Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Busy busy busy and busy...

Looking at the number of my blog postings this year, it could only tell one thing. I'm busy with work. Every time I go back home, I got to entertain the household. When the kids are asleep, I watch Astro or read some books.

Things that I want to blog now is quite a heavy topic. Lately, my mind had been thinking. Thinking about things that I can do to change the world (perrgghh..macam bagus). But seriously, until I can let it out, I won't feel satisfied.

I don't know, its just that too many news going around about climate change, security, corruption, world food crisis...etc. I wonder what kind of a world that our kids will live in in the future. What makes me want to do so much is because the industry that I'm working in. Telecommunication is the enabler of information exchange. When you get to see how telecommunication impacts the economy, politics and even climate change, it makes me want to push so much ideas that can slowly but surely change the reality. I believe that the era that we live in is the era of being informed. Anxiety and uncertainty are usually brought about when there is lack of information. Lacking in information only generates risk and there's a high price to pay for the uncertainty. Soaring oil prices are due to speculative outcomes based on current events, food crisis are probably due to booming demand from China and India and the volatile climate adds to the variable. Just to cite some examples.


There should be better coordination among major food producers that could have avoided this crisis. Nobody saw it coming kaa? I'm sure somebody must have seen the warning signs but everybody seems to ignore it. When the world is already so connected, there should be more active engagement between industries, governments and the citizens. It is no longer the time when you just look at yourself and try to fulfill your own country's need. Humanity cannot afford to be selfish if we want to strive to reach the next equilibrium point. What better way to enable equitable and sustainable growth among nations then to continuously engage with each other, exchanging critical information and coordinating efforts based on informed judgement. We can do this efficiently if we embrace the power of ubiquitous communication. People say that two heads are better than one. What if we can connect 6 billion heads?

With prevailing crisis, who benefits from all this? Does the benefit reach the poor? I bet in the case of food crisis, the middle men gets most of the profits! So the rich becomes richer, and the poor becomes poorer. Not equitable at all and definitely unsustainable.

An informed society is a pre-requisite to knowledge based economy. The challenge is how do we differentiate between information based on facts and Hollywood. So many stories came out from the internet during the last GE but nobody could validate or verify them. Even if one can deny the accusations, who can validate that too? Taking this question aside, the value that the internet connectivity can potentially create should be measured beyond the economic boundries. It's about how it enables the speeding up of innovation cycle. When the innovation wheel spins faster, we can get to our desired destination sooner. We just need some check and balance to ensure the destination or vision that our civilisation is heading to is shared and embrace by all humanity. So please, reach out, speak out, collaborate and engage.

Haiya...I found myself a topic to write for my thesis..heheehe.. But first, I got to sign up for a post graduate course laa!

No comments: