Superman’s virtually unlimited powers actually limits the scope of his character and storylines. There is actually no problem too big (on Earth) that he cannot solve with his super strength, power of flight, heat vision, supercold breath, supersight, super hearing, and super what-have-you. Here we have lost another element of exciting story telling. Many exciting stories focus on the protagonist struggling against an opponent or obstacle seemingly bigger than him. (Hope you don’t mind me borrowing LOTR as an example of this.) But for Supes he can solve any problem before dinner time.

Here you have a character who is virtually omnipotent and who seldom makes the wrong decision. Where’s the thrill in that? He may be a character who appeals to kids but no longer when they grow up and realise that the world is not black and white.

The very look of Superman is becoming a parody of the superhero concept. What’s with the cape? Why is his costume is bright red and blue like the colours used to paint kindergartens. Why is he wearing his bright red underwear outside? Superman’s look shouts at us, like the ideals he stand for.

Superman stands for an ideal or rather our ideals of what is right and good and true. He stands for many concepts that we cherish, and he will never ever surrender those ideals. For that Superman is an IMPORTANT icon and I would say more important than the rest of the other comic book characters put together because he shows us what humanity should be.

Superman is an icon. Like the American flag. Can we deny that he is the personification of USA.. The image of Superman juxtaposed with the American flag is has become iconic. (Google the image of American Flag Superman. Compare that with American Flag Batman or even Captain America). Since the beginning of his creation as a character Supes was fighting for ‘Truth, Justice and the American way’. America identifies itself as Superman among the nations of this planet. Strong, powerful and invulnerable to direct physical confrontation with any other ordinary country; dispensing its own views of right and wrong to everyone whether they asked for it or not. Despite the irony that a being who is not even from planet Earth has come to represent America (But then again America has always been a nation of immigrants.), Superman actually looks more ‘American’ (read ‘white’) than Barrack Obama or Kristin Yamaguchi. Because of this identification with their nation, American comic book writers dare not take risks of making Superman i.e. America make the ‘wrong’ choice or make the right choice but suffer the consequences.

You don’t desecrate cherished iconic symbols like a flag and a superman by making it deviate from what it has been and alwasy will be. But from a storytelling point of view this makes Superman a pretty limited character; until the day comic book writers dare to take apart and maybe even destroy the symbolism that he stands for. Exciting and interesting though that may be, but what will become of our ideals then.

We will not be inconvenienced if Facebook crashes but many will if the online banking system does or if the software on the computers driving a driverless train does a blue screen of death resulting in a runaway train.

Agreed that the scope is currently vague but hopefully the proposed board will provide a means for even self-taught programmers without any certification to register, firstly as Registered Computing Practitioners and later as Registered Computing professionals.

Rather than complain here, this is the time to raise these questions with the parties behind the proposed Bill and Board.

There is nothing to prevent developers doing innovation in a lab or a non-production computer system.

Only when the innovation has been extensively tested and proven is it released to be applied to production systems.

This is how it is done by all responsible companies, even if the innovation is not for CNII related use, well hopefully.

The problem might be that the scope defined by the proposed bill is too general and rather sparse, leaving people to imagine all sorts of horrible things. Let’s see the details of how this will be implemented by the proposed board if it’s set up.