Questions Arising

Media articles often leave infrastructure questions dangling.  QUESTIONS ARISING is an opportunity for those of you who read widely and keep their eye on what is happening to identify these articles and the questions that need to be answered. These can then be addressed in our forthcoming podcast series, so get involved – add your questions to those listed here, suggest possible lines of development, add new media articles along with the questions they raise. Sources may be the daily journals, the web, podcasts, radio, TV. Plenty of scope!

Here to introduce our first QUESTIONS ARISING  are two items identified by our Business Development Manager, Ian Spangler.

1. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s recent report on “Preparing for Disruption: technological readiness ranking, 2018”, places Australia in the top ten for the historical priod (2013-2017) BUT it forecasts that in the next five years, Australia, Singapore and Sweden will take over as the top-scoring locations. The ranking is based on the number of mobile phone connections and internet access.

Questions arising.

• Is this enough to ensure technological readiness?
• What else should we be looking at to test readiness?
• Australians, who are not easily overawed by authority, may well joyfully take up the idea of disruption, but to what end?
• How can we tell whethe our innovation is well directed?
• What else?   Add your comments below.

2.  The small homes project was recently launched in Melbourne.  The RACV reports that “from the 1950s, Australia’s average house size more than doubled to 248 square metres at its peak in 2008-09. Then last year something strange happened: the size of new builds dropped.  Over the past 20 years, median house prices across the country have gone up by more than 300 per cent while weekly wages have only increased 121 per cent. Rising cost-of-living pressures are also draining our bank accounts, with the average annual energy bill in Victoria now around $1667.  Building and running a big house is not cheap and it is not great for the environment.”

Questions arising 

• The ability of the demonstration small home to provide so much convenience in such a small space is its use of 4G and 5G connectivity.  How do you see this affecting futur constructions?
• Will we continue to reduce the size of our dwellings?   If so, what factors may come into play?  If not, why not?
• If our dwelling size does decline markedly, what impact might this have on other infrastructure?
• Other Questions