New Media, Political Infantilisation and the Creativity Paradox

Barry Jones

“When Sleepers, Wake!: Technology and the Future of Work was published in 1982, my predictions about the potential impact of the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Revolution were regarded as wildly exaggerated and hence not taken seriously. Thirty years later they read like a statement of the blindingly obvious and could now be dismissed as, ‘Well, it was always inevitable, wasn’t it?’

In the 1980s I also expected an exponential increase in access to Information and Communications Technology (ICT), but I underestimated the speed of adoption of mobile telephony or the personal computer — and its spread right across the world. In 1982 I caused some controversy by predicting at a public meeting in Hobart that by the year 2000 Tasmania would have more computers than motor vehicles, a prospect judged to be so absurd by the Hobart Mercury that it suggested I had lost grasp of reality. …”