In the world of technology, we focus so heavily on the evolution of the technology itself. New features, new releases, new terminology, methodology, ontology, buzzwords, languages, products, vendors and devices. We hardly ever focus on the changing nature of the people that use it. Who is the modern technologist? If we take the example of the computer, in the first half of the 20th century, the technologist was a mathematician, an academic… a necessarily brilliant mind.

It was necessary not just to build the machine, but every component within, from base principles. He or she (and this was really a fair split) had to understand every aspect of the machine – the benefit that the machine brought was simply that once it was going, it could work faster than a team of humans; maybe only just! A visit to Bletchley Park will show you the fulcrum computer (specifically the ‘Turing Bombe’) and by that I…