User:Stewart Fist

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

My higher education was at the University of Western Australia (Science) with a (4 year) graduate diploma in Science/Optometry, followed by specialist courses in the early contact lenses.

Later I drifted into photo-journalism through writing a newspaper column, left Optometry temporarily, and never went back. I joined an Australian television studio for a year, then transferred to its Special Projects division and spent four years globe-trotting with a documentary crew making the weekly one-hour program "Projects".

I then ran my own film production company for a few years and tried to make Australia's first global TV series. It was a series of one-hour programs on archeology and anthropology ("Migrations - looking at prehistoric race movements") with actor Raymond Burr, but I underestimated the costs and problems of making film-series in Australia, and went broke.

The old adage of "Those who can't do, teach" is true. So I wrote a textbook on film-making for schools which went to three editions, and a year or so later, I ended up as head of the external-industry training faculty of the national Australian Film, Radio and Television School. The school had just been established, and we had a free-hand operating across all States running training courses for film and TV industry technicians, production staff, etc. and also in the tertiary education sector.

This led me to work later with the South Pacific Forum and UNESCO (the then UN science and education agency). I did some teaching, helped developing nations establish TV networks and film-units, and advised on establishing national archiving and distribution systems program material.

My life change again because UNESCO wanted someone to investigate the archiving of film and video programs and sent me around the world to talk to the experts. Through this I became involved in the possibilities presented by first laserdisk and computerised video equipment which was being developed at this time in Europe and the USA. Later I became fascinated by the first personal computers and by computer programming.

For a while I studied in the USA (marketing and information retrieval techniques - before the Internet) and wrote a couple of manuals for Australia's first database access networks (X-25) and Australia's first national e-mail system.

Eventually after a short stint in Public Relations (to make some quick money) I ended up as editor of a couple of technical magazines and then managing editor of the short-lived Computerworld XPress newspapers.

For the next ten years I wrote a weekly newspaper column for The Australian (national broad-sheet) and wrote technical, medical and political articles for other publications. Later I also wrote a 750-page encyclopedia of computer and broadcasting terms: "The Informatics Handbook".

I am now semi-retired, and my current interests are in: a) the history of science and technology b) the systematic corruption of science - both by corporations and by activist groups. c) health and medical problems (especially those of ageing and the third-world countries)

4. Web-sites:

€ The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has an archive of some of my early telecommunications columns: <http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/indexsf.htm>

€ I also maintain a database of abstracts, for scientists researching the biological aspects of electro-magnetic fields: <http://electricwords.emfacts.com/>

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