Recently, I was interviewed by Josh Mehlman (@vealmince), editor of NETT, the Australian magazine aimed at small businesses bringing their work and offerings online. The interview was focussed on Australia’s online economy (although the issues have relevance pretty much everywhere).
NETT have just published the article online as a sneak preview piece for the upcoming newsstand issue. In it, my views on NETT’s questions, alongside those of (the real) Stephen Conroy, Senator Nick Minchin, Ian Birks of AIIA and Rob Fitzpatrick of NICTA are presented.
It’s interesting to compare the views of someone like me – a one-man business embedded in the online industry – with those of politicians and industry bodies. We share some views, but our approaches differ – sometimes a little sometimes a great deal. I got a little ranty in the last question, but I still like my answer to the problem of whether there’s adequate investment in online:
If any Australian government really cared about online technology, we’d have massive investment in infrastructure, people and technology. Instead, we have the joke that is the Education Revolution – which is neither educational nor revolutionary. The mindset is backward. The policy is backward. The implementation is backward.
If the Government were really forward looking, this program would equip kids with tools that weren’t crippled and filtered. They’d also be teaching things like the need for change in copyright, Creative Commons, creativity, big thinking and entrepreneurship. Things that will equip our graduates for productive careers. None of this is happening and it’s frankly criminal and negligent.
So why is it so hard to remake Australia into the clever country?
