GIGO

New Year Hopes

Another year is well and truly upon us. Perhaps it is a function of beginning a year, but there seems to be a bit more hope in the air. There's a degree of guarded optimism about which was conspicuously absent last year. Let us hope it augurs well.

It will be a year of enormous changes and new beginnings for New Zealand science, with the restructuring of a variety of organisations and the establishment of the Crown Research Institutes. It is to be hoped that this will progress smoothly, and that the institutes will provide the impetus promised.

The uncertainties and anxieties of last year are starting to be answered, with more information available on the CRIs, their form and function. People always feel more settled if they have some idea of what the future holds in store.

One way to boost faith in the future is to identify the positive things that are happening now. The research programmes we hear about, post-graduate projects, reports on the results of years of study, all serve to affirm that New Zealand science is still alive. It's heartening to hear about work which gives us a better chance of helping our endangered wildlife or a better understanding of the geological processes that went to build this country.

For all the worry about restructuring, the brain drain and funding problems, this country still has a science establishment of which we can be justifiably proud. This is not to say that we should ignore those problems, but that we should temper them with the realisation that life, and work, continue.

At the NZSM we've had our own boost, too, by receiving a Boom Makers Award from the Christchurch City Council. We won it last year, but the framed certificate has just gone up on the wall along with the new calendars.

These awards went to recognise new enterprises that have made a positive contribution to the region. The NZSM received a merit award in the science and technology section, just one of an extremely diverse range of categories. It was quite a surprise to find ourselves in company with other "small", startup ventures such as Lincoln University, Hamilton Jet and Comalco.

This sort of positive approach to the future might have something to do with the South Island's economic recovery leading that of the North. I believe that South Islanders have learnt to be more resourceful than their northern counterparts because of the greater time the South has spent in the economic doldrums. Perhaps this is one reason why so many South Islanders have taken advantage of information technology and become telecommuters, both nationally and internationally.

This month's story on the teletronic cottage has a great deal of personal interest for me. It is in such a "cottage" that the NZSM was born almost 18 months ago. We've spent that time learning how to walk and, to stretch the analogy a little, this year we plan to run, to grow and to look confidently to the future.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.