Chris Griffith

Senior Technology Journalist, The Australian newspaper, Sydney. Chris has enjoyed an extensive career as a working journalist, computer professional, and in earlier days, teacher of computer studies.

He first learnt to program in the late 1960s and began studying computer science in the early 1970s at Monash University. Programming was mainly on an IBM 360/20 and CDC 3200. His main time programming however was in the mid-late 1980s when with a friend he formed a Brisbane-based firm that specialised in installing PC networks with tailored database software. This wasn’t so easy to achieve in the early days of networked PCs. Microsoft DOS had no networking capabilities, so the pair used Novell software to network MSDOS across PCs. There was no public internet, so modems performed data transfers across offices.

He spent over a year rewriting body corporate accounting and community management software, converting some 130 modules written for standalone PCs, to work in a multi-user environment — across PCs and offices for the then Body Corporate Services. BCS used the software to manage 23,000 units/apartment in Cairns, the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Sanctuary Cove and the Gold Coast.

His work at The Australian as senior technology journalist includes weekly device reviews, fortnightly features on developments in computer technology and IT in the Life section, columns every other week, and stories for the news, business and technology sections of the paper, and for online.