Digitally Curious

CHAPTER 1BECOMING DIGITALLY CURIOUS

So, why am I uniquely qualified to be your co-pilot along this digitally curious journey?

I have been digitally curious for my whole life. My digitally curious journey into the world of electronics and technology began when I was 6 years old. My father helped me with scientific experiments that I would write up by hand in a small exercise book. I remember him encouraging me to think critically about why changing the connection between three lamps would make the lamps glow dimly or shine brightly.

Once I had started, I never stopped being curious about technology.

I had my first computer in 1980, the Sinclair ZX-80. Back then, it had just 1 kilobyte of random access memory (RAM) for storing programs and 4 kilobytes of read-only memory (ROM) that kept the BASIC computing interpreter used to programme the device. In comparison, the average size of a photo taken on a mobile phone is around 2 megabytes (MB). A lot has changed since then.

In my public talks, I ask for a show of hands as to who was born after 1983, then remark that I’ve been online longer than some of my audience has been alive. By 1983, I was “dialling up” (remember those dial-up tones) the bulletin board system (BBS) at the Angle Park Computing Centre in Adelaide and was connecting at a blistering 300 bits per second (yes, BITS, not megabits or gigabits – imagine if your phone today was that slow).

I was so fascinated by this new online world that my father had to install a second ...