In a perfect world...
I am still waiting for my ideal programme suite, the one I will use for making bench notes and storing exhibits and reading transcript and analysing evidence and writing judgments, both now and in ten years time. There will be a simple wordprocessor in it, and a simple spreadsheet. All the hardware will work, all the programmes will be integrated in the desktop suite and the desktop suite will be integrated with a completely automated court diary and case management system operated by the court system. In the desktop suite there will be an oral dictaphone and voice control. And the desktop suite will have a WYSWYG word processor based hyperlinking programme which I can use in court whatever the case, as well as a web browser, and the phoneline which is always open to the Internet. This super hyperlinker will have the flexibility of an html editor based on the concepts of the word processor rather than the concepts of the spreadsheet, but it will have a site search engine included, perhaps one borrowed from the databases, that will work in the browser as I look for the tiny but vital scrap of evidence I forgot to hyperlink. It will mesh seamlessly with the WYSWYG VRML editor, which I will be using when I am analysing evidence, and with the vectorbased and photodrawing editors and the videoproduction software where the reasons for decision will be produced. Every exhibit will be scanned in using the scanner. There will be a video capture card. And with easy to run the audio player I can use whenever a piece of music is a better medium for the sentencing remarks than any words that I can think of. I can frighten the aboriginal boys who steal cars, but forcing them listen to some of the songs of aboriginal singer Archie Roach might make them want to stop stealing the cars. I can send the boys to gaol but I cannot play the songs which will carry more meaning before they go out of the court room door. I will be able to work on any document, and with anyone else anywhere in the world, be they witness or peer or party, using videoconferencing software and the digital videocamera. If I am really lucky, someone will develop user friendly decision support software which will integrate into the suite , probably based on neural nets, classifiers and genetic algorithms, everything will integrate with the project management software which is capable of integrating the handling of unrelated projects (reserved judgments; partheard trials; conference presentations) all proceeding simultaneously. I need an MSProject that will deal with multiple projects at once. I want use all of this without setting up a spaghetti jungle of cords. I want to use it beyond the limits of electricity grids and telephone lines. I want to be able to run it via either voice or keyboard, and as a video conference centre, with documents being created and text and images being scanned in. I want to use computers to bring a court to people in new ways, ways they can afford to access because we have knifed the costs created by time; responses within hours and days instead of months and years. I want to see courts resolve the disputes people need resolved if they are to have the confidence to trade; courts which provide protection for the traders and their families, in their lives and in their transactions, locally, nationally, internationally... The question is not whether IT can do it. The real question is whether judges, magistrates and court administrators are up to the task of using IT to cope in a changing world. Or whether, as the TV generation grows up, paper based judges and magistrates will fade into an illiterate oblivion. |
I