Biographical outline.

Stewart Fist is a retired journalist; film/TV producer-director; and teacher of film, video and television techniques. He was Training Director, then the inaugural Head of Open Program (external training programs) at the Australian Film, Radio and Television School in Sydney, NSW, Australia in the 1970s. But, prior to his decision to move entirely into the media world, he was a specialist Optometrist (Dip.Opt.AOA) with a private practice in Perth WA, and clinical practices at the Royal Perth and Fremantle Hospitals.

His interest in the natural environment led to writing articles for "Walkabout" magazine then later extended to photographing wild-flowers for the Western Australian Tourist Board and later for National Geographic Magazine. Eventually he moved to Sydney to join Robert Raymond (founder of the ABC's Four Corners) in making the Project '94 to '96 television documentary series for the TCN 9 network.

He later ran Special Projects Films P/L with his wife Jillian, a Four Corners researcher, and they received the Whitlam Government's first Australian Film Commission grant for the pilot of a global documentary series (starring US actor Raymond Burr), on the "Origins of Mankind". The first in the series on "The Origins of the Polynesians" led to bankruptcy when the Australian film laboratories processed the film incorrectly.

He joined the Australian Film, Radio and TV School as the training director for the existing industry crafts, then became head of the inaugural "Open Program" which specialised in short courses for the professional industry: the establishment of an education sector; and an aboriginal division. In 1975 the International Marketing Association awarded him a scholarship to study film-marketing techniques in the USA, and during this period he first came in contact with personal computers.

After an unsuccessful attempt at building a kit personal computer back in Australia, he purchased an Apple II, learned computer programming, and became one of Australia's first users of the on-line international database networks (DARPA) via the new transPacific optical fibre cable to the USA. The Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (OTC) at this time ran all of Australia's international electronic communications..

For OTC he wrote the first Australian manual on online research techniques (then known as 'Midas') and produced the first international online reference, "Australian Database Directory". He also wrote the OTC manual for Australia's first email system ('Minerva'), and later compiled and published a major encyclopaedia of communications/computer-technology terms, "The Informatics Handbook".

From 1995 to 2004 he wrote the feature column known as Crossroads for the weekly supplement of Rupert Murdoch's "The Australian" newspaper on computers, technology and science - politics and economics. He also edited a number of science and technical magazines for the Fairfax-owned Magazine Promotion group.

Stewart has now retired, but acts as both convener and web-master for:
    * the international investigative journalist's information exchange sciencecorruption.com exposing science corruption
    and corporate lobbying by major poisoning and polluting industries,
    * a general Australian journalist/academic discussion forum, known as the Plateau Group which promoted social ideas
    such as elderly housing and small electric cars for local use. Details can be found at electric-words.com.au.
    * He is also a specialist editor (mainly on the tobacco industry) with the US Center for Media and Democracy which
    runs the sourcewatch.org web-site exposing international corporate lobbying practices. His particular speciality is the
    role played by the 500-member Atlas Group of Libertarian think-tanks.

Stewart's current interests are in untangling the convoluted mess of fallacious ideas the academic experts call Economics, and revising some of the early ideas about the British Enlightenment and its role in Australian History. He also maintains the Plateau Group's Age-Aware site with simple advice for the elderly.

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