And now for a few comments about modern information technology, which some of you may not particularly appreciate. Being both an old curmudgeon and a Luddite*, I do have considerable misgivings about a lot of this new technology. Certainly, there is some very clever work behind it, and a huge range of possibilities opened up, but I do think many people get captivated by all the colour and movement and may not be much thinking about the value of what they're doing. To me, a lot of the acitivity is simply entertainment, and that includes many uses seen by others as "educational". How much time must some people spend messing about with all these tools? How do they avoid the routine demands of life? It all looks quite interesting, but reminds me of the remark, "Computers can't teach you to think". Maybe I need a creativity injection. A separate issue is the constant poor performance and unreliabilty of IT systems. Things just don't work with much consistency. I suspect we push demands on IT systems to the level of their best performance rather than what is typical. By the way, I'm not anti-IT. I use my home computer for a couple of hours each day, but it's fairly mundane stuff; word processing, spreadsheets, collecting information from the 'net, email and photo-imaging. Computers are a great way to access, store and organise information and I wouldn't be without one, but for me, it's a tool to use thoughtfully, not an activity for its own sake.


Well, there's a bit of a rave for you all; should get things going. :-)


* I'll be around to break your weaving frames later in the day.


Here's the sort of technology I like. It's the 1912 vintage steamship "Earnslaw" on Lake Wanaka, New Zealand. You can even get to watch the triple-expansion steam engine in action: