James Mills is a web developer in the North East of England and founder of Refresh Teesside »
Mike Hughes is the Head of Business for the Evening Gazette. He will be blogging on all matters of importance to Teesside businesses - and some that are just worth knowing »
Jez Davison, business writer at the Evening Gazette, is a regular blogger on all things business - particularly finance, entrepreneurship and the state of the Teesside economy » 
Karen McLauchlan is the Evening Gazette's deputy business and features editor - with special interest in all things industry, property and arts related » 
Jeremy Middleton is a venture capitalist and the co-founder of FTSE-200 company HomeServe » 
Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » As I sat watching a repeat of âÂÂLife on MarsâÂ? on my digibox this week it struck me just how much technology has transformed our lives. The series, set in the 1970s showed a young officer being set the task of manually searching a mountain of files to see whether a suspectâÂÂs name came up in any cases over the last thirty years. This task would have taken her days or even weeks, but with the help of a modern database this time would be reduced to seconds.
The introduction of âÂÂSky plusâÂ?, hard drive recorders and online video streaming has transformed the way in which we watch TV â you can now watch what you want, when you want and even pause live TV if you want to make a cuppa. You can shop for groceries, holidays, clothes or pretty much anything without leaving the comfort of your home and more mundane tasks such as banking and paying your bills have never been easier. You can even pay your car tax online now saving you that inconvenient trip to the post office.
But itâÂÂs not all as brilliant as it should be. The NHS is constantly in the press with news on the failings of its patient records system. Individuals are threatened with identity theft and credit card fraud as retailers such as TK Max make security blunders.
There is no excuse for leaking customers' credit card details, but in my opinion we should hang in there and give organisations such as the NHS a chance to succeed; it might be a battle to get there but the long-term benefits of such a system will be huge. After all, if people hadnâÂÂt persevered we wouldnâÂÂt have all this wondrous technology at our fingertips today.
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