Umer Toor Blog: Philosophy of Technology

Showing posts with label Philosophy of Technology. Show all posts

"Newsflash": Pakistanis are far more advanced

In Pakistan, by grace of Allah, population of villages is still much greater than of cities, although with much less basic necessities, health-care being top priority. This or few other deficiencies don't have to be part and parcel of villages at all. Nonetheless, overall village life and even of semi-Urbanite non-cosmopolitan city-dwellers in Pakistan is liberating. People like me, younger age with cell phones and internet, are becoming slaves of technology day by day, but we're still much more advanced in our human relations, in living a meaningful life devoid of avoidance & superficiality, and in being at ease with nature. Something Westerners - those who're baby-sit by tv and other visual and auditory devices - are very backward at. In the end, it's all about freedom to be Archetypical, Primordial Human, true to our nature forged in the image of God.

The realization of this backwardness is not limited to outward observers - i.e., Asians or Africans or those few in West who still adore nature and rawness. First, the movie Mr Lorax debunked the sterility of anti-nature and artificial living style of Western capitalism. Now, a high school in America is doing something about it: taking students on a 3 month term in a country-side region with no cell-phones, no Facebook and little internet. Please watch the video [click on the link pls] to feel how precious and advanced Eastern way of life really is.

Why eSystems often fail: Change Management

Our professor talks about failure of implementation of technology to solve real-world business (including private/public sectors). It happens due to the gap between computer scientists/engineers and people who run processes/businesses/institutions. Yet another failure of such mass-level system: "Minister [of education] admits failure of e-system (for roll# slips)" (Dawn, Wed 9 March, p. 13).

Education ministry was supposed to give all roll # slips electronically; 17,000 roll # slips given manually. Maybe because they didn't do the ground work; without involving someone who understands every aspect of the business and understands what would be the benefits of the technology to the business.

People get over-excited by benefits of technology, but often fail to understand change management issues, both technical and behavioral. For instance, i worked on the pre-feasibility of online tuition center. Where you can lecture 40 students in a classroom, you can now teach thousands online through Skype for free. You can now have a computerized adaptive testing system in which computer adapts to the ability of students and give simpler questions to a struggling students, or more difficult to an expert one - helping each master at their own pace. We can create earning opportunity for so many talented teachers through 1-to-1, 1-to-many online tuition, textbook solutions, homework help - btw, this is not novel, its being done via Grockit.com & Cramster.com. Problem with these sites is that they don't offer local language education and require credit card payment. Fortunately students in Pakistan can now pay their bills via easyPaisa.

But there are many technical & behavioral challenges to it. 1st technical issue which can wipe out this business model on day 1 - load-shedding! 2nd, internet connections may not be very fast & reliable.

When you come to behavioral issues - these are really subtle. Some go to academies just for friends, some due of fear of teachers who force them, some may not adopt eTuition just because its not done in physical world, some would only go to an academy because their parents want them to. All of these have their own solution, fortunately! For instance, by creating a game-like, socially competitive learning environment - learning experience online can be very addictive when you can compete with students in quiz, practice session. Ever saw those badges on Khanacademy.org? It serves the purpose.

Allah doesn't create anything useless: Algae Tech

Fossil fuels, as per technologists, will end in near future. What do we do? Search for sustainable alternative field. You must be familiar with this phrase. Although the problem of environment can be discussed separately, but we hear engineers leading the movement, perhaps without philosophical insights from Islam. Just thinking that by reversing our "bad engineering" into good can transform the situation, notes Dr. Hossein Nasr, is a naive idea. Thinking that by turning to alternative energies can help us out without changing industrialist, consumer mind-set might the biggest mistake we make.

Nonetheless - this isn't topic of the post, but i couldn't help not making a comment - i've an afterthought to share. Look at this picture of Algae below.

You must have seen this on walls and on ground. I noticed it from childhood and could never appreciate its worth. i thought, what a useless is that! It sort of irritated me. But, that's where lines are drawn between ignorant and knowledgeable.

This semester, while trying to pursue a technology business idea, i stumbled across an unknown PhD level research going on in my own university in the field of bio-tech. Ms. Someone (i forgot her name) is PhD candidate in the field of bio-tech, who also teaches at my university. She is working on Alage. She has set-up a pilot project, after successful tesing of Alagae's capability of producing bio-diesel - as a direct competitor of fossil fuels, to commercialize the Algae fuel and its by-products.

Although she says it'll take a decade, but the by-products are so overwhelming in quality and importance that it'll come in market.

Metaphysics and Physics

You've to crack assumptions of people before you come to an understanding of the physical, bare argument or thing being said. It is a scientist's way of doing things; that although you're dealing with the outward/physical you start metaphysically. It is like an eyeglass which greatly affects the way images are formed in the eye, but the presence of which is often not felt or appreciated, so it goes unnoticed. Similarly, a fatwah on a political matter greatly disturbs a modern mind and he commits the sin of compartmentalizing things and often divorcing it from Heaven. This is an unacceptable position for any believer; hence he needs not pay any attention to such rants by moderns whose intellect is so atrophied.