Consequences of communications control-freaks: Wireless-less tragedy of the SS Yongala

SS Yongala, before 1911

It is difficult to wade through the history of communications technologies in Australia without entangling oneself in the weeds of technological nationalism. These promise glory, but for the uninitiated, tragedy lurks beneath their murky camouflage.

Despite the introduction of the Wireless Telegraphy Act in 1905, Australia was a wireless backwater for a decade longer than it should have been.

Before the introduction of the Wireless Act, it is quite clear that the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) ‘wanted absolute control’ over wireless. However, from 1902 to 1910, the Australian Government deliberately delayed the introduction of wireless technologies in Australia (Moyal 1988: 110). And while the Australian Government was influenced by ‘a British post office hostile to Marconi’, it rejected a decade of offers from a variety of other companies including Telefunken and De Forest (Moyal 1988: 110).

Despite setting aside £10,000 in forward estimates to establish a coastal wireless service after the Marconi company conducted a demonstration of wireless telegraphy from Queenscliff, Victoria in 1906, nothing happened until the first coastal station was built at Melbourne's Domain in 1912.

But by then it was too late to prevent one of Australia's worst maritime disasters. The SS Yongala disappeared off the coast of Queensland during a cyclone in 1911. The most unfortunate part of the tragedy is that the ship was still in sight of land when a nearby signal station received a telegram warning of the cyclone but without a ship-to-shore wireless capability observers could only watch as the ship sailed into the storm (Maritime Museum of Townsville 2008).

The Australian Government was criticised for its cavalier attitude towards wireless but the control-freak nature of things didn't end there. Although a number of coastal wireless stations opened in Australia in 1912, the coastal station in Melbourne's Domain was established using what the Commonwealth claimed was its own equipment (Deloraine and Westbury Advertiser 1912: 1; Barrier Miner 1912: 3; Given 2010: 60.3-60.5).

It appears that the government went to extraordinary lengths to maintain complete control of the coastal wireless stations by attempting to avoid the use of the Marconi system. 

After an introduction in London, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher appointed John Balsillie, the Australian-born founder of the British Radiotelegraph Company, as the PMG’s engineer for radiotelegraphy.[1] Balsillie established twenty stations by 1915 (Cleland 1979), the first of which used his own ‘invention’.

The Barrier Miner (1912: 3) reported on the Commonwealth’s reluctance to reveal any details about the first coastal station in Melbourne:

The Commonwealth Government, in fitting up its wireless stations, is using what it claims to be a system of its expert (Mr. Balsillie). Nobody knows what this system is. The Commonwealth claims that it is one which does not infringe any existing patents, but in almost the same breath as this it was announced by the Postmaster-General [Charles Frazer] that if any other system was being pirated the Government would be prepared to make suitable reparation to the owners of the patents…

When the Melbourne station was opened certain persons connected with the wireless companies in Australia sought permission to inspect the plant with a view to seeing if it was really all that was claimed by the Postmaster-General. Mr. Frazer, however, declined to allow such inspection, at the same time reiterating his statement that no patents were being infringed.

The representatives of the Marconi company in Australia are not content to take the Postmaster-General's assurance about the exclusiveness of the system of his expert.

Further, the contracts to build the major coastal wireless stations at Sydney and Perth did not go to the Marconi system. Instead, these contracts were granted to Australasian Wireless Ltd, a Sydney firm with the patent rights to equipment developed by the German company Telefunken (Goot 1991).

A series of patent disputes with Marconi commenced in 1912 and the Commonwealth settled out of court with Marconi in 1915. In the meantime, Marconi's Australian operations had merged with Telefunken's Australian operations to form AWA.

By 1922, the Commonwealth entered into a public-private partnership by purchasing a bare majority in AWA (for £500,001) to extend the international beam wireless service. This arrangement would last for thirty years (sound familiar?) because neither the Commonwealth nor AWA had any idea how to dissolve it.

The arrangement also meant that the Commonwealth was locked into the radio broadcasting industry because, at the time of making the arrangement with AWA, it had been unable to guess what might have happened in the future.

None of this helped the 122 poor souls who lost their lives on the SS Yongala in 1911. The location of the wreck wasn’t confirmed until 1958.

But one can only imagine the helplessness felt by the lighthouse keeper on Dent Island as he ‘watched Yongala steam past into the worsening weather. It was the last sighting’, knowing full well that the technology to save them could have been installed nearly a decade earlier.

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[1] The Australian Government decided to use circuits designed by Balsillie exclusively in an attempt to avoid patent problems with Marconi (Goot 1991). However, the 'Balsillie System' of wireless telegraphy had been found to be ‘an infringement of the Marconi patent’ in 1911 (Cleland 1979).

Facebook: I Quit!

Tonight, I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Additionally, I deleted my Twitter account and my Yammer account.

I have actively used Facebook since 2007, Twitter since 2008, and Yammer since 2009. In the early days of Web 2.0, I was quite interested in how the power to interact, collaborate, and self-publish (all while reaching a large audience) had the potential to change society for the better. In particular, I held a fundamental belief that a more transparent, open society would be a better society.

I still hold these views but I don't think that Facebook, Twitter or Yammer are the tools to make this happen any time soon. Instead, I am focusing this year on bringing my teaching into Wikiversity and spending the extra time to take advantage of and contribute to Creative Commons-licensed material and accessible online publishers such as ANU ePress.

After much debate over the years with colleagues at the University of Canberra, I am ready to give the open source curriculum model a run and stop wasting my time on networks that don't really add much value to my research.

Using Web 2.0 in higher education has been an interesting journey. At each stage, I have immersed myself in various applications, technologies and devices early on, often only to find myself in the 'trough of disillusionment' just as everybody else is starting their journey towards the 'peak of inflated expectations'.

But my journey up 'the slope of enlightenment' to the 'plateau of productivity' has led to some unexpected outcomes.

At the beginning of 2009, the contract ran out on my i-mate JASJAM, a 3G mobile phone I had bought in 2006. I did not renew the contract and, after having used a mobile phone since the mid-1990s, I decided to see what life was like without one (see "Life Without a Mobile Phone"). Three years on I am happier, my telecommunications budget is healthier, and I marvel daily at the people around me who fill every moment gazing at or speaking into their handsets the moment they are alone. Or sometimes even when they are not!

I found that by having a mobile phone, I was actually paying for a device that others used to interrupt my time with my family. Ridding myself of the mobile phone facilitated a much better home life, and despite my being constantly online with my work, now when I walk away from the computer I am completely unplugged. Others have to wait until I am ready and I feel like I am in control of my Net interaction.

This year I am hoping the same will be true of removing myself from Facebook, Twitter and Yammer. Although I enjoyed the sense of community on Twitter in the beginning, it was quickly dominated by broadcasters and the intimate networks established by the Twitter pioneers disappeared in a torrent of "Twitterati". 

But Facebook was great to catch up with people from the past and to stay abreast of what was happening for my friends on the other side of the world. These things I will miss.

Yammer I found was a great way to communicate with colleagues and to try new approaches in a relatively safe environment. Yammer is like an Intranet version of Facebook that is restricted to members who share a common email domain-name (for e.g. @canberra.edu.au). This means that you can be candid about organisational issues you normally wouldn't want to share on Facebook or Twitter.

So in 2011, I introduced Yammer into my teaching in an attempt to sway my students away from that bane of my existence, email. 

My simple theory is that email is a reservoir, while a micro-blogging tool is a stream. When you receive emails, you are expected to respond. But the reservoir is never empty and quickly becomes a source of workplace stress. Add 1,000 or so students per year and email gets out of hand. And often by the time you respond to an email the problem has been resolved anyway, making the whole process a waste of time.

With micro-blogging tools, messages flow past in a stream, putting the onus on the sender, rather than the receiver, of the message. If I miss the message, then the sender must resend or revise and resend. Responsibility is completely reversed!

Regrettably, my attempt to use Facebook and Yammer as alternatives has had mixed results. Given the aim was to improve my efficiency in corresponding with many students, what tended to happen was that students would correspond via Facebook, if I didn't respond within moments they would contact me via Yammer, and then send an email - all asking the same question. 

Add to this an internal email function in the learning management system (LMS), and your life quickly becomes an endless stream WITH an overflowing reservoir, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Without institutional support, these levels of service are clearly unsustainable.

After 5 years of using Facebook, Twitter and Yammer in my teaching, I am back to square one. Unfortunately, email remains the dominant communication tool within many Australian organisations and old habits die hard.

But all is not gloomy, I have found wikis and blogs to be useful tools in the classroom and will continue to develop these in 2012. I will also be trialling the BYO technology model using some new teaching spaces at the University of Canberra. It really is an evolving process and I am pleased to be moving on.

But tonight, Facebook: I quit!

The über-efficient teacher: Harnessing technology for a student-demand driven “now”

For many years I've been incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into my teaching. This year I have found some success with my teaching model, and today I presented the model at the University of Canberra. The video-recording of the presentation is below:

Here is the description I used to advertise the event:

Michael de Percy demonstrates how he can teach 250 students with zero admin support AND zero sessional staff support. His approach will enable you to achieve learning outcomes better than ever AND have students raving about how good it is! This is not a theoretical talk-fest, Michael will show you how he does this “NOW.”

Enjoy!