Roger Clarke

Roger moved to Sydney in January 1967. He studied Commerce (Info Systems) part-time, and has worked in the I.T. industry since 1971. He married physiotherapist Linda Spinaze in 1977, and they spent 1977-82 in London and Zürich. After returning to Sydney for 1982-83, they moved to Canberra in 1984, and are still there.

Roger was active for years in soccer, squash, skiiing, hiking in the Alps, and soccer refereeing from 1988 until just short of his 53rd birthday in 2002; so his knees are pulp. Golf doesn't appeal, so red wine is about his only remaining hobby, although Linda tries really, really hard to tempt him with things like helping out at her dog club, bird-watching, and the garden history society. (Boy, when the mighty fall, do they fall?!).

Roger admits to one (particular) mistake, which was wasting too many years as Reader in IS at the ANU (1984-95). The problem was a bunch of economists and statisticians who wanted to be politicians; not to mention the Ministers and bureaucrats who set out to destroy academe, and are succeeding. He keeps connections through Visiting Professorships at ANU (in Comp Sci), UNSW (in Cyberspace Law & Policy) and Uni. of Hong Kong (in eCommerce).

He returned to consultancy in 1995. His clients appear to think he knows something about strategic and policy aspects of eBusiness, information infrastructure, and dataveillance and privacy. He's been active in public interest advocacy since the early 1970s. He immodestly claims to have been instrumental in the defeat of the Australia Card (1985-87), and runs much of the large web-site of the Australian Privacy Foundation.

He talks and writes far too much. But people keep encouraging him. He still gets invites to present at conferences in Australia and overseas; and his main web-site has accumulated over 15 million hits and in March 2006 was running at over 4 million hits p.a. The more interesting papers are on things like Waltzing Matilda, Asimov's Laws of Robotics fiction, Cyborgisation, a history of the Internet in Australia, and Have We Learnt To Love Big Brother? If you have trouble getting to sleep, there's plenty on the site to help you. Try, for example, the one on Plagiarism by Academics, or the history of Privacy Impact Assessments, or better still the history of the Information Systems discipline in Australia ...

Roger and Linda have two kids – Kasia Siobhan (1980), who's been a registered nurse for 4 years and is now heading into research, and Russell Anthony (1983), who's completing a BA/BInfTech and working in IT. Kasia married Brendan Bail in March 2005, and a good mediaeval time was had by all.

Roger's sister Carole (BHS 1967-69) moved to Sydney, married Peter Waters, has two sons, and has been living in the Macarthur district south of Sydney for the last 15 years.

Roger's mum and dad, Rene and Tony, moved to Sydney in 1969. They retired to the Macarthur area, and more recently to Camden. Rene passed away in 2004. Dad's well and truly with us, at 86.

The main web-site contains more detailed bio-data that's even more boring than this, but no-one's likely to read this far, so it doesn't matter.