I must admit that I didn’t include Tasmania in the equation when I wrote “If the $43 Billion National Broadband Investment is to be of long-term economic value to the nation it will need provide the backbone that will allow Sydney (or perhaps Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth or Brisbane) to compete with San Francisco and Silicon Valley as a world leader in the export of information product services” a few weeks back in my post on why it will take a lot more than Fibre to improve Australia’s Health System.
At the same time we also had reports on the ABC and th SMH that the World’s richest man believes the NBN was too costly. Carlos Slim Helu, who has owned Mexico’s national telephone company since its privatisation in the 1990s, is in Sydney for the Forbes global CEO conference ”He says the connection estimate of $7,000 a home for the NBN is too much and not necessary because of constantly changing technology” and “You need to have in this multi-platform [a bit] of everything – mobile, landline, fibre, cable and copper”.
Apparently the Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has responded with the statement “Mr Slim’s comments about the NBN are no surprise, given he has become the world’s richest man by owning a vertically-integrated monopoly.”
I think these 3 messages – released with in a 24 hour period – provide us with a snapshot of the state of the NBN policy at both a Federal and State level. Dare I say a fascinating, yet deliciously potent, mix of electric dreams and stubborn denial?
The musings of the Tasmanian Premier reminded me of a story Matt Ridley relates in his book The Rational Optimist. In the chapter on The Collective Brain he quotes Rhys Jones the archeologist who first described the Tasmanian regress as “the slow strangulation of the mind”.
Of course Jones wasn’t describing the modern Tasmanian. He was talking about the Aboriginals the Europeans first encountered and how their isolation had somehow resulted in their unlearning or losing – a regression if you like – of the technologies that they had brought with them on their migratory travels from the Australian mainland.
This then is the opportunity that the NBN offers Tasmanians - and indeed all Australians – the chance to connect with the collective brain that is the internet and benefit (i.e. evolve) from that experience.
The position that Matt Ridley outlines in his book on how prosperity evolves is that we evolve as a people and a s a society by exchanging ideas, products and services. Here then is the intellectual heart of the Tasmanian NBN strategy:
The Tasmanians regressed because they had nobody else to exchange with. The NBN will change all that. With the NBN roll out Tasmanians will be able to exchange with the world. Indeed thanks to the speed of the NBN they will be able to exchange faster than anybody else in the world. Today Hobart tomorrow Silicon Valley…
Yes I must admit there is something deliciously Monty Pythonish in the logic that takes you in 2 easy steps from laying Fibre Optic Cable to becoming the innovation capital of the world.
It also reminds me of a similar policy statement released out of the SA Premier’s office in the late 1980′s when SA was to be the home of a MultiFunction Polis funded by Japanese and Asian Investors.
I guess what I am trying to say is the NBN is one of those national dreamings that appear to be almost generational in their manifestation. The idea that Australia can somehow become a beacon for creative and innovative talent rather than a net exporter of raw, high potential human capital. We witnessed similar things in the 1970′s with the Whitlam government’s investment in the Film Industry (Who could ever forget the rational of Australia being the ideal place to become the next Hollywood because we have more sunshine than California), the 80′s with the MultiFunction Polis, Hawke’s clever country and the Tourism Boom, the 90′s with the Information Superhighway and the local Tech Boom, the idea that Sydney could become the Finance capital of SE Asia in the 00′s and now the NBN for the 10′s.
All big ideas to deliver a new dimension to Australian Economy but the unfortunate(?) reality is Australian’s only seem to excel at one thing… Give an Australian a spade and he’ll show you a “bloody big hole”… and that’s why Australia continues to be Asia’s quarry.
One day I’ll get around to writing the great Australian Opera with great show tunes like “With a spade in my hand..” and “If I had a spade every day we’d be out digging holes again” and “Hole Digger” and “Yesterday all our troubles seemed so far away now we dug this hole we have to move away” :)
At the heart of the problem is Creative People need to exchange ideas and energy and they need to do it often. Australia’s isolation from the rest of the world means that exchange energy is lost and although the internet and the NBN will help us to bridge aspects of that divide it won’t place Australia at the centre of all this creative energy.
Fortunately for Australia over the past century the innovation centres have moved closer to us. Away from Europe across the East Coast of the USA to California and now onwards into Asia. The 21st Century innovation centers are on our doorstep. The problem is we lack the practical exchange skills to actively participate and take advantage of this creative energy now seething through SE Asia and the Indian sub-continent.
Put another way we continue to invest in very expensive intelligent technologies rather than investing in (relatively) inexpensive intelligent people. I suspect we do this because we are afraid that our best people will continue to walk away and work in the creative “hot houses”. There is – to use the management speak of the day – no ROI if the talent walks. The NBN by comparison is a safe bet. The cable is in the ground. It’s going nowhere.
However the real ROI of the NBN is how our people use it to create new value and prosper economically. That means investing in talent.
When I talk with my clients about the value of Business Intelligence I aways say how will your investment in Business Intelligence make your business intelligent? because at the end of the day the technology can’t fix stupid but it can certainly help you and your people be stupid quicker.
The secret to success in the modern world is about having Smart People using Smart Processes and Smart Technology to do more with less. The golden key is the investment in the Smart People who put the processes and technology in place.
The other secret to success in business is you only make a profit when you sell. Therefore any speculation on the value of the NBN is nought until we can discover ways of using it to improve our ability to exchange goods and services with the rest of the world.
Here then is the talent we should be teaching our children: the art of the exchange. The ability to connect with one another around the globe and add something of value to the collective brain of vibrant energy that is humanity.
We don’t need an NBN to do this. We need to do what is India is doing. Sending our best and brightest out into the world so they can learn how to connect and exchange ideas, products and services with other peoples and other cultures. We need to take proactively embrace the rest of the world rather than trying to engage with it remotely through the internet.
Further Reading
- How important is the Internet to the US economy?
- If you’re talking about innovation in America today then you’re probably talking about the MobCon
Background Reading
- Fast track to the future – or $43 billion farce?
- Digging out the value buried in Australia’s $43 Billion National Broadband Network Plan
[updated 25-10-2010]
“It seems like I’ve been listening to talk about making Australia a regional finance centre, developing high-value jobs here, ever since our first rush of deregulation in the Hawke-Keating years. Numerous inquiries, recommendations, study tours, conferences and cocktail parties later, the truth is in the reality of the proposed Singaporean takeover of ASX.” – Michael Pascoe of the SMH: Goodbye to the regional financial hub
Posted on September 30, 2010
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