The History and Significance of the Lions Books on UNIX

Updated 6 August 2026

As part of a project for an IEEE Milestone to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John Lions' Commentary on the UNIX Operating System, I compiled a narrative history of its inception and signficiance. See https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22538422 for the archived history document, and see the accompanying ETHW encyclopaedia artcle at https://ethw.org/Lions%27_Commentary_on_the_UNIX_Operating_System.

Note: I wrote the narrative history and encyclopaedia article with the help of Google Antigravity, using Claude and Gemini coding agents and Google AI Mode searches.

Comments on the National AI Plan 

First published 14 December 2025, updated 6 October 2026

This page formerly contained my personal thoughts on the National AI Plan [1]. See https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23183485 for the archived essay.

The essay identifies three related gaps in the Plan.

1. The Plan does not attempt to define the term "Artificial Intelligence". This is a missed opportunity.

2. The Plan appears to focus on large language models and generative AI, and does not explicitly mention other approaches. Because of this, it misses the opportunity to address the societal challenges and opportunities they pose.

3. The Plan does not explicitly deal with Australia's existing publicly funded high performance computing capability, or the expertise and resources needed to conduct fundamental research into AI. These omissions miss the opportunity to explore what is meant by sovereign AI capability, and what resources may be needed and available to Australia to achieve such capability.

References

[1] Australian Government Department of Industry, Science and Resources (2025). National AI Plan.