The Boomer Legacy

On the road to serfdom

Productivity–enhancing infrastructure was just a bullet–point away

Locked–down pedestrian crossing button, near QVB Sydney [Nov-2020 112KB]

Project attention deficit disorder

Every Prague Spring had its tanks

Construction cranes at the Central Park development at Broadway, in Sydney [Oct-2012 258KB]

DDoS attack

Governments and unions collaborated for decades to build a railway network so fragile that even the slightest disturbance would cause city–wide meltdowns

Parramatta station during yet another Sydney train network failure [May-2021 135KB]

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 372KB]

Remarks

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 627KB]

Meaningful social interactions

Facebook™, Twitter “X”, LinkedIn™, Instagram™, WhatsApp™, TikTok™, WeChat™, Snapchat™, reddit™, 4/8Chan… Elaborate frameworks were created to ensure you could never possibly be alone

Stargazer lawn at Barangaroo Reserve, Sydney [Aug-2016 497KB]

Remarks

Call the police

It has been said one Police horse is more effective than ten foot Police when performing crowd & traffic control (Australian Police, 2019)

Mounted Police at the Winter Magic Festival, Katoomba [Jun-2023 335KB]

Big data and the cloud

Off–line storage by the exabyte → provided you could afford to live in an upmarket area with a fast–enough network connection

Mobile phone tower and clouds from a summer storm, at Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains [Dec-2012 145KB]

Sound of sirens

Everything you could possibly ever want, via your smart–phone

Mobile phone users, Sydney CBD [Mar-2015 324KB]

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 12. During the trip, take the opportunity to lull yourself to sleep to the sound of squeaking bogie springs and the rumble from turbocharged diesel–electric engines, while your 1980s XAM sleeper car jerks about on back–country tracks and occasionally even becomes airborne, landing moments later with a satisfying KERBOOM

XPT trains at Sydney Central terminus. After decades of service, they were scheduled to be retired in 2023… [Apr-2019 336KB]

Staging server

What was once esoteric technology confined to a research lab, was now routinely used for entertainment

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

Remarks

Means of ascension

Those who could afford to do so, raced toward an off–grid future

Cars on the Eastern Distributor at Woolloomooloo [Jul-2018 184KB]

Check the feeds

… and then a coffee and meal

Café patrons, QVB Sydney [Jan-2024 376KB]

Free off–line storage

♪ Old MacDonald Had a Server–Farm, 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 ♪

Storage tanks at Tempe [Sep-2012 377KB]

415 Unsupported Media Type

Yesterday's analogue broadcast–quality equipment was reutilised as landfill

Tape–based off–line editing equipment in a dumpster at Darling Harbour [Jan-2013 186KB]

The Great Reset

Wearing face–masks was every scholar's favourite nostrum, until it wasn't

Masked commuters at Granville try to get home after another network meltdown [May-2021 187KB]

Embrace a better tomorrow

Technological progress turned out to be a bit of a chimera

Dalek ornament at Wilson Street, Lawson [Aug-2021 482KB]

We have some planes

All this technology, yet aircraft could be made to disappear by merely flipping a transponder switch

Church Street cone sculpture, removed in 2021 for the Parramatta Light Rail Stage 1 construction [Feb-2017 443KB]

Peace through superior fire–power

Build it and they will die

Vought F–8 Crusader at the Intrepid Museum, NYC [Oct-2017 206KB]

Stasi without the politics

HD–CCTV; IP address logging; Cookie tracking; SMM Profile Harvesting; Google Chrome & Android; 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 collecting every scrap of information about what everyone has ever done

CCTV, Satellite, UHF and cable communications at Marrickville 47, one of Sydney's loveliest brothels. The building has since been tastefully redecorated [Sep-2012 237KB]

∇×H

The implementation of renewable energy struggled beneath a mantle of ignorance, obfuscation and lies

Distribution cables (since demolished) in College Lane, at Stanmore in Sydney [Sep-2012 423KB]

Induced dependency

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

Pitt Street Mall passageway [Aug-2018 306KB]

Stack overflow in Mathlib

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 offshore developers had run out of money [Oct-2017 473KB]

Kernel panic

LCD in the bedroom; OLED in the lounge–room; Playstation, XBox, iPhone, Galaxy, Note, iPad, iOS and Android everywhere else

Home entertainment in suburban Kingswood, in Sydney's West [Sep-2010 447KB]

The automotive chrysalis

The 3–tonne car of your dreams came with its own shroud

SUV promotion, Darling Harbour Sydney [May-2023 387KB]

Beat the bowser

Our vehicle preferences said a lot about what really mattered

Suzuki hatchback (5.8L/100km) vs. Ford dual–cab ute (14L/100km), Glenbrook station car park [Mar-2024 344KB]

408 Request Timeout

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 $1295 (+ $75 courier fee) to replace movement and watch hands
2017–07–25 quote declined and watch returned without repair
2017–08–15 watch thrown into landfill at Blaxland Waste Management Facility

A meticulously crafted Swiss timepiece achieved its true destiny as a piece of garbage at Blaxland [Aug-2017 303KB]

All our tomorrows

Don't be afraid — we loved you more than our grandchildren. 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 150KB]

Fabricating nostalgia

A lot was said about the impacts of deindustrialisation, but few missed the unimaginative and dangerous work

Davy press at ATP Eveleigh Workshops museum. Noticed in Oct 2024 that it had been redeveloped into a gentrified precinct, with industrial machinery pushed into the background by café queues, an artisanal grocery, and a craft brewery filled with brunching bankers [Sep-2017 393KB]

Monsters from the Id

The term “Boomer Legacy” often refers to the lasting impact of the Baby Boomer generation, those born between 1949 and 1964, on various aspects of society. This generation experienced significant cultural shifts and economic growth, which have influenced areas such as culture, commerce, and technology. The legacy includes both positive contributions, like technological advancements and cultural enrichment, as well as challenges, particularly in environmental and economic sustainability. Understanding this legacy is crucial as it shapes the world future generations will inherit.
 
(AI text generated by Microsoft Edge Copilot in May 2024, in response to the prompt Boomer Legacy)

Thai Pothong restaurant sculpture, Newtown [Jun-2024 357KB]

Remarks

Time inversion at the Casinoplatz

Public transport was perfectly effective when everyone, even the rich, paid sufficient tax

Trams at the Bern Casino CH [Feb-2024 287KB]

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 62KB]

Building 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 337KB]

Scheme Number 218

It only took fifty years, and an extra $AUD 300M, to rectify most of the Stage III issues (SOH Renewal, 2022)

Sydney Opera House, Concert Hall exterior [Dec-2018 290KB]

A fist full of pills

Many of us were kept alive by medicine which as little as twenty years ago didn't exist

Six days worth of cardiovascular, diabetes & cholesterol tablets, Nepean Hospital at Kingswood [Jul-2023 293KB]

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 404KB]

Rice Bubble vs. Land Yacht

The 1973 oil crisis changed everything, but that will be nothing compared the depletion of the Ghawar Field

Microlino 2.0 in Bern CH, Lincoln Continental Mark V in Katoomba NSW [Feb-2024 396KB]

Metro at last

It only required $1.376G and 6 years to extend the M1 Metro line by 15.5 kilometres…

Metro M1 passenger triptych, Macquarie Park [Aug-2024 412KB]

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 encouraged to use them?

Abandoned bus at Opoho Road, Dunedin NZ [Dec-2017 500KB]

502 bad gateway

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 Polo hatchback, Summer Hill [Sep-2015 481KB]

Lifespans & outcomes

Living longer lives no longer needed to be an curse

Anzac Day marcher, Liverpool Street Sydney [Apr-2018 152KB]

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 230KB]

Moving forward

Supersonic airliners; Monorails; Jet–packs; Hover–boards; Space–elevators; Bubble–canopy aero–cars; Submersible cars; Cars with a KITT computer; Fully autonomous vehicles effortlessly navigating suburban streets…

First Lane at Hurstville, Sydney [Sep-2016 410KB]

Missing Einstein

It transpired that God did play dice with the universe

Living room table at the Einsteinhaus Museum, Bern CH [Feb-2024 326KB]

Remarks

Chariots of freedom

You could only be what you drove

Custom licence plates, Sydney [Jul-2023 340KB]

Logic–bomb

Our love affair with (ICE) came to an abrupt end

Georgina Street white paint, Newtown [Jun-2023 508KB]

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 230KB]

The upgrade escalator

Every nine months there was always something just that little bit better

York Street escalators, Wynyard station [Jul-2018 336KB]

The flipped classroom

An enormous benefit of student BYOD, was the ability to collect quality data to inform our effective & evidence–based focus on Action Learning, alongside facilitating the continuous improvement in teaching skills and excellence

Students at “The Verandah” study area in the State Library of NSW [Oct-2014 418KB]

Traction in an attention economy

100 km/hr in 2.85s and a top speed of 340 km/hr. Pity the maximum permissible speed was only 110 km/hr in NSW

Ferrari 488 Pista, Pitt Street Sydney [Nov-2022 265KB]

Option V for victory

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 142KB]

Congestion busting

At election time Very Fast Trains were on everyone's agenda

Bushfire wreckage, Zigzag Railway Clarence NSW [Jul-2019 504KB]

In the days of the citizen journalist

Broadcast–quality equipment was no longer required to craft good stories

Media–workers at the Sydney Opera House [Jul-2014 259KB]

Remarks

Strength through joy

Networked technology wasn't always a bad thing

Corporate team building exercise, George Street Sydney [Jun-2024 287KB]

The imperfect panopticon

Own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better (Auken, 2016)

Apartment courtyard surveillance cameras awaiting connection at Victoria Park. The cameras were still not connected in 2018, four years after this photo was taken… [Sep-2014 155KB]

Orderly exodus

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

Toyota HiAce vans await delivery at Penrith [Apr-2017 338KB]

The spam massif

We facilitated a global network of unsolicited urgent messages

Sydney University public noticeboards [Oct-2017 569KB]

Accidental monuments

Civil Engineering 101: slap something together as cheap as you can and then completely rebuild it later for 5× the cost — to solve issues you should have addressed the first time

Zigzag Railway upper viaduct, Clarence [Jul-2019 561KB]

Remarks

Retro–tech

Some Edwardian technologies weren't as clueless as we originally thought

The pantograph of a NSW Heritage “Set F1” suburban train carriage, Central station [Jun-2019 120KB]

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 automobile at the Classic Throttle Shop showroom at Milsons Point [Dec-2020 135KB]

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 355KB]

Aerotropolis now

We discovered airlines never actually supply customers with carriage on any “particular flight”, but rather “a bundle of contractual rights” which they may (or may not) redeem at any time in the future (Crikey, 2023)

Sydney International Airport in twilight [Nov-2017 111KB]

Pan atomicus

48 tonnes of reactor fuel blown into the sky; 500K liquidators to clean up the mess; 335K evacuees; 6K+ deaths; 90K+ animals culled; 20× increase in mutations; 2600 km² exclusion zone; €2.15G for the New Safe Confinement; $235G in damages; the collapse of the USSR in 1991… The effects of 1986–04–26 are with us still (National Geographic, 2019)

Heritage locomotive at Central Station, Sydney [Jun-2019 177KB]

Fighting a war for the future

A branch–office economy was adopted to ensure the redundancy of skilled workers

3801 heritage locomotive and train at Central [Oct-2022 220KB]

Rushing toward the mountain

We had plenty of technology to phase out fossil fuels and address climate change, the only problem was how long were we prepared wait?

The Gornegratbahn returning to Zermatt CH [Feb-2024 256KB]

Your privacy was taken very 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 311KB]

Hazard perception test

There was an emotional component about driving vehicles that spoke of freedom, independence and to be in control of one's own destiny

2013 Ford G6E Turbo wreckage, Blue Mountains [Mar-2014 445KB]

It just works

Release now, patch later

Jensen Avenue at Dover Heights [Nov-2016 291KB]

Remarks

In the sky with diamonds

The airwaves were jammed with hits from forty years ago

580 George office building entrance, Sydney [Jul-2024 158KB]

Remarks

Start your holidays in hell

Term–break queues snaking out the door; One flight cancelled, the next three delayed; Overweight baggage fees; Overhead locker–bin arguments; Drunken footy players booted from first class; 40–minute delay for take–off clearance; The oversized bloke kicking the back of your seat; Barefoot passengers using armrests as Ottomans; Screaming toddlers, scrolling teens and impassive parents; Instantaneously reclining seats; The window–view of the port side ailerons

Budget airline on final approach at Rockdale [Dec-2013 372KB]

Think small

A charismatic and perfectionist architect; Engineers hamstrung by 1960s tech; A meddling public broadcaster; Timorous bureaucrats & spiteful politicians… The Sydney Opera House looked magnificent from afar, but up close it was riddled with defects caused by years of bickering, indecision and compromise

Front yard fountain at Church Street, Croydon [Sep-2016 447KB]

Remarks

Carbon capture

Wholesale deindustrialisation led to scaling back fossil–fuel and carbon–related activities, eventually

The abandoned remains of the Illawarra Coke Company at Coalcliff [Sep-2014 398KB]

Reeks & Wrecks in Dumpstercopia

A sustainable future could only be found by scavenging, scrapping and repairs

Cardboard packaging in Blue Anchor Lane at Circular Quay, awaiting transport to an interstate landfill [Nov-2017 505KB]

0xDEADBEEF

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The 1963 ICT 1301 mainframe display at the Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin NZ [Nov-2017 201KB]

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 382KB]

Edgy by order

Zeitgeist–y environments to have fun, be niche, leverage the likes & disrupt the new normal

Disposable bicycles on Pitt Str, outside World Square [Jan-2018 176KB]

X–out & scroll

First they came for the factory workers, then it was our turn

Gomo Sportswear prior to its demolition to make way for Granville Place [Jul-2017 382KB]

404 Not Found

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 calculate the true cost of mobile–phone plans (WSJ, 2013)

Mobile phone users at Martin Place, Sydney [Dec-2014 306KB]

Force carrier

Sometimes we just couldn't contain ourselves

Electrical junction box at Chippendale, Sydney [Jul-2017 499KB]

Astounding Science Fiction

Superconducting NbTi coils; Holmium magnetic flux condensers; Liquid He at 4K insulated within a liquid N₂ jacket; A suitcase–sized He 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

The 3T MRI scanner at a medical imaging practice at Penrith, in Sydney [Sep-2013 105KB]

Interconnected loose–ends

Sprawling cities were serviced by deliberately substandard public transport

Southern Cross station, Melbourne [Apr-2019 337KB]

Radical self–reliance

The smartest thing a person could do was marry well and inherit big

Indigo Slam at Chippendale [Jul-2017 134KB]

Fruits of ascendancy

Electric vehicles solved one problem by creating a multitude of others

Enmore Road mechanic spare parts automobiles [May-2023 356KB]

Leptons coralled

Everything depended upon the flow of wave–particles which before 1897 no one knew existed

33kV AC transmission tower outside the Penrith Transmission Substation [Jul-2011 216KB]

Built for comfort

Cruise control ✓ Loudspeakers ✓ Touch–screen TV ✓ Dual petrol tank caps ✓ National flag ✓ Oversized padded seat ✓

Indian Roadmaster motorcycle at Mandible Street, Alexandria [Aug-2019 363KB]

Eloi wonderland

We gathered by the harbourside to sip infused agave nectar and nibble on sweet fuyu persimmons, and were astonished by the vast contraptions built by our distant ancestors

Sydney Harbour sunrise kayaks [Jan-2019 245KB]

Remarks

Well maintained infrastructure

Continuous effort was required to sustain our vibrant economy

New Canterbury Road Lewisham and Light Rail construction Sydney CBD [Jul-2016 356KB]