Paul Ekblom

Design and Security

Consider an elementary security problem: theft of customers’ bags in bars. Consider also an equally elementary practical solution: mounting clips beneath bar tables to secure bags by preventing thieves from moving them stealthily along the floor with their foot or lifting them off chairbacks while customers chat with their companions. Faced with high bag theft rates, in London, several years ago, the police developed the ‘Chelsea clip’,1 a plastic fixture screwed under bar tables for anchoring customers’ bags. The police enthusiastically promoted the clip and many were installed. However, an observational survey of a major shopping/entertainment locale in London (Upper Street, Islington) revealed that few were in use. A similar picture emerged more recently from research at a venue at London’s Victoria Station.2 Moreover, during the three-month period of observation by researchers from Central Saint Martins, just one Chelsea clip was found to be in use.

Securing the Knowledge

In our increasingly knowledge-driven society, we continually encounter guides on ‘how-to’ operate new procedures and technologies at home and work, necessitating rapid familiarization with terms, standards and updates, adaptation to new constraints and exploitation of new enablers. This occurs whenever we change companies, move posts, our current post alters beneath us, or the operating environment out there changes along the axes of science and technology, the economy, the environment or the law. We must also become discerning consumers — learning to distinguish ‘good’ knowledge from the irrelevant, wrong or outdated.