The Boomer Legacy

Faisal's gambit: The engine warning light came on in October 1973, but we covered it over and kept going

Abandoned shops (since demolished), Parramatta Road Homebush [Jun-2016 172kb]

Retro-tech: Some Edwardian technologies weren't as clueless as we originally thought

The pantograph of a NSW Heritage “Set F1” suburban carriage, Central station [Jun-2019 92kb]

Core dump: It took only one generation to progress from room-sized behemoths to teraflops in your lap

The 1963 ICT 1301 mainframe display at the Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin NZ [Nov-2017 190kb]

Think small: A visionary but impractical architect; Workaday engineers hamstrung by 1960s tech; A grandstanding public-works minister out for revenge… From afar the Opera House looked magnificent, but up close it was riddled with problems caused by decades of controversy, compromise and bickering

Domestic fountain at Church Street, Croydon [Sep-2016 397kb]

Congestion busting: At election time Very Fast Trains were suddenly on everyone's agenda

Bushfire wreckage, Zigzag Railway Clarence NSW [Jul-2019 587kb]

Peace through superior fire-power: Build it and they will die

Vought F-8 Crusader at the Intrepid Museum, NYC [Oct-2017 166kb]

Stasi without the politics: HD-CCTV; IP address logging; Cookie tracking; SMM Profile Harvesting; EFTPOS transaction records; Data-mining; Phone-hacking; Location-sensitive personalised marketing; Mandatory QR Code scanning; Live facial-recognition surveillance; The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program; The unassailable cult of predicting future demand by knowing everything about what everyone has ever done

CCTV, Satellite, UHF and cable communications at Marrickville, in Sydney [Sep-2012 248kb]

Well maintained infrastructure: Continuous work had to be done to sustain our vibrant economy

New Canterbury Road Lewisham and Light Rail construction Sydney CBD [Jul-2016 372kb]

All our tomorrows: We loved you more than our children, for you were our greatest and most cherished asset, an organic talisman that gave us light and warmth and votes and windfall profits, and glistened so beautifully in the dying sun

Anthracite in Lithgow, NSW [Jun-2019 156kb]

Formalism Concrete: Move fast and break things with stable infrastructure (Facebook, 2014)

Indigo Slam at Chippendale [Jul-2017 105kb]

The Great Reset: Wearing face-masks was every academic's favourite nostrum, until it wasn't

Masked commuters at Granville try to get home after another network meltdown [May-2021 151kb]

Brand garbage: 2000-08-07 purchase Omega Speedmaster Automatic watch (35105000) #56462628 $2150; 2001-01-13 repair under warranty for loud rattling inside watch; 2005-03-29 repair due to watch stopped $595; 2009-08-03 repair due to watch requiring movement replacement $655; 2017-07-20 watch gains 10 minutes every hour, Omega quote to replace movement and watch hands $1295 (+ $75 courier fee); 2017-07-25 quote declined and watch returned without repair; 2017-08-15 watch thrown into landfill at Blaxland Waste Management Facility

A luxury wristwatch achieved its destiny as a piece of garbage at Blaxland [Aug-2017 316kb]

Linear ascension: Those who could afford to do so, raced toward an off-grid future

Cars on the Eastern Distributor at Woolloomooloo [Jul-2018 173kb]

Perpetual congestion: Once the great symbol of individual freedom and personal mobility, the car has become a ball and chain. Slow, expensive, and surrounded by endless others, automobiles have taken us as far as they can (Hume, 2012)

Weedon Avenue garage at Paddington [Mar-2017 331kb]

Deferred consumption model: As we grew older, we could finally afford the things we wanted so much when we were young

A mint green 1977 BMW 633 CSi at the Classic Throttle Shop showroom at Milsons Point [Dec-2020 102kb]

Accelerated obsolescence: Yesterday's broadcast-quality equipment was repurposed as landfill

Tape-based off-line editing equipment in a dumpster at Darling Harbour [Jan-2013 167kb]

Big data and the cloud: Off-line storage by the petabyte → provided your network connection was fast enough → provided your resellers didn't vanish overnight…

Mobile phone tower and clouds from a summer storm, at Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains [Dec-2012 113kb]

Carbon capture: Wholesale deindustrialisation led to scaling back carbon-related activities, eventually

The abandoned remains of the Illawarra Coke Company at Coalcliff [Sep-2014 416kb]

Computer says no: We could detect Gravitational Waves (LIGO, 2015), prove Fermat's last theorem (Wolfram, 2014) and even ridicule Wall Street's misuse of Gaussian copula functions (Wired, 2009) — but no-one could figure out the true cost of mobile-phone plans (WSJ, 2013)

Mobile phone users at Martin Place, Sydney [Dec-2014 320kb]

Meaningful social interactions: Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, TikTok, WeChat, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, LinkedIn, 4/8Chan: elaborate frameworks were created as a semblance of community to ensure you could never be alone

Stargazer lawn at Barangaroo Reserve, Sydney [Aug-2016 563kb]

The imperfect panopticon: … Own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better (World Economic Forum, 2016)

Apartment courtyard surveillance cameras awaiting connection at Victoria Park

The location was revisited four years later and the cameras were still not connected… [Sep-2014 112kb]

Reeks & Wrecks in Dumpstercopia: A sustainable future could only be found in scavenging, scrapping and repairs

Cardboard packaging in Blue Anchor Lane at Circular Quay, awaiting transport to an interstate landfill [Nov-2017 626kb]

Together alone: Everything you could ever possibly want, via your smart-phone

Pitt Street Mall passageway [Aug-2018 328kb]

Fibre nescience: Do consumers really need data transfer rates that only fibre could provide? (Liberal Party of Australia, 2013)

Mothballed satellite dishes in Rozelle, in Sydney's East [Jan-2013 296kb]

Pan Atomicus: 48 tonnes of reactor fuel blown into the sky; 500 000 liquidators to clean up the mess; 335 000 evacuees; 6 000+ deaths; 90 000+ animals killed; 20-fold increase in mutations; 2600 km² exclusion zone; €2.15 billion for the New Safe Confinement; $235 billion in damages; the collapse of the USSR… The effects of 1986-04-25 are with us still (National Geographic, 2019)

Heritage locomotive at Central Station, Sydney [Jun-2019 126kb]

From lab to stage: What was once esoteric technology confined to research labs, was now used routinely for entertainment

Stage technician, Campbells Cove Sydney [Jan-2019 234kb]

The upgrade escalator: Every nine months there was always something just that little bit better

York Street escalators, Wynyard station [Jul-2018 333kb]

Waves don't vote: Roughly 2TW of energy was freely available in the form of coastal wave-power, but it was ignored because fossil fuel production was electorally more important

The abandoned 2006 Oceanlinx Mk1 Wave Generator prototype at Oilies Beach, Port Kembla. In June 2017 it was eventually towed out to sea and sunk [Sep-2014 326kb]

In the days of the citizen reporter: Broadcast-quality equipment was no longer required to craft good stories

Reporters at the Sydney Opera House [Jul-2014 210kb]

Nostalgic Futurism: The Eighties didn't quite get the future right

The now dismantled Sydney Monorail at One Dixon Street, Sydney's Chinatown [Jan-2012 151kb]

Honest mistakes: Just because we were reckless didn't mean we didn't care

The MV Baragoola before (Sept 2018) and after (Feb 2022) sinking, Waverton [Feb-2022 448kb]

It just works: Release now, patch later

Jensen Avenue at Dover Heights [Nov-2016 313kb]

Sci-Fi Now: Superconducting NbTi coils; Holmium magnetic flux condensers; 4°K liquid helium insulated within a liquid nitrogen jacket; A suitcase-sized helium condenser; A FFT-processing rack more powerful than a dozen 1980s mainframes… A 3T magnetic field from a machine the size of a family SUV, to obtain non-intrusive millimetre resolution 3D internal body images. Twenty years earlier no one would have believed any of this was possible…

The 3T MRI scanner at a medical imaging practice at Penrith, in Sydney [Sep-2013 77kb]

Orphaned success: It only took fifty years and $AUD 300M to fix most of the issues with the opera & concert halls (SOH, 2022)

Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall exterior [Dec-2018 378kb]

We have some planes: All this technology, and yet aeroplanes could easily vanish by merely flipping a transponder switch

Church Street cone sculpture, removed in 2021 by the Parramatta Light Rail Stage 1 construction [Feb-2017 686kb]

Polarised encounters: Our vehicle preferences said a lot about what really mattered

Domestic sedan vs. SUV, Penrith car park [Mar-2021 403kb]

X-out & scroll: First they came for the workers, then it was our turn

Gomo Sportswear prior to its demolition to make way for Granville Place [Jul-2017 323kb]

Built for comfort: Cruise control ✓ Loudspeakers ✓ Touch-screen TV ✓ Dual petrol tank caps ✓ National flag ✓ Oversized padded seat ✓

Indian Roadmaster motorbike at Mandible Street, Alexandria [Aug-2019 285kb]

Lifespans & outcomes: Living longer lives no longer needed to be an issue

Anzac Day marcher, Liverpool Street Sydney [Apr-2018 98kb]

The spam massif: We facilitated a global network of unsolicited urgent messages

Sydney University public noticeboards [Oct-2017 525kb]

Eloi wonderland: We languidly gathered by the harbourside, sipping infused agave nectar and nibbling on sweet fuyu persimmons, and were amazed by the vast contraptions built by our distant ancestors

Sydney Harbour sunrise kayaks [Jan-2019 197kb]

Moving forward: Monorails; Supersonic airliners; Jet-packs; Hover-boards; Space-elevators; Bubble-canopied aerocars; Submersible cars; Cars with a KITT computer; Fully autonomous vehicles effortlessly navigating suburban streets…

First Lane at Hurstville, Sydney [Sep-2016 370kb]

Rattle & roll: With a maximum cruising speed of 130 km/hr, you could in theory travel between Sydney and Melbourne in 7½ hours. In practice it took twice as long. During the trip, you could also rock yourself to sleep to the sound of squeaking bogie springs and rumble from the turbocharged diesel-electric engines, while your 1980s XAM sleeper car jerked about on back-country tracks and even occasionally became airborne, landing a moment later with a satisfying kaboom

XPT trains at Sydney Central terminus. After decades of service, they were due to be retired in 2023 [Apr-2019 284kb]

∇×E: The implementation of renewable energy struggled beneath a mantle of ignorance, inertia, poor governance, obfuscation and lies

Distribution cables (since demolished) in College Lane, at Stanmore in Sydney [Sep-2012 374kb]

Off-line storage: Acres of tank-farms to cache our dreams

Storage tanks at Tempe [Sep-2012 369kb]

Rust-belt agriculture: I'd rather put my trust in looking at the sheep and seeing how it performs, than in some number dreamed up by some scientists on a bit of paper (Merriman, 2012)

Farm sculpture, Cathedral Street Woolloomooloo [Jul-2018 616kb]

Stack overflow in Math Library: Mate, I dropped “maffs” in school as fast as I could

At the One Circular Quay construction site, Sydney Cove. The site had been abandoned for months because the offshore developers had run out of money [Oct-2017 484kb]

Let them drive cars: How was the world's largest network of private toll-roads ever going achieve it's projected ROI if people weren't strongly encouraged use them?

Abandoned bus at Opoho Road, Dunedin NZ [Dec-2017 516kb]

Orderly exodus: When we were finally done, we got into our white vans and disappeared

Toyota HiAce vans await delivery at Penrith [Apr-2017 310kb]

The well-connected domicile: LCD in the bedroom; OLED in the lounge-room; Playstation, XBox, iPhone, Galaxy, Note, iPad, Android and iOS scattered everywhere else

Home entertainment in suburban Kingswood, in Sydney's West [Sep-2010 415kb]

Streaming fermions: Everything depended upon the action of wave-particles which two hundred years earlier no-one could imagine exist

33kV AC transmission tower outside the Penrith Transmission Substation [Jul-2011 193kb]

Your privacy was taken extremely seriously: The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner; The Information and Privacy Commission of NSW; The NSW Information Commissioner; The NSW Privacy Commissioner; The Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Amendment Act 2012 (Cth); The Australian Privacy Foundation; The Cyberspace Law and Policy Community; The NSW Council for Civil Liberties; The Law Council of Australia Business Law Privacy Sub-committee; The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Era Inquiry; The Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) to replace the National Privacy Principles and Information Privacy Principles; The drone "roundtable" inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs; The Royal Guide Dogs of Tasmania Privacy Officer

A Menckenesque kaleidoscope ensured that everyone in Wollongong could see you taking a bath [Feb-2011 290kb]

Interconnected loose-ends: Sprawling cities were serviced by deliberately substandard public transport

Southern Cross station, Melbourne [Apr-2019 274kb]

Option V for victory: Upon the assumption that international postal services were a universal right, the UPU Terminal Dues System was adjusted to ensure only developing countries received generous subsidies when exporting small parcels to the west

Airport Drive, outside Sydney International Airport [Oct-2019 129kb]

Aerotropolis now: Cheap and easy air travel was assumed to last forever

Sydney International Airport in twilight [Nov-2017 77kb]

Force carrier: Sometimes we just couldn't contain ourselves

Electrical junction box at Chippendale, Sydney [Jul-2017 447kb]

Edgy by order: Zeitgeist-y fresh environments were encouraged for start-ups to prosper

Disposable bicycles on Pitt Str, outside World Square [Jan-2018 180kb]

For a better tomorrow: Technological progress turned out to be a bit of a chimera

Dalek ornament at Wilson Street, Lawson [Aug-2021 525kb]

Fabricating nostalgia: A lot was written about the impacts of deindustrialisation, but few missed the unimaginative and health-degrading work

Davy press at ATP Eveleigh Workshops museum [Sep-2017 438kb]

Hazard perception test: Down the hill, around the corner and into the trees

2013 Ford G6E Turbo wreckage, Blue Mountains [Mar-2014 454kb]

Accidental monuments: Civil Engineering 101: construct it as cheap as you can and then completely rebuild it later to solve issues you should have addressed the first time

Zigzag Railway upper viaduct, Clarence [Jul-2019 596kb]

The sound of sirens: To what extent was a person's sense of belonging determined by the world around them?

Mobile phone users, Sydney CBD [Mar-2015 279kb]

Engineering new pathways to wealth: A culturally unbalanced society where BScs and BEs were displaced by BAComs, CPAs, LLBs, MPsychs, FRACGPs and BA(Hons)MT

Sand-blasting and repainting the Sydney Harbour Bridge to replace the decades-old lead-based paint [Jul-2011 221kb]

Cut-through messaging: Make your mark, repeat, move on

Vandalised rail-car at the Zigzag railway, subsequently destroyed by the 2019 summer bushfires, Clarence [Jul-2019 325kb]

Gaming the system: The Volkswagen “dieselgate” story, in which the company helped their cars pass emissions tests under special conditions that they later failed when the car was driven normally, was not an isolated incident (The Conversation, 2015)

Befouled VW automobile, Summer Hill [Sep-2015 567kb]

Project attention deficit disorder: Every Prague Spring had its tanks

Tower cranes at the Central Park development at Broadway, in Sydney [Oct-2012 228kb]

Tip of the spear: The most inspiring thing about the Kamikaze was that every problem had exactly the same solution

Lockheed A-12 engine aerospike at the Intrepid Museum, NYC [Oct-2017 49kb]

The flipped classroom: A tremendous benefit of student BYOD was the ability to collect quality data to achieve KPI's and attendance targets, inform our evidence-based focus on learning, and facilitate the continuous improvement in teaching skills and excellence

At the State Library of NSW [Oct-2014 411kb]

Chariots of freedom: You could only be what you drove

Custom license plates, Sydney [Nov-2018 263kb]