions aside, it\u2019s actually very exciting.<\/p>\n

Barring accidents or illness, there\u2019s a decent chance I\u2019ll still be alive in 2066, and if I am lucky enough to be able to reflect on 100 years of Computer Weekly, my hope will be that in the intervening years the leaders and visionaries of the technology industry have become more reflective on this connection, on the nature and interplay of humanity and technology, and perhaps learned a little humility.<\/p>\n

Because I look now at these men \u2013 and they are all men and we all know their names \u2013 and I see amoral, greedy people who would happily ride roughshod over life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the sake of a big cheque.<\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t accept the visions of these foolish mortals. I want the utopian version of the universe, not the dystopian one. And if we can reconnect humanity and technology, I believe heaven on earth is achievable.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Margherita Stoval<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 22 September 1966,\u00a0 the launch issue of the world\u2019s first weekly technology newspaper was published \u2013 today Computer Weekly is the UK\u2019s oldest business IT title. What’s changed the most for you since then? Here, our security editor, Alex Scroxton, looks back at how a fascination with people watching became realised through technology. Whisper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":918503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30386,40105,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-918502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-accidental","category-reflections","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}