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Fascinated by the Future: Interpreting Australian Telecommunications Policy Debates
Abstract
Rhetoric about the future has been a prominent theme in many areas of discussion about technology and change. As societies enter periods of change and uncertainty there is a growing need to deal with the future. This has been the case in the area of telecommunications policy in Australia but this feature of discourse is often taken for granted or not seen as problematic. This paper has two goals. First, it aims to analyse the significance of discourse about the future. This significance has a long historical precedent but it is intimately tied up with the notion of progress and technology. It has political ramifications since it functions to shore up expectations around specific interests—usually those of powerful corporations and governments. Second, it aims to relate the analysis about the future to recent Australian debates in telecommunications policy. Since many countries have been swept up in the enthusiasm for a telecommunications-based future, lessons from Australia may be very relevant. It is argued that some groups (users and consumer groups) would appear not to have had their expectations met in the areas of competition and universal service. In spite of this, some of Telecom Australia's views expressed in the 1975 planning exercise Telecom 2000 seem remarkably prescient today. This seeming paradox is discussed in terms of discourse on the future. A future based on an over reliance on technological or managerial determinism may well lock the country into a future of limited choice. It will be important that mechanisms are established to ensure that appropriate and timely choices can be made in telecommunications policy.
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Author and article information
Notes and References
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Communications Research Forum 1998, Old Parliament House, Canberra, 24-25 September 1998. The author would like to thank Don Lamberton and John de Reuck for useful discussions and suggestions as well as Paul Couchman, Peter Morris, Mark Rix and Maria Degabriele for some helpful references. The author accepts full responsibilities for the inadequacies of this paper.
D. Lamberton (ed.), Beyond Competition: The Future of Telecommunications, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1995.
See for example: ‘Future jobs: where you stand in the new economy’, living IT Supplement, Weekend Australian, 22-23 August 1998; ‘Revolutionary inventions: technology that changed history’, Living IT Supplement, Weekend Australian, 4-5 July 1998; and Paul Kelly, ‘Can democracy survive?’, The Australian Magazine, 30-31 May 1998, pp. 24–6.
See for example, US Department of Commerce (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), Telecommunications in the Age of Information, US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC, 1991; Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, Communications Futures: Final Report, AGPS, Canberra, 1995; Broadband Services Expert Group, Networking Australia's Future, Final Report, AGPS, Canberra, 1995; and Richard A. Joseph, ‘Political myth, high technology and the information superhighway: an Australian perspective’, Telematics and Informatics, 14, 3, 1997, pp. 289–301.
S. Kyrish, ‘Here comes the revolution—again’, Media Information Australia, No. 74, November 1994, pp. 5-14; C. Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.
For a discussion of this issue see: Jon Guice, ‘Designing the future: the culture of new trends in science and technology’, Research Policy, 28, 1, 1999, pp. 81–98.
See for example the magazine Futures which is an excellent source of writing in this area; see also S. Inayatullah, ‘Deconstructing and reconstructing the future’, Futures, 22, 2, 1990, pp. 115–41.
F. Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation 1644-2001, Basic Books, New York, 1979.
G. Hofstede, Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-related Values, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1984, pp. 110–47.
I have chosen to adopt Hofstede's ‘descriptive’ view of human nature for the purposes of this paper but fully recognise that this is far from the last word on the topic. For an interesting summary of the differences between the descriptive and normative notions of human nature see: Tom Bottomore (ed.), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1987, pp. 214-7. See also Vernon Venable, Human Nature: The Marxian View, Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA, 1975, for an excellent treatment of the topic.
Hofstede, op. cit., p. 116.
G. I. Rochlin, Trapped in the Net: The Unintended Consequences of Computerization, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1997.
Hofstede, op. cit., pp. 114–5.
Ibid, pp. 117–8.
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Joseph, op. cit.
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S. Kyrish, op. cit., p. 5.
C. Marvin, op. cit.; and N. Rosenberg, Exploring the Black Box: Technology and History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 203–31.
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G. I. Rochlin, op. cit.
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F. Clarke, op. cit., p. 119.
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F. Clarke, op. cit., p. 124.
See for example: A. Moyal, Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1984; and R. A. Joseph, ‘The politics of telecommunications reform in Australia’, Prometheus, 11, 2, 1993, pp. 252–70.
See the special issue of Media Information Australia, No. 58, November 1990 edited by Peter White with Dominique Fisher entitled AUSSAT: Culture Policy and Technology’.
See for example: A. Lynch, ‘ACCC to decide on local calls’, The Australian, 1 September 1998, p. 38; and recent issues of Australian Communications and Communications Update.
Australian Telecommunications Commission, Telecom 2000: An Exploration of the Long-term Development of Telecommunications in Australia, Commonwealth Government Printing Unit, Melbourne, 1979.
Ibid, p. 63.
Digital Data Inquiryhttp://www.aca.gov.au/publications/reports/digital/index.htm
A. Lynch, ‘ATUG slams data services report’, The Australian, 1 September 1998, p. 64.
G. Montgomery, ‘Telstra profits to tumble’, The Australian, 1 September 1998, p. 38.
N. Pandit, G. M. Peter Swann and T. Watts, ‘HTSF marketing and customer education: a role for a technology awareness programme?’, Prometheus, 15, 3, 1997, pp. 293–308.