A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital Future to 2050 report.
A world-first, the report reveals information and communications technology (ICT) enhanced with ubiquitous high-speed broadband is becoming Australia’s new utility – as historic and game changing as electricity or telephony.
Written by Phil Ruthven, Founder and Chairman, IBISWorld, and commissioned by IBM, the report looks ahead of existing research to examine how Australia can harness this new utility to transform our lives, our cities and the way we interact.
The report rates all Australia’s industry classes (509) against the impact of the new utility. Ruthven and his extended Industry Impact Panel assessed the prospects of the 509 classes of industry in the Australian economy over the next 40-50 years.
The report predicts that 10 per cent of Australia’s 509 industries, accounting for 23 per cent of the nation’s revenue, will not function without this new utility. A further 23 per cent of industry revenue will use it to drive step-changes in their business. 15 industry classes are likely to demise if they do not reinvent themselves to embrace the digital future; and some may simply be unable to do so.
The report finds that Australia will no longer be known for its dependency on the export of natural resources over the next half century. It will become known as much an exporter of services such as tourism, business services, health and education services. The export of tourism alone could match the 2012 mineral exports totalling around $175 billion by 2030.
John Hodgman, comedian and resident expert, "explains" the design of three iconic modern objects.
Museum app - Exploring old Sydney: The Rocks (Free)
This week Nico, Einar and I finished another museum walking tour app for android and IPhone. Exploring old Sydney: The Rocks is a self-guided walking tour of The Rocks features a selection of historic images and maps from the Powerhouse Museum collection.
A really nice idea - PeerJ - lifetime Peer review Publishing Model
PeerJ provides academics with two Open Access publication venues: PeerJ (a peer-reviewed academic journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (a 'pre-print server'). Both are focused on the Biological and Medical Sciences, and together they provide an integrated solution for your publishing needs. Submissions open late Summer.
An Uncanny Mind: Masahiro Mori on the Uncanny Valley and Beyond. A post in which Norri Kageki interviews Masahiro Mori, who, as a professor of engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology in the 1970s, proposed the now-famous concept of the uncanny valley. [Read the first authorized translation of his seminal article here.] Mori's insight was that people would react with revulsion to humanlike robots, whose appearance resembled, but did not quite replicate, that of a real human. He called this phenomenon bukimi no tani (the term "uncanny valley" first appeared in the 1978 book Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction, written by Jasia Reichardt.
Do we need specialist curators?
Commented on Giles Miller's post on Do we need specialist curators where he makes a case for the continued employment of specialised curators to manage museum collections.As a curator I agree with his sentiments but I do think that there is no one size fits all solution - different museum collections are curated in different ways and perhaps a range of curatorial styles is a better approach for some of these. I also think resourcing is an issue for large diverse collections like the ones here at the Powerhouse and as a result specialised curators in one area can also lead to no curators in other areas. While I would love to think just employing more specialised curators to cover all collection areas would solve some of the problems museums face I think the solution may be a little more complicated.
David S. Linthicum CTO and founder of Blue Mountain Labs slideshare on Redefining cloud computing again - what cloud computing is, and what it should be. The way it’s defined today, and how should be defined tomorrow.
Immediately thought there could be all kinds of uses for this great idea - Evian introduces smart fridge magnet, schedules deliveries of water.
My post on Photographing the 1874 Transit of Venus looks at the 1874 transit and how it led to some major advances in the use of photography for astronomical observations.
