I believe that the day is fast approaching when humanity’s complete knowledge base is accessible through the Internet.

The pace of change is immense. Knowledge sources for previous generations, such as libraries and published physical reference books, are long gone. Online dictionaries, Wikipedia, YouTube and other repositories unlock immense riches for those people able to put an online search engine to work to satisfy their curiosity.

Accessibility of online data has changed too. Personal computer usage is in rapid decline globally as personal, portable devices accompany people everywhere they go.

Access to knowledge is ubiquitous and, apart from the cost of a device and web access, free.

Despite the on-lining of everything capable of digital capture, I think there are still some major gaps to fill. The biggest of these is about people, collectively and individually, and what these people do, think and believe. In other words, a social commentary and history about what defines us and directs us.

Over the past five years I have had a family tree project on the boil. I’ve learned heaps about my relatives past and present, but mostly those past. Keeping tabs on living relatives is an immense task.

But beyond the stretch of human memory, information other than Stud Book records outlining people’s names and vital dates fast evaporates. For example I’d love to know why my ancestors vacated hearth and home in the British Isles and made a journey to settle on the other side of the Earth. I’d love to know why my great grandparents settled in Stratford at the end of the 19th century when it would have been little more than a frontier hick-town. I’d love to know how my great grandfather came to be a Sangster.

Reviewing records over the past 150 or so years, it’s possible to find out where people lived and what their occupation was, but little else. There’s the occasional moment when old family photos are found. There may be scribblings on the back saying who or what may have been featured in the image on the front. Sometimes not. Photos are often quite personal and people don’t formally note anything about the contents because they don’t need to – they know that photo’s story. However that knowledge is often lost when the photo’s owner passes.

Thousands of photos each year will be destroyed because they take up space and nobody knows why they may have been important and kept in the first place. The same applies to other memorabilia. The only stuff that tends to be kept is that which is believed to have a tangible value, like jewellery, bone china, original artworks and so on.

Families aren’t the only ones struggling with this. Public libraries and museums around the world have similar issues. Theirs are often complicated by the fact that many of the historic images they have are on perishable materials, like acetate film or glass plates. Even modern film stock won’t last forever, particularly if it is regularly accessed or used in some sort of machinery, like a projector, for instance. Sticky fingerprints take a toll of many things humans interact with, particularly our history. All of this builds a strong case for digitising this information.

I don’t think that understanding history will ever change human behaviours, but that’s another story entirely. But I believe it can significantly influence our knowledge and understanding about who we are, and why we may be where we are doing what we do.

Families have their own records. Many of these are verbal and tactile – family legends, a grandmother’s cheese scones, another’s knitting, an uncle’s record collection, a big brother’s first car, the drought of 1972. I believe that is these stories and impressions of the circumstances around them that shape us more than what we learn at school or on business development courses, or from empirical data found in the Edmonds Cook Book or weather records.

Regrettably this knowledge lives largely in people’s heads and is never formally captured as part of a family’s or community’s social history. I think that we’re the poorer for that.

Yet this week I discovered and have been excited by a tool that can help provide a social history around historic photographs and images. Some libraries and museums are already using it. It’s a New Zealand-developed piece of kit called Recollect. There’s a demo site at http://demo.recollect.co.nz that gives an idea of what this is about and what it can do. Please go and have a look, if you’re that way inclined.

New Zealanders think that accents are something that others have. We love to pour scorn on our closest neighbours across the dutch who eat feesh and cheeps and carry their shopping around in bargs. Other nationalities’ spoken English renditions are not immune from our discerning ears and our rebuking tongues.

But the New Zealand exsint is a shocker. Seriously. I was reminded of this earlier today while out and about listening to the car radio. Flat vowels and dark Ls abounded, as somebody who called herself “Mushow” revealed. I suspect her name is written as “Michelle” but I may be wrong. Mushow said she works in the “howth” sector. I suspect as a therapist of some sort.

While mutilated diction is par for the course for most of us, one expects a higher standard from news-readers and other “professional” voices. Alas, no. I cringe every time I hear a breathless newsreader’s account of somebody being “ear lifted” out of harm’s way, or items about “womman’s issues”, rather than “wimmin’s”. Is the “shearmarket” a legacy of our agricultural past?

While heinous crimes against spoken English are permissible from professional voices, similar crimes against New Zealand’s other official spoken language are not. Great care, precision and even exactitude are aimed at words like Taupo, Taranaki and Kaikoura. The Bayer Plenny, Gisbin and Straffid aren’t so fortunate. Perhaps one should craft a letter of complaint to Nyo Zullin On Ear.

And so it goes. Perhaps one day Mr Microsoft will have an app that places red squiggly lines under questionable words used in spoken language. That would certainly be an effective way of highlighting much of what falls out of my Kiwi mouth.

Many years ago I read a book entitled “New Zild and how to speak it (A Kiwi’s answer to Strine)”. The author’s name was “Arch Acker”, presumably a nom de plume. I wish I’d kept a copy. I can still remember some classic lines that caused me much mirth, such as “Annie’s gorgeous under the posts!” and “Air sick horse”.

Success comes in many forms. As Kim of Kath and Kim fame once said: “I always dreamed of being effluent and now I am!”

Thankfully tonight is Friday. It’s fush and chups night.

One thing I’ve learned is that motorbikes are extremely evocative – and sociable. People just wander up to you and tell you all about their first love: the AJS they restored from parts and rode 12 miles every day to school on unsealed roads; the Triumph that their brother owned; the Harley-Davidson they had before they married and had to exchange for a mortgage; or the Ducati they’re going to own in a couple of years’ time when that last child leaves home. All of this while they’re looking at your Kawasaki Z1000 – a bike that looks like none of the above yet, strangely, does to them.

I suppose that classic car owners may experience similar feedback. But as somebody who has owned or driven mid-sized, four-wheeled, four-cylinder, corporate fare over the years, nobody other than my Mum has ever wandered up and admired my ride or gone all misty-eyed whilst recounting tales of dreams and lost loves. A Honda Accord isn’t a key to unlocking unbridled lust.

This motorcycle sociability isn’t just found in New Zealand. Five years ago we crated up a bike in Wellington and a few weeks later uncrated it in Los Angeles, California. Seven weeks and over 13,000km later we had seen quite a bit of back roads USA and Canada. Our bike travelled with its New Zealand rego. That, combined with the bike, was a big conversation starter in Small Town America: “Where y’all from?”

My first inoculation with motorcycles was when I was about six. Dad employed a Massey University Diploma of Agriculture student who owned a Matchless 500. Whoar. This single-cylinder British machine was Robert’s pride and joy. Riding it gave him the opportunity to wear every item of clothing he owned, or so it appeared. In those days 500s were “big” machines. Starting it from cold took technique and endurance. Robert used to put all his riding apparel on in readiness for his journey, then start kicking his machine over. Clothing was shed layer by layer as a sweat was built up. Once the bike fired, it warmed up as Robert cooled down and started putting his gear back on again. On a quiet evening we could hear every gear change as he rode to Stratford, about 12km away.

A few years later the farmbike was invented. We never had one at home but a neighbour had a Honda CT90 with a high/low ratio gearbox and knobbly tyres. Another had a two-stroke Yamaha 100. Milking for them usually meant that I got a fang to the back of the farm to round up the cows before nerdling along behind them back to the cowshed. Farmbikes were eventually fitted out with bump bars to protect lights and levers, as well as trays for dogs to stand on. Maintenance was optional.

One of my milking gigs was for a farmer who believed that a “tune up” involved standing the bike in the cowshed’s yard and hosing all of the caked mud and cow shit off with a high-pressure hose. One night I discovered that my ride to round up his herd was to be undertaken on a machine with no working clutch, brakes or sidestand. One learns to adapt.

Friends at high school and university owned motorbikes. Kids who rode to school had a couple of designated sheds where these could be parked – and perved at. A couple of chaps used to commute each day from Te Wera – 35km east of Stratford with a couple of beaut saddles to negotiate – one on a Kawasaki H1 750 “widow-maker” and the other on a H1 500. Both of these were two-stroke triples and quite lovely to look at, although to ride the frames felt like they were made of spaghetti.

I think Mum was pleased when I left home for university and bought my first car. My first bike took a long time to arrive: 2003 to be precise. But it was worth the wait.

The original Song Of The Sausage Creature was penned by the legendary Hunter S Thompson. It involves a Ducati motorcycle. I recommend reading it.