Adelaide is becoming a hub for higher education.

Computing should be taught as a rigorous - but fun - discipline covering topics like programming, database structures, and algorithms. That doesn't have to be boring.

One of the lessons of history is that even the deepest crises can be moments of opportunity. They bring ideas from the margins into the mainstream.

The smug complacency of technology adverts disguises a pretty mixed picture, with too many people not connected, too many passive users of technologies designed for interactive, and far too much talk about empowerment but far too little action to make it happen.

On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.

The once-science-fiction notion of hyper-connectivity - where we are all constantly connected to social networks and other bubbling streams of digital data - has rapidly become a widespread reality.

The most important innovators often don't need any technologies - just imagination and acute sensitivity to people's needs.