We should know by now from watching air crash investigations that an airline incident is a product of many failures at once. I am pretty sure that a single breakdown does not cause hundreds of people to fall into the ocean.
I am also pretty sure from my readings of Aviation Herald that dozens of incidents happen every day. Few result in anything beyond a sensationalist headline and a few lines on twitter.
So yesterday September 20 2013 an incident occurred almost directly over my head. About 38,000 feet over my head actually. That is about eleven and a half kilometers - up!
I saw it happen not in the air but on Twitter a short while later. You have probably seen the headlines that 2 Qantas planes almost crashed over Adelaide.
I'd like to tell you how I followed up what had happened and the tools I used to discover the truth.

I despair of journalism. Not all journalists but certainly many I stumble over in the popular press.

I understand I am personally to blame for the entire failure of the fourth estate. I stopped buying newspapers. This has its implications. I do recall being excited to collect a free copy of the Sunday Mail from my local supermarket recently. I have stockpiled it. How else can I clean the bar-b-que.

I have yet to see a publication on line that I am ready to pay for. I do look at the on line press daily and  shake my head at the trite rubbish that pervades the popular press. Nothing could convince me to pay for what I have seen so far in the areas I am keen to know more about.

So it is all my fault - I apologise.

Then I read a piece like I saw recently and I know I am right. The standard of journalism is simply abysmal. I will not link to the story but if you follow the popular press you will no doubt stumble over it.

Digital Myth
A teacher once argued with me about digital natives and digital immigrants. He asserted, in a public class

• digital natives are a myth
• that “millenials think differently” is a ploy
• the multitasking brain is a scam. 

“The multitasking brain of our youth,” he claimed, “is a myth propagated by big business to get more work out of individuals for less money.”
He may be right but I believe I have observed an improvement in student outcomes when they are allowed to work with music playing and a chat client running alongside their work. 
His argument was that technology in the work place was a big business plot to drive greater productivity from workers purely for profit. 
I love my technology and discounted all he had to say - once I stopped being cross. 

Steve Jobs introduced the iPad as a device of the post PC era. He pointed to smart phones and iPods as post PC devices and welcomed the iPad as the next post PC device. It was viewed as marketing speak and few people paid it much attention. Business futurists are now embracing the idea of a post PC world and viewing its implications. 

Steve talked about PCs as the trucks and busses of our working world dedicated to the heavy lifting of computing and work but looked at the iPad as the family car of the post PC era. The device we choose for personal adventures along the technology highway. 

In the last quarter of 2011 Apple sold more iPads than any computing company sold of their entire range of computers. The world has embraced Steve's post PC device.  

I was in conversation with a teacher who was bothered that she had not used the iPads in her classrooms in 2012. She wanted to assure me that “as soon as the dust settles,” she will be back choosing apps and designing programs to use the iPad. I asked if girls had just stopped bringing iPads to lessons since she was not using them.