In today's world, broad societal trends tend to originate in the center and migrate to the periphery. Europe and North America are in the center, and Australia is on the periphery. Of specific interest to communication scholars is the growth or ebbing of communication theories or techniques. One trend, the use of computers in communication scholarship, has entered a new phase. More quickly than has been true of previous innovations, computer usage in organizational communication research has made its way from North America to Australia. National, geographic, cultural, and time barriers all have influence, and political and linguistic differences exist, but the university communication curriculum is becoming increasingly more uniform. U.S. speech communication theory has only recently begun to take hold in British-influenced Australia, where speech communication has not traditionally been an academic offering. To avoid making U.S. and European mistakes by adopting "bad" ideas from those cultures, Australia must have: (1) knowledge of the U.S. and European scenes; (2) knowledge of the Australian scene; (3) knowledge of the vectors of idea transmission; and (4) longitudinal studies of the movement of foreign cultural influences into Australia. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that Australia will quarantine itself from Northern Hemisphere trends, good or bad. (SG)