[LINK] Australian no-show at CeBIT

[Antony Barry]

On 19/02/2009, at 11:01 PM, Roger Clarke wrote:

> My Dad put the proposition a few years ago that the world was changed
> more by technology in his life-time than in mine.
>
> Crystal radio, TV, the battle tank, usable flying machines,  
> plastics, ...
>
> To my surprise, I found it was an argument actually worth having!



I've just turned 68 so I'm a bit older than Roger however in my  
lifetime more has been published than in the entire course of human  
history.

I'm a war baby, born in the bleak year of 1941. Menzies was PM in his  
first government and I've lived through Fadden, Curtin, Forde,  
Chifley, Menzies again, Holt, McEwen, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam,  
Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard and now Rudd.

I've seen the introduction of jet planes, affordable air transport,  
the transistor replacing valves, diesel replacing steam trains,  
genetic engineering, TV, FM radio, computers, "microgroove records",  
compact tapes, CDs and DVDs,  the application of relativity other  
than in bombs and nuclear power stations, the maser then the laser.

In that time the British, French, Dutch and Soviet Empires have  
collapsed and the number of countries in the world has almost  
tripled; equal pay for women was introduced into Australia, the  
Australian Aboriginal were given the vote and a great swathe of what  
were regarded as sexual crimes legalised. Suburbs have become the  
place where most people live and children are predominately delivered  
to school by car instead of walking, biking or using public transport.

Geology has been revolutionised by continental drift theory; genetics  
by the unravelling of DNA with the consequent major changes in  
botany, zoology, taxonomy; physics by quantum electrodynamics and  
chromodynamics and the standard model of nuclear theory and cosmology  
has become a subject.

But then there is post-modernism :-[

Tony
phone : 02 6241 7659  | mailto:tony at Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
mobile: 04 3365 2400  | mailto:tony.barry at alianet.alia.org.au

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