The end of printed Next and private blogging

More than 20 years ago, a now defunct magazine called “Computing Australia” had the final column by Graeme Philipson talking about how Mainframes would have a long lifespan. I wrote a letter at the time saying how it was a pity he chose a dead duck for a swansong. Now, I have to acknowledge he was right and I was wrong. A week ago, Graeme wrote another final column that had featured weekly for 10 years in the IT pages of the Tuesday edition of a local Melbourne paper, “The Age”. The section, renamed Next several years ago, was many pages long in its heyday and was the source of several of my jobs over the years. Now not only are the ads on the net, so is the whole mostly-national IT section. As Graeme observed, “IT journalism is moving to the internet”. The strange thing is that the Net seems to have no content from “Computing Australia”.

I wrote many blog posts last year with pen and paper that were good writing practice that I never got round to publishing, I hope to read many more posts from Graeme if he continues , and I will try to post more as well. Graeme’s last topic was the internet and communication. May we both use the former for the latter for many years to come!