Social Interconnections Research Articles

TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, 1854-1930

Australian history has been conspicuously short on the examination of the history of technical subjects and of the role technological development has played in the country's evolution. As early as 1961, Geoffrey Blainey observed: “We historians are uneasy outside the old triad of political, social and religious history; we are inclined to avoid the history of technical subjects even more than did the historians of the last century with their narrower compass of history.” The comment remains valid today. The history of technology in Australia stands as a broad and relatively empty canvas on which to depict the major underpinnings – and their social interconnections – of an increasingly industrialised society.

The macrophage as the social interconnection within the immune system

Mammalian macrophages are presented as the social interconnection between the different mechanisms of the immune system, since they appear in a variety of roles—as effectors, helpers, and suppressors—in nearly all immune reactions. Their phylogenetic antiquity and their special task of picking up antigen signals and representing them on their cell membrane have made them the pivot for immune system evolution.

Political Representation in Metropolitan Areas

Unless federation and political representation are developed in metropolitan areas, compartmentalization of local government and fragmentation of public administration will continue. The unmistakable characteristics of American metropolitan areas make them easy to spot: dense populations, urban in nature; industrial and commercial resources; one or more central cities producing the mononucleated or polynucleated pattern; economic and social interconnections maintained by a daily inflow and outflow of traffic. The web of economic and social structure is, however, by no means equalled by political interconnections. The governmental services required by the people living in the area are either unresolved in their metropolitan aspects or are administered by authorities which are often autonomous and remote from coordinated control. Area-wide government to establish policy for the metropolitan population in its unanimity of need and interest is lacking. No political power is in existence to administer the metropolitan aspects of functions. Metropolitan government as such does not exist; it is a concept and possibly a tentative approach. So far, it is no more than that. Still less in esse is metropolitan self-government.