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 Dale
Spender is the writer/editor of more than thirty books,
many of which have been university texts, and some of which
have been translated into Japanese, German, Italian and
Spanish. Required to make the personal transition from pen
to PC, she became fascinated with the changes that are taking
place for writers and readers as a result of the digital
revolution. These issues are taken up in Nattering on
the Net (Spinifex, 1995). A member of the executive
committee of the Australian Society of Authors, and a director
of the Australian Copyright Agency Limited, she is committed
to extending the creative and professional boundaries of
online authorship.
http://www.espc.com.au/dspender/
National Computer Strategy
"The
raw material of today's global community is intellectuality
and creativity, which is why everyone needs a computer,
an ISP, a national information infrastructure, and a support
system. The government who buys every member of society
a computer is sure to get a great deal, and an excellent
customer service agreement. Not to mention a head start
in the global economy."
CREATE
WEALTH; CONNECT THE COMMUNITY!
Seaports,
roads and railways, have been the marks of achievement throughout
the industrial era. (Airports have been a more recent but
no less costly addition.) So important have these facilities
been to a manufacturing community that they have frequently
formed the dividing line between the developed and the developing
world. The haves are the countries with a sophisticated
transport system; the have-nots are those without such amenities.
Nations
with advanced economies like the UK, the USA and Japan,
have not regarded their ports, their road and rail systems,
as an optional or even an awful expense. They have generally
been only too keen to invest in the infrastructure that
gives them the competitive edge. Britannia once ruled the
seas (and the colonial market place) while the USA used
the railway to open up the wild west, and Japan poured money
into bullet trains - and all this money spent on support
systems so that the country could trade in the market place.
Australia
constructed railways to remote mining sites, and built roads
across a continent, to transport the raw materials to the
cities and ports. The nation invested mightily in the Snowy
Mountains Scheme to generate the power that was necessary
to provide for the workers and process the goods of the
manufacturing era. And no one said we can't afford it; no
political party has had a platform that has been against
development, transport, or communication facilities.
In
an industrial society, infrastructure just makes sense.
The whole point of the exercise is to get the workers
to work and the goods to market in the most efficient manner.
No modern society can survive without such a sophisticated
form of connections.
But
we aren't living in an industrial society any more.
The
developed nations of the world are moving from a manufacturing
to a knowledge base; from the factory system to services
delivery. And it is not roads or railways that we now need
to get the workers to work or the goods to the market place.
Today's transport and communications system is the information
infrastructure - which connects everybody.
continued
on page two...
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