We are here today because of what came before.

Recently the Telstra commercial has been making me go arrrggghhh!!!

You know the one, some small internet connected contraption and the head of Alexander Graham Bell talking to us from inside some glass dome. Someone at the advertising agency has been taking something because not only is it freaky and frightening to small children, you have no idea who the talking head is supposed to be until he starts discussing how he invented the telephone.

And this gets to the part that irritates me. The talking head of Alexander raves about Telstra's smart phone and how it can do a myriad of amazing things and that the phone he invented was only good as a paperweight.

This irritates me because todays telephones may be able to do amazing things, but we would not have them at all if it was not for the determination, imagination, hard work and research by people such as Alexander Graham Bell for inventing such things as the telephone in the first place. It is all to easy to dismiss stereo systems, televisions, mobile phones from previous generations and nothing more that bizarre curios but not only were they amazing technological revolutions at the time, they were often much better constructed and cost more as a percentage of the weekly income than todays consumer products.

So as we learn about the amazing things we do in this web 2.0 course, lets remember the hard work of people who developed telecommunications and computers to the point that we have the technology at our hands today.