Yesterday evening I had the immense joy and pleasure of seeing very good friends of mine that I had lost contact with in the whirlwind of working life for going on about a year now.
Even though a lot of the carnage left behind from this whirlwind was my own doing, last night had further reinforced the benefit of social interactivity and the importance of 'keeping up to date' with the lives of people you care about. Facebook updates alone simply won't suffice.
Hobbies and Occupation are the natural springboard to any conversation and it was very interesting to listen to the thoughts that people had with respect to ISPs, in particular about Telecommunications in Australia. Mainly;
- That the NBN(NBN2, enter trivial acronym that Ruddy/Conroy conceive) is "Pie in the Sky" as an astute friend called it.
- That unfortunately, Exetel was virtually non-existent to the majority of my friends, most of whom are quite capable technically and at the very least have some idea of the nature of providing internet services.
- That Australia is a long way behind many European/Asian countries in regards to broadband access and speed.
It was deliciously ironic that in general my friends had conceded that the NBN proposal by Ruddy was already teetering on the edge of fantasy, with one foot already entering the doorway of nonsense but would still vote for him in the next Election(Clearly likeable still to many). What other conclusion could a sensible person come up with when the words "$42 billion"and "10 year plan" are spoken within the same breath other than mass skepticsm considering those skeptics are people who know next to nothing about Telecomms - of course, as John L would say, this would also apply to the people who actually came up with the proposal in the first place - zing.
As somebody who works day in, day out in 'ISPland' it is also interesting to see what the average person knows about what's available out there - mainly Telstra and Optus it seems. While Exetel's (so far as I know anyway) target in regards to knowledgable I.T experts who can spread the word (which has clearly worked for years so far), the next echelon, the final frontier as it were is to somehow penetrate to the populace at large. Perhaps this is my naievity speaking from the mind of 'Mid 20s Generation Y pop-tart', but I would have thought given a customer base, amassing in total in the order of 80,000 odd that somebody would have known us off hand, or at the very least in deep thought.
Not the case, aside from one of my friends who only knew because I work for Exetel. While I never understood the term applied to a company of 80,000 odd customers as 'a drop in the ocean' I can see, perhaps in a 'household' name sense, or indeed from the point of view of what we have to compete with as this being the case. It's both exciting and disappointing at the same time but nonetheless interesting.
I should make Thursday night drinks a much more regular activity in my repertoire.
Finally, it should be remembered that on this day a mere 8 years ago, an atrocious act in an attempt to destroy civilization by theocratic zealots in the name of religious biggotry cost the lives of many hundreds of men and women.
And while this has never been the first, or unfortunately probably won't be the last of such kind of attacks against humanity it is important to realise now more than ever as we march into the 21st century with technological vigor, having won for ourselves many battles against superstition, biggotry and credulity that civilization must continue to strive for truth - mainly with science and reason as its formidable weapons against those who wish to destroy it.