TECH-HEADS are good for business. Forgot all that you’ve read about IT being detrimental to your IQ — the geeks are about to inherit the earth.

Business Week (May 2) says that unofficial technology is changing big business; phenomena such as blogging, vlogging (video blogging) and podcasting (blog radio shows broadcast over the internet or to mobile devices including iPods) are being taken up by the mainstream, or lame stream (official geek-speak). Newsweek (April 25) reports on a new generation of entrepreneurs transforming the web to make money.

The next dot-com boom is on the way; e-craziness is everywhere. Fortune (April 18) enthuses about how flash mobbing is evolving with services to bring together doggers for outdoor frolics and “toothing” to match platonic friends by using Bluetooth technology. The Wall Street Journal (April 25) profiles Asian “technosexuals” who use cell phones in place of smart cards to travel on the subway and buy products from vending machines.

And it’s not just Silicon Valley that is getting excited. The IT recruitment website CWJobs.co.uk reports that the UK’s IT jobs market has increased by 79 per cent since January 2004. The IT literati are particularly sought after in the retail and public sectors.

But Luddites can rejoice, it’s not all good news. Business Week draws our attention to the expression “dooced” — when someone loses their job because of blogging. Usually because they have said something sensitive about their employer. The expression originates from Heather Armstrong, who lost her job because her website, dooce.com, was none too kind about her former employer.

Blogging isn’t the only threat to corporate culture though, PersonnelToday.com says that sophisticated gangs of phishers are sending fraudulent e-mails to office workers to elicite user names and passwords with which to break into HR and payroll systems and steal confidential data.

Computing (April 21) reports that the real threat isn’t from outside phishing expeditions but from password sharing by work colleagues. “The most common threat in terms of identity theft is someone else sitting down at your PC and pretending to be you,” says Jay Heiser from Gartner.

Surely that’s not a problem, provided they do the work and we get the pay.

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