future

Dalliance with the iPad

Sunday. Launch plus two days. I’m walking down Bourke St in central Melbourne when I pass JB HiFi. A single handmade sign stuck onto the wall states simply: “iPad. Here now”. Now some in my family accuse me of being a nerd, but the truth is that while I was aware of the iPad’s Australian [...]

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‘New Matilda’ finds its billabong – R.I.P.

The problem with blogs is that they have no editorial filter. Everything gets through, no matter how shrill, elongated or irrelevant. Newspapers have the opposite problem. Their editorial filters are increasingly clogged, nothing getting through except what already has before: the same old arguments from the same old writers. Which is why both readers and [...]

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The Beginning of the End? Fears for America

I know it’s unfashionable. I’m not American, but I love America. Right now, however, I’m concerned that we are seeing the beginnings of permanent decline in the great American empire. Let’s start positive. Why do I love the US of A? Well I don’t love it in that crazy, flag-waving hand-on-heart, gooey way that Americans [...]

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Climate Change Straight Talk from Unlikely Sources

15000 delegates are currently sitting in Copenhagen and thrashing out some sort of agreement on how humanity might be saved from the effects of climate change. That’s a mighty big committee. Let’s hope all the hot air that will be exhaled over the next fortnight is being captured and put to good use. I must [...]

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Portrait of the Artist as a New Media Mogul

While working in a ‘real’ job and then later for myself, I had no idea how little society valued the arts. Now that I’m a writer, I’m learning fast – and the image I see is not very attractive.

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