human bits

There were two surprises to come out of the announcement of the national broadband network this week. The first was that the government got it right. I’d been hoping and praying for the last few months that they would have the balls and the vision and they have exceeded my expectations on both counts. Real leadership - who’d have thought! The second surprise has been the petty mindedness and utter lack of vision on the part of the opposition and some ‘analysts’. This also has exceeded my expectations. The implications of affordable high speed internet access across Australia are enormous. This is not about downloading movies - it is about what will be produced. It is about what will be possible. It is about unlocking potential. If there is a digital divide it is between those who can only see what now is and those who are ready to make what will be.

(writing this as we drive into Canberra for the weekend.)

People who mainly talk about themselves are hard to be around. Anything that tries to exist just for its own benefit gets to be pretty pointless after a while. It is one of the basic facts of the universe that things are most useful, most significant, most themselves when they point outside of themselves.

It is true of people and it is true on the web. The more you give the more you get. The more you send people away the more they come back. Imagine if google had links only to google. The more facebook points outside of facebook - the more it makes other things useful to me - the more likely I am to use facebook.