Sidney meets the world
Summary Description Simon Vandore wonders if Australian technology will cope with an Olympic invasion.
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Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore

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Article Topic Vandore
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Story Group 000806
Post Date 04/08/2000 07:20 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon Vandore on 02/08/2000 12:59 PM


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Introduction
I am an immigrant. At the age of nine I arrived in Australia from Scotland with my parents and sister. The kids at our new school thought we were American and insisted Scotland was a town near England, which was somewhere up past New York.

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After a while, some of my Scottish relatives thought I sounded a bit Sassenach and asked about my life in "Sidney", a place with dangerous scorpions and permanent sun. To their kids, my parents' house soon became a bit of a youth hostel because Australia was the place to go backpacking in your year out.
On a recent trip to Europe I got the impression this has changed. Australia is not remote and inhospitable; it's no longer at the ends of the Earth. Sydney with a 'y' is hosting the Olympics, which makes it pretty important, but there's something else. Sydney is now seen as a fashionable, international city, the place where they made The Matrix and MI:2. It's home to those nice Aussies they met on the Internet.
In a little over a month and a half, the city gets a chance to prove itself. Forget the sport for a moment -- I'm talking about those pieces shown on the BBC, CNN, or ESPN between event coverage. The comparisons with home. The fillers on the Olympics broadcast where NBC's Katie Couric goes shopping in Pitt Street Mall.
I'm sure customs officials will have some fun when the Europeans and Americans arrive in September. The number of satellite phones, mosquito nets and khaki vests among the reporters at Kingsford-Smith Airport will give them a few good laughs. There will be those who still expect a real backwater.
"Martha? Hello Martha? I'm in Sydney, Australia. It's dark and . . . and there's only one Starbucks!"
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome will be our infamous cultural cringe, which I believe has affected SOCOG's treatment by the media. A lurking suspicion that we're not quite up to it culturally, psychologically or . . . technologically.
About 18 months ago I wrote a feature for Australian Personal Computer on the IT preparations for the games. Companies like Telstra, IBM, Fuji-Xerox and Samsung showed me their work to date and predicted great things. I was truly impressed with the ability and commitment of the SOCOG people involved, and if they've survived all the bad press I'm still sure everything will go very well.
It's the technology outside the official Olympic venues that concerns me. Sure, we have both CDMA and GSM in Sydney now, and people will be able to roam their mobile phones. But our television is, well, a bit crap. The universal acceptance of advertising breaks every 10 minutes on commercial free-to-air is embarrassing and the availability of cable TV is comparatively poor.
I think using the Internet from Australia will bring home to Americans the fact that the US is the centre of the global network. Response times will appear poor between Sydney and the sites they access most. Those who look for broadband capability may be disappointed, because we don't yet have enough bandwidth to feed local demand, let alone that of the world's media and other visitors. On the other hand, our flat-rate local call charges are a great advantage -- the Europeans, in particular, will be amazed by the way people here use the Internet from home without watching the clock.
Hopefully Sydney, not to mention the rest of the country, will inherit some benefits from new technology infrastructure left behind by the games. In the meantime, let's hope the trains stay on the tracks and those new paving stones on George Street don't cause too many people to trip over.
Vandore is published each Friday on Newswire.


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Simon Vandore wonders if Australian technology will cope with an Olympic invasion.

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