The Stories Continue

What were we thinking?

What were we thinking?

What was I thinking?

Back in May, I celebrated CIO's 100th issue by introducing a continuing series - CIO Retrospectives: Seminal Issues & Technologies - where CIO writers revisit seminal events, issues and technologies we've covered over the years.

If you're a new reader, or need a bit of a reminder regarding the "how's" and "why's" of this particular exercise, here's our premise. The writers are to kick off with "What were we thinking" - that is, why we all believed the selected story was important and the pervasive mind-set at the time among users, observers and (occasionally) vendors. Then, in some instances at least, the writer looks back and casts a jaded eye - that is, "What were we thinking?" - over the topic.

Thus far, we've covered a number of issues, including the likes of Y2K, "IT Doesn't Matter", the skills crisis (or lack thereof) and dotcom mania.

This month CIO writers cast their respective eyes backwards at that plucky tag-team of security and privacy. (While privacy is a one-off, the ever-changing nature of security means we'll be revisiting that particular topic more than once in this series.)

As always, I'm happy to entertain your suggestions for other "seminal" technologies or issues we should cover.

LK

linda_kennedy@idg.com