Category: government

Newcastle as a Smart and Innovative City

In today’s modern world, success is determined by our ability to come up with unique, smart and innovative ideas. It has become the key economic driver for cities and regions as they increasingly compete with other places for attention, investment, visitors and talent.

Newcastle City Council recently released their 2030 strategic plan to become a Smart and Innovation City to help Newcastle develop a healthy, diverse, creative and resilient economy.

But, how do you create a culture of new ideas? How do you attract smart people? How do you turn an Old World City into one the World’s Smartest Cities?

On June 29 2011, The Lunaticks Society of Newcastle will host some of the most creative minds in Newcastle from business leaders to content producers for an evening of thought provocative discussion, collaboration and lots of smart ideas on how to construct a Smart and Innovative City.

Speakers/Panelists

MC: Paul Wallbank – author, tech writer and radio presenter

Featured speakers include: Greg Hall – writer and movie producer, Simon McArthur & Jill Gaynor -Newcastle City Council and Carol Velduizen – Senior Research Fellow, Hunter Valley Research Foundation. More speakers to be announced…

Venue: Delany Hotel, 143 Darby Street, Newcastle

Date: Wednesday, June 29 2011

Time: Starts 6.30pm – Ends 10pm

Don’t miss this event! Book at the New Lunaticks website.

Skilling for the future

We can’t rely on governments to deliver the skills our businesses need

Tonight we see the first budget of the Gillard government and one of its stated priorities to get the long term unemployed, disabled and single parents back into the workforce.

This is welcome in a society where we are facing skills shortages, the effects of an aging population and a developing global race for talent that is steadily making the old model of importing immigrants to cover workforce gaps no longer viable.

For those who’ve been out of the workforce for a long period the biggest challenge is acquiring the skills they need for the modern economy, to work in most industries today means using technologies that weren’t around five or ten years ago.

Like many ideas that come out of Canberra, the scale of this task seems to be underestimated by the public servants, politicians and the media reporting their plans. Training those currently excluded from the workforce is going to take more than a visit to Centrelink.

To give these folk marketable skills is going to require rebuilding our adult education and TAFE systems that have been systemically allowed to run down by governments over the last thirty years. That in itself is a major task that neither the states nor Canberra seem to have the appetite to address.

One of the big challenges with bringing disadvantaged groups back into education is transport, the colleges and teachers are often a long way from the students who usually face a convoluted and time consuming public transport journey to get the colleges and schools.

This is where technology comes in with access to the internet and online learning tools. Developed sensibly, broadband access can create relevant community learning centres along with individual in-home training.

We should be careful though treating technology as the only solution, one of the essentials for using computers and the Internet effectively is literacy and that’s a big challenge for many of these groups and something that is going to take a lot of investment in well trained and motivated teachers.

Those education investments, along with the spending we’re committing to the National Broadband Network, need to be co-ordinated and this seems to be where the Federal and state governments really drop the ball with poorly thought out, short term schemes.

For businesses, those last thirty years of government neglecting adult education have seen us neglect training as well. We’ve thrown much of the training burden onto reluctant governments or increasingly asked workers themselves to pay for training out of their pocket then moaning when new staff don’t have the skills we need.

That indulgence is running out as we begin to face the inevitable consequences of failing to train young workers coupled with the demographic certainty of an aging workforce.

We can hope our governments can deliver on their promises but we shouldn’t wait on them, even they get it right this is a project that will take years to bear fruit, we need to be starting right now with our own businesses and staff.

Training all workers, managers and business owners is a great opportunity to build new industries and use the web to give people the skills that will make them valuable members of their community.

Our days of complacently expecting workers to have the skills we need from the day we hire them are over, if they ever existed. We have the tools to fix the problems ourselves and we need to start now.

The global online sales battle

The fight between governments, retailers and online traders has some big stakes.

Gerry Harvey’s and Bernie Brooke’s Fair Go for Retailers campaign drawing attention to the GST treatment of online overseas purchases is part of broader battle being fought around the world between multinational corporations, governments and small business. How it is resolved is going to affect all of us.

Last week, while Australians were focused on their major retailers campaigning for changes to GST rules, Internet retailer Amazon wrote to its Illinois affiliates warning that should the state legislature pass a law imposing sales tax on Internet purchases, the company would cut off their partners in that state, just as they already have in Colorado.

The actions of the Colorado state government, the Illinois proposal and Amazon’s ruthless response are just the latest phase in a longer term struggle between borderless online retailers and those governments, and businesses, limited by their physical locations.

What’s making this particularly acute in the United States is state governments are struggling to balance their budgets and sales tax is the one of the few avenues they have to raise revenues in an economy where incomes and property markets continue to stagnate, if not fall outright.

That balancing act isn’t just confined to the US, the UK government has increased VAT rates from the beginning of the year for the same reason and is facing discontent over increasing tax burdens, particularly on fuel prices.

For the moment the UK government and customs authorities seem to be fairly relaxed about the leakage of VAT income that has seen some British supermarket chains shipping online orders from their Channel Islands branches to avoid local taxes in the way Gerry Harvey and Bernie Brookes proposed last December when the floated the proposal to move their online stores offshore.

The British public hasn’t shared their government’s sanguine response with organisations like UK Uncut blockading stores accused of dodging taxes or owned by alleged tax avoiders.

Governments aren’t the only ones affected, while in Australian it’s the retailers who are publicly worried about their loss of sales at present, other sectors, particularly those providing business to business services, are even more at risk.

Last month The Economist described how US law firms are seeing high margin but relatively low skilled work moving offshore to India and it’s likely those contractors are offering similar services to Australian law firms and corporate clients.

Online bidding sites such as Freelancer.com, O-desk and 99 Designs are offering almost every business support service imaginable, from virtual offices to logo design. Anyone competing locally against foreign contractors on those sites starts from exactly the same GST disadvantage as Harvey Norman, Myer and the local shoeshop.

The power of international retailers and service providers like Google and Amazon to avoid taxes and deliver lowest cost products to customers are challenges to both businesses and governments.

Julia Gillard’s and Bill Shorten’s almost condescending responses to the retailers shows the politicians are somewhat more in tune with the public mood than the retailers. But we can be sure that should the porridge in Australia’s Goldilocks economy start going cold, then Treasury will start looking for those lost GST dollars.

While we can criticise Gerry Harvey, Bernie Brookes and the others behind the “Fair Go for Retailers” campaign for being out of touch and failing to respond to obvious threats to their markets, most businesspeople – and politicians – shouldn’t think for a moment they are immune from the same forces the retailers are complaining about.

Few of us, whether we run businesses or not, will be untouched by these forces realigning the global economy. We all need to understand what these changes mean to our livelihoods and investments, lest we get caught out like Australia’s big retailers.

What businesses should learn from Wikileaks

Cablegate forces us to question computer security and the stability of the Internet

The Wikileaks Cablegate affair has been entertaining us now for two weeks as we see diplomats and politicians around the world squirming with embarrassment as we learn what US diplomats really think about the foreign powers they deal with.

Both the leak of the cables and the treatment of Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, by various Internet companies raises some important questions about the Internet, cloud computing and office security in the digital era.

Security

It’s believed the source of the leaked cables is Private First Class Bradley Manning, who is alleged to be responsible for leaking the Iraq tapes released by Wikileaks earlier this year.

The lesson is don’t give junior staff unrestricted access to your data, access to important information such as bank account details, staff salaries and other matters best kept confidential needs to be protected.

You can stop data leaving the building by locking USB ports, CDs and DVDs through either software or hardware settings on your computers and you should ask your IT support about this, keep in mind that locking down systems may affect some of your staff’s productivity.

Locking the physical means though doesn’t stop the possibility of data being sent across the Internet and access logs may only tell you this has happened after the fact. So it’s important to review your organisation’s acceptable use policy. Check with your lawyers and HR specialists that your staff are aware of the consequences of accessing company data without permission.

Incidentally, the idea that Pfc Manning was just one US Army staffer of thousands who were able to access these cables raises the suspicion that the information Wikileaks is now releasing was long ago delivered to the desks of interested parties in London, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Beijing and cave hideouts in remote mountain ranges.

Don’t rely on one platform

Wikileaks found itself hounded from various web hosting and payment providers. As we’ve discussed previously, relying on other people’s services to deliver your product raises a number of risks. Make sure you have alternatives should one of your service providers fail and never allow an external supplier to become your single point of failure.

Concerns about the cloud

This column has been an unabashed fan of cloud computing, but the Wikileaks saga shows the cloud is not necessarily secure or trustworthy. Not only is there the risk of a PFC Manning working at the data center compromising your passwords or data, but the arbitrary shutdown of Wikileaks’ services is a stark lesson of relying on another company’s Terms of Service.

Within most terms of service are clauses that allow the provider to shut down your service if you are accused of breaking the law or straying outside of the providers’ definition of acceptable use. As we saw with Amazon’s treatment of Wikileaks, you can be cut off at any time and without notice.

Amazon’s shutting down of Wikileaks is a pivotal point in the development of cloud services. Trust is essential to moving your operations to the cloud, and Amazon’s actions shown much of that trust may be misplaced.

Should you be considering moving to the cloud, you’ll need to ensure your data and services are being backed up locally and not held hostage to the arbitrary actions of your business partner.

Don’t put your misgivings in writing

So your business partner is a control freak? Great but don’t put it in writing.

Be careful of gossip and big noting

One interesting aspect of Wikileaks to date is how senior politicians like gossip and showing how worldly they are to US diplomats.

That’s great, but it probably isn’t a good idea to tell your best friend they should consider beating up your most important customer. As mentioned earlier, this little gem was probably on polished desks of the Chinese Politburo long before the cables found their way to Wikileaks.

Resist the temptation to gossip, remember your grandmother’s line about not saying anything if you can’t say something nice.

Ultimately what Wikileaks shows us is all digital communications are capable of being copied and endlessly distributed. In a digital economy, the assumption has to be that everything you do is likely to become public and you should carry out your business conduct as if you will be exposed on Wikileaks or the six o’clock news.

Wikileaks is a lesson on transparency, we are entering an era of accountability and the easiest way to deal with this is to be more honest and open. That’s the big lesson for us in our business and home lives.

Where next for the consumer society?

Have we reached the limits of consumerism?

Anand Giridharadas in his NY Times article on A Yearning for the Soul in Two Nations describes how he believes some in India and China are seeking alternatives to the affluence models of the developed world. He says;

“In this view, there is too much mimicry of Western models, regardless of their fit. There is too much attention to money, and not enough on culture and values. Journalists, Mr. Ji said, don’t ask him what he thinks or how China might be changed; they concentrate on his Forbes rich-list ranking.”

But is this really a Western value, or the result of a half-Century of consumerism?

Up until the Second World War, most Western societies operated just like the “traditional” societies of Asia where extended family and the community looked after their old and sick with it being quite normal for four generations to be living in one small house.

Post World War II, the advent of the nuclear family and increased material wealth allowed us to dispatch Nana to the nursing home, where we’d expect the state to pay for her dotage. This allowed debt laden working age families to get on with working two jobs to bring up two kids in a five bedroom house on the outskirts of town where we could retreat away from the surrounding community into the soft comforts of mass entertainment.

Has that model of the consumer society reached it’s limits?

In the West, the last two decades have been focused on ever elaborate mechanisms to put consumers, government and societies into greater debt in order to sell more plasma televisions, bigger cars and empty bedrooms in oversized McMansions. In turn government borrowed more to sustain the illusion that this material wealth could be enjoyed throughout retirement.

The Global Financial Crisis was the undoing of this as the mechanism to continually fund debt and bankers profits stretched to its limits and finally broke. Today, we have the bankers being bailed out by governments which in turn have to be bailed out by supra-national organisations like the IMF or European Union.

While Anand’s right in pointing out that some Indians and Chinese are questioning the Western style rush for consumer driven growth, it would be wrong to assume that nobody in Europe, North America or Australasia questioned this as well.

In the west, these voices were drowned by the obvious attractions of having a ice cream maker and espresso machine in every kitchen but they were there nevertheless. Today they are being heard.

We in the developed nations have reached the maximum point of the consumer society – we have enough plasma TVs in our households and many of us have reached the limits of how fare we can commute in a day. We were able to sustain this for a while after we passed the point we could afford it as cheap credit became easier to obtain but even that is now exhausted.

So we’re looking at a period where consumer spending is not going to drive the world’s developed economies the way it has for the past few decades.

In some respects this will mean a nominal reduction in our standard of living as we won’t be able to buy that third car, fifth iPad or go on overseas holiday every year and it will mean some industries based on the extremes of consumer spending will shrink.

But overall it may not be a bad thing as it will force us into spending more time with our local communities and families with our incomes and debts being tempered to more sustainable levels. We’ll invest in sustainable and important matters like our health and environment rather than speculate on overleveraged assets.

This will be great challenge to businesses and industries built around servicing every increasing consumer demands and many won’t cope with the change. Are we, and our governments, prepared for this change?

ABC Nightlife Digital, 12 October 2010

Your say on the National Broadband Network

There’s been a lot of talk about the National Broadband Network, join Rod Quinn and Paul Wallbank to discuss what the NBN means to you.

We’ll be taking listeners’ calls to debate, explain and discuss the issues, costs and technology questions surrounding this massive project.

Please note that this segment will be going out on the ABC Local Digital Network in capital cities as the Commonwealth games will go out on the analogue network.

If you are outside of the capital cities, you can stream the program through the ABC Nightlife website. If you’d like to join the conversation with your questions or comments phone 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702 or twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag

Thoughts on Media140

How is real time and social media changing politics?

This post was part of the Media 140 Australian Politics of which I was kindly invited as a guest blogger. The focus on the afternoon panel is because this was the specific session I was asked to cover by the organiser, Julie Posetti.

After an election what panelist and political cartoonist First Dog on the Moon
described as “three months of despair” a review from a panel of cartoonists,
photographers and other outliers of the Australian political journalism was always
going to be well received.

First Dog’s comments showed the general despair by the electorate at large towards
a bland performance by both major political parties, particularly in their use of new
media tools.

The rest of the afternoon panel on “alternative views on political news” shared First
Dog’s general attitude, but luckily they made up for that despair with an entertaining
and funny take on the election and pricking some of the pomposity that can surround
the social media communities.

Malcolm Farnsworth (@mfarnsworth) put this best when he described much of
Twitter as “ego, brown nosery and wankery”. Surprisingly this was taken well by the
room.

His point is valid though, we need to keep in mind that one of the attractions of social
media is we can choose our own friends, particularly in Twitter where we can restrict
our social circle to those we like and agree with.

A few of the questions from the floor recognised this as did Julian Morrow
(@moreoj) with a shameless plug for The Chaser’s iPhone App. In an earlier session
Claire Wardell had shown how new media isn’t just Twitter and tools like apps and
clever websites can drive the political discourse just as well as a witty tweet.

Julian also showed how The Chaser crew were ahead of the curve with taking a
failed newspaper empire online in the late 1990s. Although his line about Twitter giving “the monkeys the typewriters” also betrayed a Rupert Murdoch style bitterness towards
new media.

To further move the issue from social media, Peter Bowers (@mpbowers) raised
the issues of photographers’ rights and payments, citing the Hudson River plane
crash as a good example where an agency snapper would have received some
large rights payments for the early photos of the aircraft floating down the river.

Peter moved into another aspect of social media and the perils for photographers
when talking about Parliamentarians taking photos from the floor of the house. In
the Australian Parliament, there are strict rules about the use of images and he had
once been bought before the Privileges Committee for breaching the rules with the
possibility of gaol time for contempt of Parliament.

What this illustrated in Peter’s opinion was how laws haven’t kept up to date with
technology. We could also say it’s another example of how people don’t understand
the real time consequences of seemingly trivial online actions.

As one of the final sessions for the day, the session was good opportunity to liven up the room with some funny, out of the box and thinking that shot down the thought that the day would be a Twitter love-in.

Overall, Media140 was a success in examining how the new online tools are changing
politics and the reporting of it. Having Claire Wardell’s UK perspective and Jeffrey

Bleich’s view from the Obama campaign showed just how far Australia has to go with
these tools.

Probably the biggest message was from the journalist participants – it’s clear many are
uncomfortable with the public being able to work around the gatekeepers and some
are downright scared of the abuse they think they receive from the community.

“It’s all about getting paid” one journalist said. You can’t help but think that was the
same thing bleated by the loom weavers of 200 years ago.

What we saw from the OzPolitics Media140 is a community and society in great
change: The political parties, media and the electorate are working through how these
tools are going to change the way we vote and how our governments work.

An appropriate broadband policy

What should Australia’s Internet policy be?

On Radio National’s Life Matters Paul joins Richard Aedy, Jane Bennett and Peter Cox to discuss what the appropriate broadband policy should be for Australia.

Our previous discussions on this are covered in our Freeways of the Future article and presentation.

Some of the topics we’ll be looking at include;

  • if we choose to go with the est $43b broadband fibre to the door policy – does this mean they’ll be coming along digging up the street to lay cables into every yard?
  • if we don’t do this but choose to rely on wireless connection from hubs – what does that mean for reliability of internet connection?
  • how do any of the options compare to the current speeds Australian cities, and rural and remote regions have?
  • are we over-building if we proceed to take fibre to every household in the country?
  • are we simply ensuring that we will be ready for expansion of services on the internet?

The show is live at 9.00am Australian Eastern time and will podcast on the Life Matters site shortly afterward.

Why hung Parliaments are good for business

A government answering to independents is the best result for businesses

Heather Ridout, the Australian Industry Group chief executive, is quoted that Independent control of Parliament will result in “instability, uncertainty and short-termism in policy development” which is an interesting view, given these are exactly the reasons voters have punished the major parties.

Indeed Heather has seen this first hand as a member of the Henry Tax Review Panel, where the final report was hidden for six months, then the bulk of the recommendations were ignored and the few accepted were mutilated and taken out of context.

All of this with no debate or consultation with the community in a review that would “position us to deal with the demographic, social, economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century.”

So much for the vision of the big parties.

Leadership isn’t delivered by risk adverse, focus group obsessed political managers doing deals with big corporations and lobbyists; it’s delivered by leaders who are capable of stating their case and steering their views, visions and policies through fair and robust debate, not hiding behind well crafted communications strategies and sound bites.

We need leadership in both business and politics to face those 21st Century challenges the Treasurer identified when he announced the Henry Tax Review.

A hung Parliament is a once in a generation opportunity to rebuild leadership and confidence in our governments. It’s one we shouldn’t squander.

The freeways of the future

How the Internet is changing Maggie’s life

“I don’t see why the Internet is important to me” said Maggie, the first caller to our “is the Internet the ultimate consumer’s revenge “ radio program.

Maggie’s question is a very good one at a time when governments, businesses and households are investing heavily in Internet technology. Just a few hours before the radio show I’d been invited by television program A Current Affair, to discuss if Australia’s 43 billion dollar investment in a National Broadband Network is worthwhile.

For Maggie and ACA’s viewers, the answer is “yes, it is very important” — the Internet today is what the motor car was to the early 20th Century and railways were to the 19th Century. Communities that aren’t connected will miss the benefits of the 21st Century economy.

To illustrate how important it will be, let’s have a look at Maggie’s life. We’ll assume she’s an older person living in a regional Australian town or one of the fast growing fringe suburbs of a big city.

Probably the most immediate change the Internet delivers for Maggie is how it is giving her a stronger voice as a consumer and citizen. This is what we discussed on the ABC program, how Internet tools like social media are giving customers and voters their voices back.

With reliable broadband Maggie can be researching products and voicing her dissatisfaction with government and private organisations to the world in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago.

Those Internet tools also growing communities around her as like minded people across the world and in her own district are connecting online then meeting in real life at events like Coffee Mornings.

Not only does the Internet connect communities, it connects families — one lady recently described to me how she speaks more to her daughter living in Brazil through Skype than she did when they lived nearby. The net brings friends and families back together and helps overcome social isolation.

Exclusion in education has always been a pressing issue, once upon a time you had to be in Cambridge or Oxford to access the world’s great minds. With a fast reliable Internet connection, the kids in Maggie’s neighbourhood can listen to a Harvard or MIT professor’s lecture without leaving their hometown.

Bringing knowledge to local communities will also help Maggie should she have to have to go to the local hospital, the local doctors will be able to consult specialists without Maggie having to travel long distances to get specialist advice.

Importantly for Maggie and her local hospital, the access to online training resources mean the local staff will be up to date with their professional development and across new trends, ensuring Maggie’s standard of care will be equal to the big city teaching hospitals.

Solving staff training issues also delivers benefits for the local business community. It means the Maggie’s son Tim, the owner of a local plumbing business, doesn’t have to pay for expensive training courses or to travel into town to attend business conferences.

The net also means Tim can access the world’s best business minds without leaving his office. Which gives him benefit of running his business more efficiently and profitably.

For Tim’s kids, it also means they aren’t excluded from the entertainment world. They can stream and download the latest things happening and share equally on social networking sites. They may be in a small town, but they can play in the big world.

Having these education, business, training and entertainment resources strengthens communities. It means kids and entrepreneurs can live in their home towns and still participate in the global economy. It means Maggie is a valued and important citizen of her country and the world.

Fast accessible Internet is more than important, it’s vital just in the ways roads, railways, canals and the telegraph were in their eras. The investment in these freeways of the future is necessary to grow strong and dynamic communities.

5 ways to manage information overload

If President Obama struggles with his information overload, how can the rest of us deal with it? Here’s five ideas on how to manage the inbox deluge.

In a speech to university graduates on the weekend President Obama described some of the problems we face with information overload. That the US President struggles with it despite his army of secretaries, assistants and advisors shows just how big the task has become for the rest of us.

Albert Einstein famously said “information is not knowledge” and that’s certainly true of the net. We need ways to process the data that comes pouring in so we understand the context and value of what we’re reading. Here’s five ways to manage your information overload;

Mail Rules

For most business people, email is the first thing we look at each morning and it’s where half the day can easily disappear. The mail rules built into every email reader help you filter the important from the not so important.

It’s also worthwhile reviewing your email subscriptions every few months and unsubscribing from newsletters that no longer interest you. The less clutter, the better.

Google Alerts

“Unknown unknowns” is a quote from a less esteemed historical figure and there’s a lot we don’t know happening on the net that can affect our lives and businesses. The Google Alerts tool gives you a regular email summary of what’s appeared on the web for any search term you enter.

The right terms in Google Alerts gives you an insight on news and trends about your industry, competitors and customers. It’s a great, but underused, market intelligence tool.

Twitter

90% of what you read about Twitter discusses marketing, in my view Twitter’s real value lies in following smart people who tweet smart things. You get the benefit of the accumulated wisdom of the people you follow and the things they find interesting.

These days I find I spend as much time reading links I’ve saved from Twitter as I do surfing the net. It’s become an invaluable tool.

RSS Feeds

Most websites have a built in feature called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS feed, which pumps out updates to the site as they happen. You can use the built in RSS features in your browser’s bookmarks folder or a dedicated feed reader to keep up to date with your favourite websites. Just click on the subscribe button most websites feature.

Favourites

Bookmarks or favorites is the oldest way to save information off the web and it can result in overload of its own. If you keep your bookmark folders organised, it can be a treasure trove of useful information.

We’re at the early days of the information economy and the flood of data which engulfs us is going to get even greater. The challenge for all of us is to learn how to manage this so we can derive the best benefits from this new economy for our businesses, society and families.

As President Obama said in last weekend’s speech at Hampton University, Virginia;

“What Jefferson recognized… that in the long run, their improbable experiment — called America — wouldn’t work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn’t have the best interests of all the people at heart.

“It could only work if each of us stayed informed and engaged, if we held our government accountable, if we fulfilled the obligations of citizenship.”

The same is true of our personal and business lives as it is of our citizenship. Get informed.

The Future Summit 2: Artificial divides

I took a lot from the Melbourne Future Summit, many good and some worrying.

One of the worrying aspects was the hostility from the “creative thinkers” towards Engineers and scientists.

I took a lot from the Melbourne Future Summit, much of it good and some of it worrying.

One of the worrying aspects was the hostility from the “creative thinkers” towards Engineers and scientists.

This was apparent in the Innovation Imperative seminar where many of the panel’s and audiences’ comments were notable for their hostility towards Engineers and scientists along with their view it was time for some “creative thinking”.

Most of questioners from the floor went as far to blame Engineers and scientists for the Global Financial Crisis.

This is odd as scientists and Engineers are no more responsible for the banking sector’s financial engineering any more than artists are responsible for the bankers’ creative accounting.

Creating artificial barriers between “creative” and “scientific” thinkers is dangerous and foolish. Our greatest Engineering and scientists are creative thinkers by definition. Many great artists have applied science to their work.

If we force people into these pigeon holes where an Engineer can’t be creative and an artist can’t use science then we are all the poorer for it and less equipped for the challenges ahead of us.