To automate or not to automate

I have been speaking on this subject since 1970 and so I am beginning to feel like one of the cast in The Mousetrap which has been playing for even more years than that. But soon after I spoke in November 1984 at an MKA Conference (Tower Hotel, London), a piece appeared in the computer press giving a 100‐word summary with typical inflammatory headlines of what I took an hour to say. The headlines related in no way to what I said in my one‐hour presentation but to a background chat during the lunch break. As a result, someone wrote a letter to the publication attacking me for identifying the possible high cost of implementing the Act because in his words, ‘the Act does not make any demands over what a normal business should do’.