HISTORY OF SCIENCE in Australia is a field intimidated by its subject. Historians have been too slow to examine the local context of knowledge production and use, deferring to scientists and their uncritical catalogues of the past. Historical analysis has given way, too often, to the antiquarian plod or the celebratory frolic.

In nineteenth century Australia, ‘progress’ was a popular theme whenever the scientifically-inclined paused to reflect on their discipline. By the latter half of the century, science was developing an institutional base with the establishment of universities, societies and government posts. History helped locate this fledgling enterprise within a grand progressive tradition. Catalogues of scientific achievement provided a preface to current endeavours. Obituaries of local workers portrayed them, stuffed and mounted, within a gallery of revered pioneers; there were no Darwins or Newtons amongst them, but their lives were still dedicated to the same glorious ideals. The collecting of history parallelled the collecting of specimens – the main scientific activity within the colonies. Science progressed by the steady accumulation of plants, platypi and people.

By the end of the century, science was changing. Experimental science was beginning to displace natural history; professional scientists were edging amateurs out of the vanguard of progress. With more scientists, more societies, more publications and a never-ending parade of anniversaries to be commemorated, disciplinary and institutional studies became commonplace in the twentieth century – predominantly in scientific journals. As science fractured into increasingly narrow specialisations, history seeped in to fill the cracks, smoothing the narrative flow of scientific progress. Many of these historical efforts were of the ‘amateur-antiquarian’ variety identified by Michael Hoare (‘The History of Australian Science: Prospect and Retrospect’, Newsletter of the Australasian Association for the History and Philosophy of Science, no. 5, 1974), but some disciplines have been better-served. T.G. Vallance and David Branagan in geology, and R.W.Home in physics, have helped us to understand how disciplinary communities coalesced and changed (e.g. Vallance and Branagan, ‘The Earth Sciences: Searching for Geological Order’, The Commonwealth of Science: ANZAAS and the Scientific Enterprise in Australia 1888-1988, ed. Roy MacLeod, 1988; Home, ‘The Beginnings of an Australian Physics Community’, Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, eds Nathan Reingold and Marc Rothenberg, 1987). Astronomy has been remarkably well-endowed, with detailed institutional histories, Beyond Southern Skies: Radio Astronomy and the Parkes Telescope (1992) and The Creation of the Anglo-Australian Observatory (1990), as well as a recent general work, Explorers of the Southern Sky: A History of Australian Astronomy (1996).

Significantly, much of this work has been undertaken by scientists. Despite the oft-heard protest that scientists look forward, not backward, scientific institutions have been major supporters of historical research in Australia. In 1962, the Australian Academy of Science established the Basser Library as a ‘centre for the study of the history of Australian science’. Ann Moyal and Michael Hoare used research positions within the Library to effectively pioneer the field, creating bibliographical resources and outlining many of the broad historiographical questions. The Academy continues to publish the only specialist journal in the field, Historical Records of Australian Science. Within this journal, however, scholarly historical articles are juxtaposed with biographical memoirs of deceased Academicians, written almost exclusively by Fellows. The memoirs are far-advanced beyond the taxidermic tributes of the nineteenth century, but the relationship between the articles and the memoirs is uneasy. Such biographies, as with many disciplinary histories, do not just comment on science past, they help to define science present. Scientists writing history are helping to establish, both within the scientific and broader communities, what makes a scientist and what counts as knowledge. In a powerful sense, the history of science is science. This nexus has been largely ignored, robbing the field of much analytical insight.

A lack of access to sources has sometimes been blamed for this historical inertia. But no more. The Australian Science Archives Project (ASAP) provides details of archival and published sources through its online database, Bright Sparcs (http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/). Few other fields of Australian history are so well served. In addition, some naturalists’ journals have been published, and collections of correspondence are appearing. A major project is under way to collect and publish the voluminous correspondence of eminent nineteenth century botanist, Ferdinand Von Mueller. Over the past few decades, tools such as these have been put in place to support an active research community, but where is the activity?

Biographies have appeared for major scientific figures, though there are notable omissions and inadequacies. The ADB has paid increasing attention to scientists over the years, and its articles remain the authoritative sources for many significant workers. Scientist-cum-explorers have fared rather better, as in E.M. Webster’s biography of Leichardt, Whirlwinds in the Plain (1980). The belated impact of women’s history has encouraged efforts to recover the names and deeds of women whose contributions to Australian science has been heretofore overlooked. However, there have been few attempts to move beyond this cataloguing process, to analyse the structures and assumptions that circumscribe participation in the scientific community, though some of the contributors to On the Edge of Discovery (1993) do raise such issues. Recent years have brought a mixed bag of scientific biographies with subjects including Macfarlane Burnet, Crosbie Morrison and Ian Clunies Ross, but none really manage to blend the scientist with the person. The dilemma is revealed most clearly in Lyndsay Gardiner’s biography, E.V. Keogh: Soldier, Scientist and Administrator (1990) – Keogh’s scientific work is dealt with separately in an appendix by a scientist. Scientists will remain divided figures as long as biographers are intimidated by science.

Science has been quarantined within Australian history – unfamiliar and forbidding territory for historians – best avoided. W.K. Hancock, however, thought differently when he emphasised the economic significance of William Farrer’s wheat breeding heroics (Australia, 1930). Ernest Scott likewise showed no qualms when he took it upon himself to lecture the Australian scientific community on their own history (‘The History of Australian Science’, Report of ANZAAS, 1939). In the 1950s and 1960s science seemed to provide healthy fodder for historians exploring the boundaries of their discipline. Geoffrey Blainey recognised its importance within economic history, Geoffrey Serle mapped its development alongside other cultural markers, while George Nadel and Michael Roe began to explore the meanings and uses of science within Australian cultural history. An exciting program of research was unfolding, and yet faltered. Why?

The 1960s and ’70s brought a loss of faith in the benevolent bounty of science. Perhaps a growing sense of suspicion served to alienate rather than inspire historians, reinforcing not revealing the mythical ‘two cultures’ divide. Significantly too, the same period saw the rapid growth of the history of science as a separate discipline. The interests of such historians generally lay in the grand themes of science, such as the Scientific Revolution. Their models and mentors were international, not local. When attention was finally turned towards the history of Australian science, it was within such an international framework; Australia became a case-study in the diffusion of scientific knowledge. International conferences in 1981 (Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison, 1987) and 1988 (International Science and National Scientific Identity, 1991) explored, in a cross-cultural context, the development of the colonial scientific community and its interaction with Europe. Analyses of ‘colonial science’ extensively modified the crude diffusionist models. Roy MacLeod, for example, in his ‘Visiting the Moving Metropolis’ (Historical Records of Australian Science, 5:3, 1982), offered an alternate taxonomy, that recognised the complex trajectories of science and imperialism. Nonetheless, conceptions of Australian science have largely remained bound by the ‘top-down’ perspective assumed by the diffusionist program. Australia was a receiver of knowledge, not a creator of culture. As a consequence too much has been assumed and too little explained. The impact of isolation on the Australian scientific community, for example, has been much commented upon. Blainey’s clichéd ‘tyranny of distance’ is wielded as a causal mechanism without reflection upon the actual meaning of isolation within an Australian setting. Wade Chambers provides some antidote in ‘Does Distance Tyrannize Science?’ (International Science and National Scientific Identity, 1991), exhorting historians to challenge the ‘metaphorical power’ of ‘the myth of “tyrannical distance”‘. But his call-to-arms has brought forth few eager combatants.

Important contributions to our understanding of science in Australia have come from outside the mainstream discipline. Bernard Smith’s European Vision and the South Pacific: 1768-1850 (1960) drew attention to the way the land and its inhabitants were perceived by European scientists. Tom Griffiths’ Hunters and Collectors (1996) revealed how amateur scientists and collectors were involved in the construction of Australia’s past. Environmental history has similarly explored how science is involved in the complex relationship between people and environment. ‘Australia’ is revealed as a participant in this process, not merely a receptacle for transplanted institutions. Greater awareness of indigenous knowledge systems has also highlighted the limitations of diffusionist models. Aboriginal knowledge systems, where they have been examined at all, have tended to suffer from ‘first chapter syndrome’. Used as an introduction to the history of Australian science, Aboriginal knowledge is paternalistically portrayed as containing the seeds of our ‘modern’ understanding. By implication or design, Aboriginal knowledge is embraced as familiar and then discarded as incomplete – as proto-science. Non-indigenous scholars now recognise the power and sophistication of such knowledge systems. Works such as Singing the Land, Signing the Land (1989), are beginning to demonstrate how indigenous knowledge stands alongside, not prior to, the western mode of science.

In 1988, Roy MacLeod noted that ‘we await works of synthesis… a new Hancock, who will convey and interpret for us the scientific enterprise, from colony to Commonwealth in the making’ (‘Introduction’, The Commonwealth of Science, 1988). And beyond. Only Ann Moyal, in a Bright and Savage Land (1986), has dared to move towards such a broadly integrative project. But hers is the work of a pioneer – a sketch rather than a detailed analysis. The 1988 Bicentennial prompted a surge in history of science publications. However, the main works, The Commonwealth of Science (1988) and Australian Science in the Making (ed. R.W. Home, 1988), were collections of articles – hors d’oeuvres only at the history of science banquet. The pickings are sparser still in relation to twentieth century science. R.W. Home has rightly directed attention towards the impact of World War II on the scientific community (‘Science on Service’, Australian Science in the Making, 1988), but D.P. Mellor’s volume of the Official History, The Role of Science and Industry (1958), remains the most comprehensive account. Boris Schedvin’s history of the CSIR, Shaping Science and Industry (1987), stands out as a the story of a scientific institution within its political and economic context, and also as a history of Australian science in the early twentieth century. However, the companion volume on the CSIRO has never eventuated.

While historians may have successfully occupied territory on the other side of World War II, scientists largely remain in control of the recent past. Academic interest in modern Australian science has more typically been within the realm of science policy or sociology of science, although with some interesting results. Life among the scientists (1989), for example, describes a quasi-anthropological study of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research. Such studies should give historians cause for reflection. Methodologies and insights drawn from the social studies of science can, and should, inform the practice of historians. In the same way, historians of Australian science need to explore the cultural context of their studies, moving beyond an examination of the culture of science, towards an understanding of science as culture. Our knowledge of science, as well as of Australian history, will greatly benefit.

On Sunday I was listening to the local ABC station, 2CN, when a bloke came on talking about “unsung heroes” of Australian history. Apparently it’s a regular spot, and it so happened that the two heroes being sung on Sunday were scientists – Ferdinand von Mueller the botanist, and John Tebbutt, the astronomer. However, my initial pleasure at having scientists included in such a forum, quickly turned to frustration.

Many, perhaps most, of you would have heard of Mueller. He was probably Australia’s greatest nineteenth century scientist: Victorian Government botanist for 40 years, an explorer who collected and classified thousands of specimens, a prolific correspondent who maintained a vast network of collectors throughout Australia, an international figure whose unequalled knowledge of Australian flora was widely recognised in the scientific centres of Europe.

But what were the two key achievements proclaimed by this radio commentator to justify Mueller’s inclusion in the pantheon of “unsung heroes”. First, that he sent eucalyptus seeds around the world, so that we can now see gum trees in California; and second, that he planted marrum grass on Australian beaches to prevent erosion. That was it. There was no indication of Mueller’s broader scientific achievements, no understanding of the development of science in Australia – indeed, I doubt whether the words science or scientist were used at all. It seemed rather that Mueller and Tebbutt were being included almost apologetically – ‘well, you know they were scientists, but they did some interesting stuff as well’. Instead of being introduced as active contributors to our knowledge of the natural world and to Australian culture, they were presented as oddities – mere trinkets on the sideboard of Australian history.

Perhaps this is not surprising, despite Australia’s strong record of scientific achievement, the scientist does not really fit our myths of national identity. The closest we come is probably the ingenious ‘make-do’ bushman, able to cobble together all manner of useful gadgets from a roll of barbed wire and a jam tin. But this is ultimately a conservative image, it is simply pragmatism, not a passion for knowledge, that is assumed to be the driving force. What is celebrated by such myths is not creativity, inspiration or genius, but simply a capacity to respond to circumstances. Consequently, we have had several generations of schoolkids believing that the heights of Australian scientific and technological achievement can be summed up in three words – STUMP JUMP PLOUGH.

At this point I must make a confession. I recently prepared an article for the Oxford Companion to Australian History on the history of Australian science, or rather the historiography of Australian science. In it, I argued that one of the problems with the field is that too much of the history of Australian science has been written by scientists. This seems a rather unfriendly thing to say on an occasion such as this, but let me explain. The point of my argument was not to denigrate the many thorough and detailed historical studies of scientific institutions, personalities and disciplines conducted by scientists, but rather to highlight the failure of the broader historical community to incorporate science into their studies of Australian life and culture. The historians aren’t pulling their weight. Where is science in the various survey histories of Australia? – if you’re lucky you may find a reference to William Farrer, or perhaps myxomatosis, but not much else. This separation between Australian history and Australian science continues, I believe, to the detriment of both.

But instead of just complaining, as I seem to do quite often, let’s chart a plan of action, inspired by Murray Upton’s fine example. After all, if the historians aren’t yet ready to take up the challenge, then the burden lies even more heavily with you – it is up to the scientific community to ensure that its own achievements, activities, culture and development are adequately documented, that its stories are told. But where to start? I foresee a battle waged on three fronts:

1. the records
2. the people
3. the history

the records

In the preface to his book, Murray makes some insightful comments about changing recordkeeping practices in science, and the likely impact of this on the work of future historians. As Murray mentions, perhaps the most frightening prospect is that presented by electronic documents – email, databases, notes – all those things you create on your computer on a day to day basis. We can still read Joseph Banks’s journal of the Endeavour voyage more than 200 years after it was written. In 200 years time will it be possible for a historian to read your records? This is not simply a job for archivists. The way such records are created and disposed of means that archivists and scientists need to be working together to develop strategies and procedures. In the past, institutions could put off any action on archives until the retirement of a long-serving staff member. But scientists now are often on short-term contracts, each time they move, change jobs, change institutions, records are lost. Institutions can no longer rely on archivists being able to come in and clean-up after the science has been done, if they do so, they risk losing a substantial chunk of their corporate memory – our scientific memory.

Why does this matter? Well, I’ve already gestured towards the cultural and historical arguments for preserving our scientific heritage, but there are also some important practical considerations. As you all know science is practised within an ever-growing regulatory framework. There are a raft of legal obligations, issues of intellectual property, patent rights, concerns about scientific fraud, all of which can only be dealt with by instituting adequate recordkeeping processes.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as organisations such as Australian Archives (now National Archives) are beginning to recognise the special requirements of scientific recordkeeping, and of course the Australian Science Archives Project, is always willing to provide advice and assistance.

the people

I’ve always believed that one of the most important ways of getting the general public interested in the history of Australian science is through stories about scientists themselves. By exploring their achievements, their hopes, their failures, their passions, you break down the barriers of fear and intimidation that tend to alienate the public from science, encouraging instead the realisation that scientists are people too. Having met on the common ground of our own humanity, it is then possible to carry the audience beyond, to open up areas of science that had previously seemed remote and forbidding.

And so with a work like Murray’s we find that it is the characters that emerge most clearly – the tragic, the foolish, the heroic and the inspired. We recognise in these figures elements of ourselves, our friends, our colleagues and we make a connection. From there we begin to perceive the context, to assemble the pieces in our own minds and grasp the broader significance – entomology, CSIRO, Australian science, Australian culture. Murray comments that he found few documents recording ‘social history’ and yet within the lives of his characters we find many clues to the changing nature of Australian society: restrictions on the employment of women, for example, highlighted by the tragic suicide of Mary Fuller; or the Cold War hysteria surrounding the employment of Sergei Paramonov.

I’m not advocating wholesale hagiography. The establishment of a gallery of scientific heroes doesn’t really interest me as either a consumer or creator of history. I’m talking about revealing scientists as people, not about turning them into icons. In pursuing this task there are many lives left to be documented, many stories to be told. Record your memories, write down your anecdotes, pass on your stories.

As an indication both of what can be done, and what remains to be done, you might like to go away and explore Bright Sparcs. Bright Sparcs is a resource on the WWW that contains information on over 3,000 Australian scientists from the 18^th century to the present – it includes biographical, archival and bibliographical details, with links to some memoirs, obituaries and historical articles. Contributions are always welcome.

the history

When faced with such a thorough piece of work as Murray Upton’s history of the ANIC, it is perhaps tempting to cross the topic off the list and think ‘Well, that bit of history’s been done’. But, of course, history doesn’t work like that – there is no end, there is no final product. There will always be new perspectives, new interpretations, people and events will be examined in different contexts. By this constant ravelling and unravelling our insights and understandings develop.

I’m sure that Murray would join with me in urging you not to see this book as the final word on the subject. Murray’s meticulous research has provided us with a new baseline in the history of entomology in Australia – a new starting point, not an endpoint. In coming together today to congratulate Murray and the Australian National Insect Collection, we must also be aware that this book confronts us with a challenge – a challenge to continue this work.

What am I doing here? I work for a non-profit organisation attached to the University of Melbourne. What can I say about “Doing Business on the WWW”? You all know universities have it easy, large IT departments, huge bandwidth connections – it’s a different world!

But life’s not quite like that at ASAP. For a start, ASAP (the Australian Science Archives Project) is totally self-funded. Through consultancies and grants we support our activities, aimed at preserving and making accessible Australia’s scientific heritage. We’ve been doing it now for ten years.

I’m sure you’d be surprised at the richness of Australia’s scientific past. The problem is both to communicate that richness to a wide audience, and to provide specialist resources for researchers – all on a non-existent publishing budget. As you’ve probably guessed, we are increasingly using the WWW to achieve these ends. Along the way we have established one of the main sites in the world for information on the history of science, technology and medicine. On the WWW a small organisation can have a big impact. Our experience demonstrates that there is much to be gained when the information producers rise up and take over the means of distribution – there is a world to win and you have nothing to lose but your evenings!

Our quest for world domination began modestly in 1993 when we made a few plain text documents available through the gopher and ftp sites of the Coombs Computing Unit at ANU. A year later we published our first WWW page – again a fairly modest effort. Gradually we added resources: general information about who we are and what we do; copies of our newsletter; the text of some of our published guides to archival collections. These were all documents we had created for different purposes. They were just sitting around, feeling lonely and unwanted on the hard disk of my computer, until the WWW gave them the chance to be reborn. Text became hypertext.

With this new life came new meaning. Publishing on the WWW is not the same as running off a couple of thousand glossy leaflets. The sense of connection between publisher and the reader is more immediate, more direct. Once the leaflet has been taken, scrunched into pocket or bag, the connection is broken. On the WWW, your readers are your guests. They have come through your door, marched up to the reception desk and asked to be told all about you. They can question you, they can complain, they can make orders or leave their contact details. When you publish on the WWW you don’t just distribute information, you open a pathway for communication.

Recently we were visited by an archives student from the University of Washington. He came out to Australia specifically to do his practical work with us. Why? Because he had found us on the WWW. He read about us and the sorts of work we do and made contact. Would he have been as likely to follow up his interest if he had come across a copy of our newsletter in his university’s library? I don’t think so. The WWW provides a sense of community that overlays its informational content. There are people behind the documents.

The more you participate in this community the better. While I was putting together our first WWW documents I began to collect links to other history of science related resources on the Net. I thought I might as well make this list of links available to others, so on to the WWW it went. This has grown into the WWW Virtual Library for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, with links to over 150 sites and with around a thousand users per week. This is work we undertake for the good of the community, but the spin-offs are substantial. We now have a significant international presence. The Director of ASAP recently spent twelve months overseas visiting universities in Europe and the US. He was surprised to find how many people were aware of ASAP. How did they know us? Through the WWW of course. This sort of exposure in turn creates new opportunities for cooperation and development, opportunities that we could never have planned.

Too much WWW is never enough, after our initial foray we were quickly hooked. All of a sudden new possibilities began to emerge. We had for some time been discussing the possibility of developing a multimedia CD-ROM on the history of Australian science. We already had a database containing information on over 2,000 Australian scientists from the 18th century to the present. We knew that there was plenty of pictorial material and sound. What we didn’t have was money, and in the dark days before Creative Nation such ‘high-tech’ initiatives were viewed suspiciously by funding bodies.

Then came one of those moments of inspiration: “Why don’t we do it on the WWW?” It seems obvious in hindsight, but at the time it was pretty exciting. Once again it was a case of liberating our data – of taking material that we already had, equipping it for life on the WWW, and then sending it out into the world. I simply HTMLified reports from our database, ran the output through a few simple macros and ended up with thousands of little HTML files – kludgey but effective, it was on the WWW within a few weeks of the initial inspiration. Bright SPARCS (Scientists Present in Australia’s history Resource CD-ROM) had become Bright SPARCS (Scientists Present in Australia’s history Resource Collection Strategy).

Thanks to the WWW, a stalled project was given new life, a good idea became a useful resource. But the WWW incarnation of Bright SPARCS is quite different to the original proposal. It is a work-in-progress, rather than a finished product. It is the framework for an ongoing, collaborative endeavour, not just an electronic publication. By making what we have available, we are encouraging other people to do our work for us. Through their corrections and additions Bright SPARCS will grow and mature.

At the same time we are undertaking collaborative projects that link into Bright SPARCS, creating a detailed resource network. We recently produced a WWW version of Physics in Australia to 1945 a biographical and bibliographical register of Australian physicists. This is cross-linked with Bright SPARCS, so that a single click will switch you between resources. Similarly we are in the process of developing a WWW edition of the Australian Society of Archivist’s Directory of Archives in Australia. Once again this will be integrated with Bright SPARCS – a user will be able to follow his/her researches through to the point of finding the contact details of repositories holding archival materials relating to Australian scientists. In both cases the basic data was already in electronic form, it was just waiting to be liberated. Just think of the potential resources that you must have locked away in your computers. This cruel oppression must stop. Your data wants to be free!

But let’s not leave printed documents out of our revolution. The Australian Academy of Science recently provided us with funds to scan and process over 100 detailed biographical memoirs of Australian scientists, originally published in Historical Records of Australian Science. Freed from the printed page, these articles too have joined the Bright SPARCS movement.

Data gathers data. The WWW grows not by consuming resources, but by linking them. The document that you liberate from your hard disk may be the seed for something much larger, even unexpected.

The WWW now provides the focus for most of our outreach activities. It is also useful as an internal staff communication device. ASAP has offices in Melbourne and Canberra, as well as workers at a variety of sites throughout Victoria. All of our staff have access to the Internet, and email is our main form of communication. The WWW provides us with the equivalent of a staff noticeboard in the tea-room. This is the place where notices are posted, and where embarrassing photos are displayed. By using forms and cgi scripts all staff can contribute without having to know much about HTML. It’s a means of maintaining communication and building solidarity.

ASAP has achieved all that it has with minimal resources. Most of our WWW development has been done by our Canberra Office, which until early this year, meant me. Our only connection to the Internet, until a few months ago, was a dial-up line to the ANU. More recently we established our own server, and I had to learn the hard way about Unix system administration. Being in Canberra we receive little technical support from the University of Melbourne. We are pretty much left on our own, but I believe this is an advantage rather than a handicap. We have been forced to develop our own skills and ideas, we have seen the world rather than a single institution as our audience. Unfettered by bureaucracy, unable to avoid responsibility, small organisations are in an excellent position to harness and express the enthusiasm which drives all that is best in the WWW.

As I have said, the WWW is more than just a publishing medium, but how much more? Who knows? The WWW is a continuing experiment. New uses will be found, new types of resources will be developed. You cannot know how your organisation will use the WWW, until you start using it. Those organisations that will benefit the most will be the ones high on enthusiasm, who fling open the drawers of their filing cabinets and push the WWW to its limits. It’s a journey into unmapped territory, an adventure.

The development of WWW resources is not simply an investment in technology, it’s an investment in people and ideas. As our experience shows, the WWW can open up unexpected opportunities, but you have to set things going. This a not just a world of IT expertise, but of imagination and creativity. And no I don’t mean fantastic graphics that consume huge amounts of bandwidth. I mean finding new methods of communication, new uses for existing resources – taking that database that sits on your hard-disk and turning it into a innovative, accessible resource. I’m sorry, but you’re not going to be able to hire somebody to have your ideas for you. You know your organisation, you know your subject. You have to make the connections. Say goodbye to your evenings, say hello to obsession, the WWW has arrived to take over your life.

If the WWW is to be more than just a second-rate marketing tool we have to pay more attention to the important issue of bandwidth – intellectual bandwidth. There has to be space for innovation. Lack of imagination and the heavy hand of managers will do more to restrict our use of the Internet than any technical bottlenecks. Within our organisations we have to use the WWW not just as a tool, but as an incubator of new ideas, as the canvas upon which our grandest dreams are sketched out.