humanitarian.info

I haven’t gotten around to writing the third part of The Innovation Fallacy yet, as I’ve been finalising some information management training for UNICEF. However I did run headfirst into the following two quotes via two of my fellow bloggers.

First, Mikel, at the UNGIWG plenary, discussing open source:

The common refrain was that “the technological problems are nearly solved, it’s the social process that’s in question”.

Then, Kevin, quoting Bruce Schneier:

If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don’t understand the problems and you don’t understand the technology.

Have we still not successfully communicated the above two very fundamental points to the people who make decisions? Is the problem that we’re not sufficiently skilled social engineers? Is the humanitarian community structured precisely to avoid social engineering? Questions, questions, questions.