I watched the launch presentation of the new Windows Vista yesterday. Mostly I was bored by what they had to offer, but one thing stood out.

Parental controls.

To many parents this seems like a great idea (a reason to buy) but I’m a little concerned.

When the Internet was first starting to become popular, I was in my mid-teens. Just the kind of period where the lure of pornography is rather strong. I didn’t have a computer in my bedroom, so that provided its own controls. If I wanted to look at pornography I had to go on late at night when everyone else was in bed, or wait until I had the house to myself. Then I’d make sure there was time to delete my Internet history and temporary files. I was careful, not because I wasn’t allowed to look at this stuff, but because I would have been embarrassed if my parents found out.

Of course, I’m pretty sure they knew. But they respected my privacy, and I don’t think they minded that I looked at a few dirty pictures.

I know of other parents who searched their kid’s rooms, read their diaries and looked through their bags. No trust, whatsoever. And the kids felt it and responded by being less trustworthy.

I never smoked, took drugs or committed any petty crimes. I honoured the trust I had too much. Guess which kids had drug problems.

Now Windows Vista allows you to spy on your kids with greater ease. It can restrict the time they can use the computer, it can restrict the software they can open, but most worryingly it can log the sites that the kids access so that parents can see exactly what they’ve been looking at.

It’s become far too easy to not trust your kids. It’s too easy to turn a microchip into the parent. Welcome to the world of 1984 : Home Edition.

This is one of those technologies that makes life easier short-term, but creates weakness over time. It hinders, for example, the ability to develop qualities such as self-discipline and respect for authority.

There are crazy restrictions in the workplace too. That mentality of let’s not trust our employees to send personal emails or check out entertaining websites, because it could stop them doing their work. Suddenly, they can’t look at a website or catch up on their personal email, during a lunch break. And yet, they always got the work done before.

I was listening to a radio broadcast a few weeks ago. A listener phoned in and they began talking about his band. The presenter wanted to check out their MySpace page to see what the music was like and possibly play a little on air. Unfortunately that site was restricted by the stations IT department.

When I was at university (I was about 19), my friend and I were walking towards the entrance of the local Toys “R” Us store. The security guard stopped us at the door and told us we had to drop off our bags at the enquiry desk if we wanted to look around. We did as asked, but I felt really bad about it. I was surprised to find myself completely mistrusting the store, and was annoyed that I’d done as I was told and left my bag with a stranger. I decided never to go in that store again.

Of course, there was the possibility that I was a shoplifter. But we cannot look at everyone as a potential criminal. I deserved to be trusted until I broke that trust. At which time the law would (or should) take over.

I’m not saying Vista should not have parental controls, but it needs to be made clear that this is a punishment for breaching a parent’s trust. It needs to be made clear that this will have negative consequences if kids can’t earn that trust back.

Management based applications need to take such trust issues into account. If technology is going to be part of our people management strategy, it has to take that role much more seriously.