iPad? Techno Wipeout and how to avoid it

© Depositphotos.com/@searagen

Tomorrow's release of the iPad in Australia is sure to cause a stir in the media. But claims that this is a world changer will be nothing but noise in the echo-chamber. The changes happening as a result of the information revolution pre-date Apple's mass marketing techniques.

One of the biggest problems for any user of technology is keeping up with the changes. Conservatives typically quote digital cameras and their ever-increasing megapixels as markers of the pace of technological change and why it is pointless to try to keep up. 

But the release of the iPad tomorrow will see many arguing that this is the great marker of the revolution, many others saying that Apple isn't everything, and the rest not really caring.

Part of the problem is what I call "Techno Wipeout". It might be cutting edge to surf the edge of chaos, but it can also be expensive. 

I argue that it is better to wait for the right wave and ride it to where you want to go. Unless you are mega rich, of course, and then do whatever you like!

I have tried a few times to be ahead of the curve, but the only outcome was that I was ahead of the curve. Form over substance.

Increasingly, I am finding that the soft skills needed to work with new social media technologies are more important than the technologies themselves. Sure, if you leave it for too long, it can be a long swim back out to the surf, but it is better than constantly being dumped as a new technology wave hits you.

So while Apple's iPad will no doubt bring about some amazing new applications and ways to access and manipulate information (just as the iPhone did), is it really the marker of a brave new world? I doubt it.

But what the iPad will do is signal to the mob that it is now cool to do what many tech geeks have been doing for a long time - connecting and networking and sharing almost anything through their communications devices. Who knows, my students might even start reading e-books!

Apple's brand power will also make those who have refused to see the benefits of these devices take notice. Not because they now see the benefits and the new ways to collaborate and improve productivity, but because it was in the newspaper and on the telly.

So Apple's marketing machine might be the straw that broke the camel's back and bring social media and other web technologies into the mainstream.

But for me, I'll be sticking to my netbook for another generation or two. Just like I did with my telly - I'll be buying my 3D TV real soon and I will not have to get rid of my rather large plasma. That's how I avoid Techno Wipeout.

Telstra down but not out

Although you might still not encourage your mother to buy their shares, Telstra is down but not out.

A Labor win at the election could see Telstra hopeful for an agreement on the NBN. But according to CEO David Thodey:

It is a purely commercial issue and if we can get to an outcome we'd be delighted, if we can't we can't and life will go on.

On the other hand, an Opposition victory (which Tony Abbott appears to have personally hijacked) might prevent any plans to split Telstra's wholesale and retail operations.

But how does this really affect Telstra, and not just its legacy network?

David Thodey suggests that Telstra's wireless customer base is doubling every nine months:

 Telstra CEO David Thodey: Let me say it again, every nine months. Any of you out there would die to have a business like that.

And with Telstra continuing to improve the capabilities of its wireless infrastructure, once the fallout from the Three Amigos and the NBN negotiations has cleared, it seems plausible that Telstra will come out of it all just fine.

Either way, the NBN debate is giving Telstra enough breathing space to reposition its business. Ticky Fullerton's report on ABC's Lateline recently is worth a watch as it identifies some of the major issues for the election. No mention of how backward Australia is at the moment or how it will screw-up our future capabilities, though!

But in the meantime, speculation over the retail  price of the NBN services in Tasmania has prices ranging from $40-$90 per month - even some suggesting it is "too expensive". Given that I currently pay $109 per month to get quasi-reliable Wimax in Palmerston via Gungahlin (I gave up on the ADSL "service" just recently), if any Taswegians out there would like to swap, let me know via the post as my email may not be working...

Photo credits: Telstra sign: "Bidgee"/CC BY 3.0; David Thodey: Telstra.

Infrastructure Duplication? Duct structure is the problem, not the cable

Optus CEO Paul O'Sullivan has confirmed that the telco will support the "controversial "cherry-picker" levy to crimp the ability of Telstra and others to build high-speed networks in high-value, low-cost areas in competition with the NBN".

Singaporean Government-controlled Optus is obviously taking the opportunity to have a swipe at Telstra. But the out-dated natural monopoly argument still being used to prevent infrastructure duplication is a smoke-screen.

The idea is that duplicating infrastructure is inefficient and leads to unnecessary civic disruption and unsightly cables, boxes and so on. The early telegraph and telephone days are cited as proof of this problem.

But it is clear that where a provider has access to the duct structure or the poles (that is, the conduit), the provider is able to deploy wire or cable to connect consumers. Transact in Canberra is a prime example. 

Where Transact (through ACTEW) owns the power poles, consumers have access to the Transact's cable. If you live in Gungahlin, where the ACT Government rushed the development of the suburb's infrastructure through a variety of public-private joint ventures, you get, well, nothing.

So when Optus supports a measure designed to prevent the duplication of infrastructure, it is important to look closely at the argument against duplication.

Put simply, it is inefficient to duplicate the duct structure or the poles (the conduit), not the actual cable. Additional cables increase bandwidth. Additional conduits cause the problems experienced in the early days of the telegraph and the telephone.

Shara Evans at Market Clarity suggested at a broadband conference in Sydney last year that government could improve access to the duct structure by adding this component to all new road-building projects .at a fraction of the cost to do this as a separate project. As the road is built, so is the duct structure.

The main reason this doesn't happen already? The division of powers between the federal, state and local governments.

So the next time you hear Optus or any other telco arguing against "infrastructure duplication", the duct structure is the problem, not the cable.

Put simply, the interests supporting the new measures to avoid infrastructure duplication are worthy of further investigation. And to make matters worse, none of this even got a mention in the whole NBN debate.

NBN cheaper, but so is the politicking

Today's release of the National Broadband Network (NBN) report suggests that the NBN will cost taxpayers $5 billion less than the initial proposal and will be affordable for consumers with or without Telstra’s participation. This is good news for Australia. But the way Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is handling one of the most important events in 21st century nation-building is an absolute disgrace.

The long awaited report by KPMG and McKinsey was released at 1:30pm today after a budget-style lock-up of selected journalists. And this is where the problem with Conroy begins.

The NBN has the potential to put the "public" back into public policy-making. But with the current minister at the helm, all we seem to be getting is a one-size-fits-all solution dictated by policy-making elites.

Australia has one of the most modern democratic political systems in the world, yet citizen participation in policy processes is effectively blocked by elitist attitudes. Indeed, public consultation usually results in little more than a placebo to calm the masses rather than a deliberate attempt to understand what issues are actually in the "public interest".

The bill for neglecting Australia's communications infrastructure has finally arrived and while it is significantly cheaper, the sneaky manner in which publicly-funded reports are delivered by government is nothing short of tyranny.

To make matters worse, the government is delivering mixed messages. In response to the Government 2.0 Taskforce report recently, the government is suggesting that the use of new communications technologies (which will be enabled by the NBN) will “shift public sector culture and practice to make government information more accessible and usable [and] make government more consultative, participatory and transparent”.

It would seem that somebody forgot to tell Stephen Conroy.

The minister is doing everything possible to sabotage public involvement in the NBN's implementation. Today's cloak and dagger style meeting of Canberra's press elite is just an extension of what we have come to expect from a minister who wants to implement an Internet filter to censor what Australians can access on the Net before the NBN is even available.

But none of this is necessary. Any number of people involved in delivering services such as health and education know just how important access to the NBN will be in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. But even the problems in these two areas are not being addressed by innovative practice or new ideas - giving more and more responsibility to the federal government is all the elites have been able to come up with so far. Maybe it is time someone else had a go.

Those educating young Australians know just how desperately Australia needs the NBN. In comparison to their counterparts in the UK, Canada and the US, Australian students are not only behind in accessing affordable and adequate communications services, but their involvement in creating, disseminating and accessing public goods such as open education and other information resources is about a decade behind. So much for the education revolution and preparing for the knowledge economy.

Further, education now ranks in the top 5 Australian export industries. In a country where the standard of living rests on major exports of unsustainable resources such as coal, the education industry provides the biggest opportunity for sustainable future prosperity. But without the NBN, our chances of continuing to grow our exports in this industry are effectively hamstrung.

While today’s government-funded report is nothing more than an expert opinion to back up the government's NBN proposal, the price tag and the expected increase in access to the infrastructure will provide welcome relief for the government. And few would doubt the report has been held back for so long for any reason other than political opportunism.

With Opposition Leader Tony Abbott speculating recently that the Coalition could deliver the NBN faster and cheaper, Conroy will be able to take a breath while the details of the 500 page report are being absorbed.

But don't be fooled into thinking that things will be better under a Coalition government. After all, Conroy says the Coalition were responsible for keeping Australia's communications infrastructure in the dark ages.

And this is one area where Conroy is actually right. Abbott and the Coalition will no doubt cut spending on the NBN or scrap the project altogether, and this would be tantamount to deliberately making Australia part of the developing world.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is well aware of the consequences of failure with the NBN, stating that he doesn’t “intend to be Prime Minister of Australia which consigns our 21st Century to a 20th Century technology”.

But none of this bodes well for the whole point of having the NBN – to enable citizens to have greater access to information and communication services.

Today’s NBN report “lock-up” harks back to convict times. In the information age, the way policy is being made is simply not good enough.

Australia needs the NBN, but it also needs a major attitude change from senior ministers such as Conroy. Public money belongs to the public and hiding information for political sensationalism is just plain wrong.

Don’t expect the public consultation that is planned to be conducted as part of the NBN rollout to be anything more than a farce. Consumers might be “the big winners”, but citizens are getting more of the same. So much for 21st century nation-building.

For further info, see  Delimiter's coverage here.

Photo of Stephen Conroy by Dr Ron from wikimedia.org. CC-By-SA

Electioneering via Social Networks: Preaching to the Converted?

With an election looming, some of the old favourites like "let's kick a dole-bludger" among other idiotic policies are being tossed around in the popular media. Targeting Tony Abbott in particular, it appears that the ACTU will be using Facebook and Twitter to 'hammer out a warning' about a re-painted Workchoices industrial relations environment.

Everybody knows that such a policy is not a winner - just ask John Winston Howard and Stanley Melbourne Bruce. But it makes me wonder how much difference the use of social media will make this election?

The inherent beauty of social networks is that you don't have to engage with or read stuff you don't like. If you have a friend or followee who annoys you, you simply unfriend or unfollow them and move on.  But how many people will be happy about having their social networks infiltrated by those annoying politicians during the election campaign?

The reality is that most of us will either only read or engage with those we are already going to vote for, or alternatively we will keep a safe distance away from the more evangelistic politicians. 

I am not a betting man, but if I were my money would be on social networks being nothing more than a sideshow for the traditional media, or at the every most a case of simply preaching to the choir.

UC 2.0: The Hothouse Rocks!

Today I met with the UC Hothouse crew to report on my progress for the Winter Term. I arrived 1/2 hour early to finally use the room set aside for us. After teaching from 8:30am to 3:30pm without a break, I spent the time listening to Scheherazade on my old iPod Shuffle while responding to student emails on my new Netbook. I was surprised to learn how quickly time has passed this semester with just over a week left to go for the semester, and now only two weeks for us to use the Hothouse room.

The trial with the University of Canberra College using my Web 2.0 techniques is proving to be a real winner with students with English as a second language (ESL). On sabbatical last year in Jordan, I really got to know what it was like to be a foreign ‘student’ and Google Translator and other tools became firm friends. On returning to the UC College fold, I decided to change my attitude toward ESL students and now students are providing me with links to the tools they are using - typically tools peculiar to particular languages.

Not everyone will agree with the approaches to teaching I am using (see the video in the coming weeks!). But the simple fact is that using traditional teaching methods, my ESL students sat stupefied as my head talked at them in the classroom. At the end of a class, nobody could correctly answer a single question asked of them. Now, it is rare that I get vacant faces when I ask questions - indeed the converse is true.

What is obvious is that the days of the talking head at the front of the tutorial class are limited - and for me the computer lab is the place where learning is ramped up to warp factor.

Next week, Leonard Low of the Hothouse crew will be producing a video record of my approach to teaching ESL students. I still need to collect detailed feedback from students but the informal feedback I have been receiving from numerous students and peers has been mind-blowing. My gut feeling is that the system I was using in Jordan works as a teaching method with a class of about 90 students. Nonetheless, the method is resource intensive, requiring computer labs for every face-to-face contact period except the 2 hour lecture.

My biggest fear is how I will be able to replicate the results I have achieved in the computer lab in a fully online unit. To be honest it is stressing me no end as the numbers for the new Winter Term are approaching 80 students and rising. What makes the difference is knowing that the Hothouse crew are behind us the whole way. After today’s meeting, I am noticeably less stressed. Whether that is the result of the meeting or that 1/2 hour of chilling out this afternoon I am not sure, but either way it is attributable to the Hothouse!