Media Room
Here is a selection of news media stories about or involving Prof Peter Poole.
To contact Prof Poole for interviews, click here.
Everybody's gone surfin'
Source: The Age, Sunday 20 June 1999
Ten years ago when Australia's first international network link was established at Melbourne University, the entire Australian Internet ran through a link smaller than the one that runs into your home or office PC, and nobody at Melbourne University wanted to use e-mail. "They said 'look, this is a waste of money. There is absolutely no demand for electronic mail' ", says the university's first head of computer science, Emeritus Professor Peter Poole.
The Network Anniversary
Source: I.T. - News from the World of Information Technology, Monday 21 June 1999
The reason the first Australian link came to Melbourne University was a combination of history and the presence of Robert Elz, according to Elz's then boss, Emeritus Professor Peter Poole.
Poole was the university's first professor of computer science. When he got the job, he was allowed to buy "a computer".
He chose an Interdata 832, with one megabyte of memory, worth $200,000.
At about the same time, Poole hired Elz, a "brilliant" student of information technology and law.
Domain Games
Source: 4 Corners, Monday 5 June 2000
Four Corners explores the Melbourne IT float and asks whether the university may have undersold its domain names monopoly, which had been essentially a public asset. Is it better that such an asset is in public or private hands?
Peter describes Robert Elz as: "He's bearded, long hair, wears sandals.
He is very much -- looks like the -- the image that people have of a traditional computer nerd or geek or whatever term you --
But these people exist all over the world, and some of them are extremely wealthy men today."