Friday, June 18, 2004
Rural usage of the internet:
Recently, the boss sent to me Primex with on behalf of the ISP work for. It was an interesting task and somewhat of a learning experience as I went in thinking the Casino would be fairly IT savy. I was right, sure there were your 70+ farmers who had never touched a computer but when a cane farmer of 60+ rocked into our stand and started talking to me about the value of the internet and open source software like linux I was very pleased.
Many people who were listening to our conversation pricked up their ears as they could not believe what they were hearing an old cane farmer talking about the latest distribution of linux redhat, debian and solaris. How he had completely gone away from Microsoft based products and was surviving on linux open source based products and was beta testing products developed in linux by a friend of his for the agricultural industry.
The networking night was very interesting held at one of the local pubs, the number of guys in high up positions industry that don’t use computers amazed me, these fellows in their 50’s had decided to go near machines and genuinely expressed a fear of using them. They had secretaries for all that sort of thing according to one local government members but some of the older gentlemen and especially ladies at this event were very quickly to discuss internet related options and products.
At the actual field day the older generation featured prominent in the number of people discussing internet related products. I found people interested in stocks, family history, keeping in contact with the kids, travel and just being on it because its was trendy.
But what interested me was the usage of the internet in a rural setting, the farm was featuring high on the list. The new national live stock identification scheme was making the internet a must on most farming properties. Infact after talking to the guys from the department of agriculture on the night of the Primex networking night we I found many people coming over asking for our internet brochures because they had told them about the company I work for.
But farming is featuring highly, the weather from www.weatherzone.com.au or www.bom.gov.au and details of chemicals, planting advice, finance details and something I was able to grasp an interest in was computer aided livestock management and computer aided live stock trading. The old days of going to the auction according to one farmer are gone. He takes a digital photograph and puts up a breading history of the cow or bull on the livestock auction site and bingo it sells. He admits at the moment only the most internet effieicnt farmers are online in this system but he says it is improving. But he recons you also have to keen if your going to get a bull freighted from Victoria to near the NSW border.
Many people who were listening to our conversation pricked up their ears as they could not believe what they were hearing an old cane farmer talking about the latest distribution of linux redhat, debian and solaris. How he had completely gone away from Microsoft based products and was surviving on linux open source based products and was beta testing products developed in linux by a friend of his for the agricultural industry.
The networking night was very interesting held at one of the local pubs, the number of guys in high up positions industry that don’t use computers amazed me, these fellows in their 50’s had decided to go near machines and genuinely expressed a fear of using them. They had secretaries for all that sort of thing according to one local government members but some of the older gentlemen and especially ladies at this event were very quickly to discuss internet related options and products.
At the actual field day the older generation featured prominent in the number of people discussing internet related products. I found people interested in stocks, family history, keeping in contact with the kids, travel and just being on it because its was trendy.
But what interested me was the usage of the internet in a rural setting, the farm was featuring high on the list. The new national live stock identification scheme was making the internet a must on most farming properties. Infact after talking to the guys from the department of agriculture on the night of the Primex networking night we I found many people coming over asking for our internet brochures because they had told them about the company I work for.
But farming is featuring highly, the weather from www.weatherzone.com.au or www.bom.gov.au and details of chemicals, planting advice, finance details and something I was able to grasp an interest in was computer aided livestock management and computer aided live stock trading. The old days of going to the auction according to one farmer are gone. He takes a digital photograph and puts up a breading history of the cow or bull on the livestock auction site and bingo it sells. He admits at the moment only the most internet effieicnt farmers are online in this system but he says it is improving. But he recons you also have to keen if your going to get a bull freighted from Victoria to near the NSW border.
# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 5:58 PM 
