Impressions of Australia

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

As most of you know, GG and I were downunder for the past three weeks. We
spent most of our time in Sydney and Canberra with just one day in
Melbourne.


It is winter in Australia and cool. Sydney had temperature ranges of a high
of 19 ish and lows overnight of 1. Canberra had lows of -8 (a record) and
highs of 16. There was little if any rain.


We arrived in Sydney and staying at the Regent Hotel by the Circular Quey.
They have a great rate via AMEX and was one of the best hotels I have ever
stayed in. Their Chief Concierge, Jacque, is a rare gem.


Since Sydney was largely planned as a rest stop, I tried to minimize my
work and thus ended up doing just an interview with ABC -- their public
radio system (I will be Live again next week on their national technology
talk show); an interview with Communications Australia -- their trade
magazine in Comm.; a lunch talk for EFA (Electronic Frontier Australia)/
ACS (Australian Computer Society); and an afternoon at the University of
Sydney giving a technical talk on the Gigabit Experience.


Since I tend to judge a town by its sights and food, I give Sydney very
high ratings. The view from the hotel of the harbor and opera house is
unexcelled. We had a chance to take the Jetcat to Manly and stroll along
the beach (a bit cold for swimming).


The restaurants in Sydney are very good. As I said before the Rookpool on
the Rocks was one of the best I have ever been in but there were many good
to excellent places from the Seibel Hotel's dinning room to the Ox on the
Rocks -- a small "bistro". Ethnic eating is fine and even kangaroo is
great.


Some technical observations re Sydney. I was surprised by the scarcity of
computer stores and the lack of variety of what they carry. Given the
seeming emphasis on computing as shown by a weekly computer section on it
in the Australian -- their national newspaper (and much much better than
USA Today), I was surprised not to see more.


There is a "fight" over cellular systems with GSM and Analog in use (GSM is
still small). The AU government has stated that analog will go in 2000. The
cellular industry is deregulated and lots of competition. I called Telecom
Australia to see if I could get my phone activated in AU. They never said
no but the hoop jumping looked to long. By the way, it is trivial to get an
AU activated in the USA.


In Sydney I did not see evidence of a lot of telecom activity in the
academic world. There was a lot of interest in the NII. As a side, I got a
lot of comments in Australia on the imperial tone of Gore's GII speeches
and defended him in the main (wish he would go low on the spreading
democracy via the GII. It tends to be read as American style and American
culture).


We went down to Canberra to spend time at Australian National University --
ANU -- Center for Information Science Research with Prof. Michael A.
McRobbie who were my host for the trip to Australia. Canberra is a small
but quite nice city very much like DC in architecture and like Ottawa in
living style.


I met a lot of interesting people in the Federal Government's Science
establishment and at ANU and helped them celebrate the launching of a
cooperative agreement with Storage Technology and their getting a large
Storage Vault. ANU has a large Fuijitsu Supercomputer and a Thinking
Machine system.


We were invited to attend a Rugby game by a Minister of the ACT (Australian
Capital Territory) and sat in a box eating pizza (a native dish now) and
beer (very good) and cheering on the home team (they won). Tradition calls
for a Au$2 bet into a pool on game attendance and I won by using 20000 plus
three digits from 1776 (an American I am). I took away $67 and they did not
even deduct taxes ;-). Great people!!


I gave two talks in Canberra and gave an interview that appeared in the
Australian. Talk one was an University talk on the NII and the American
experience in information infrastructures. I pitched the importance of the
GII and used the Gigabit Testbed as an example of
Government/University/Industrial collaboration that Australia may want to
try. Very well received. I then gave again for the EFA and the ACS a
lecture on Democracy in Cyberspace that looked at the issues of law,
privacy etc. In the future. Australia is trying to deal with similar issues
as we are trying to face. Again well received.


With all my comments on the state of Australian Information Infrastructures
-- to quota a comment of mine from the Australian "I don't see the
realization down here yet that data networks are a huge driver of the
economy for supplying goods and services." -- and because they wanted to
hear from and chat with me I was invited to go down to the Telecom
Australia Research Labs in Melbourne. I did a one dayer. For those who have
never been to Melbourne (I stayed there for a week several years ago), it
is an old city with charm. It is the home for many of the ethnic groups who
migrated to Australia. It is the third largest Greek city. It is however
like Tokyo in traffic congestion with no beltways and everything going into
downtown. It is also LA in sprawling out. Took one hour from the airport to
the Labs at non rush hour.


Telecom is undertaking an ATM experiment in Australia at 155 mb involving
some Universities etc. I met with the Lab Director and some of the key
staff and they got my usual blunt comments and advice. I learned a lot and
hopefully so did they. They kept asking when I would be back. I gave a talk
to a rather full auditorium on the NII/Gigabit testbeds from a
technological perspective and again had fun.


We tried to leave Australia on the 12 th but the plane broke and had to
deadhead to Tokyo to get fixed so we stayed in Sydney, met with a
Government official, had much and dinner at the Rockpool and finally got
back.


A meta comment about Australia. It seems to have taken its position as a
bridge between the West and the East. The entry of the UK into the EC
closed a lot of markets and brought home the location of Australia in the
Pacific. It is still English in many ways but more and more Australian in
many important ways. It has a talented workforce and is, in my opinion,
better leverage to become the information center for the Pacific than is
Singapore both for "technical" reasons and for future stability reasons.
But it needs to develop a much better program for getting into the 21 St.
century and the information society. I pushed them to think of more
experiment such as a Capital Network as a show piece experiment linking
together the state and national capitals with each pushing their technology
and applications as far as possible. Starting with Canberra may be the
easiest. Besides experience gained and companies started who could export
their experiences and products, it would act as a focus for the training of
people who would form both the leadership and the workers for the future in
telecommunication.


Australia claims to have the largest number of computers per capita and
should push toward the same position in networking.


I loved my stay. The Australians are great people, still a bit of outback
attitude and spirit, friendly, open and neat. They are in transition and it
will be interesting to see where they go.


Dave


ps Sydney in 2000 !!!