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July 2017
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If it is one thing this past fifty years has taught us, is that the speed with which things change and are replaced is far more rapid than anything the world has known before. It means there is no way anyone can realistically paint a portrait of 2030, far less 2050. What we do know is that the citizen of tomorrow has to be flexible and savvy to be able to survive. The vision that the UWI team and I now share is that survival is by far the most important objective for any education system. We believe that our citizens must be educated and trained to meet and beat every challenge that comes their way. But for us to get to that level of self-determination, we need to have a vision. I took the risk of giving a forecast of the technologies available in 2050 based largely on some of today’s emerging technologies. One thing we can say for sure is that if we maintain the current trajectory, and if the world survives to2050, the technology of that time will be unimaginably more advanced. I will comment on just two aspects but we know these advances will bring new social challenges. Time and space do not permit me to delve too deeply on this aspect. Transportation will be superfast, spanning hitherto inaccessible physical spaces, from the deep ocean to immediate space. There may be wars fought over extra-planetary real estate. Star Trek-inspired teleportation technology (“beam me up Scotty”) may well be at the point of commercial deployment. This technology is based on local disassembly and precise remote reassembly at the molecular level. It is not as farfetched as one might think, as ongoing experiments have opened doors to its possibility. If this technology comes to be, it would certainly disrupt the paradigm of physical transportation. It could revolutionize medical treatment and, as for any powerful technology, could make crime fighting significantly more challenging. If that is not thought-provoking enough, if the technology is successfully applied to the teleportation of live humans, religions everywhere may all be driven to a state of disarray. How does one “beam” the essence of life? Communication would be further enhanced by nanotechnology implants that tie into the human brain. If this comes to be, then it should also be possible to programme, de-programme and re-programme knowledge and skill into an individual – or transfer knowledge, skill and even personalities to computers and machines (androids and robots). Even now, with the democratization of knowledge consequent to the proliferation of online courses, as one Australian University Vice-Chancellor stated in the Ernst & Young 2012 report, “Our major competitor in ten years’ time will be Google…if we’re still alive!” However, the use of these bio implants would automate education at the knowledge transfer level. My colleagues in the education sector should take serious note of this possibility. I am secretly hoping that our young, keen computer scientists at UWI might also feature prominently in the global technological landscape based on work I have seen. For instance, they have just produced a suite of apps called AgriNeTT to help farmers manage their finances, monitor crop production, view soil and land information, check the suitability of land for planting specific crops and to monitor the daily prices of crops. Automated learning would revolutionize distance learning so that it would not have the high dropout rates as at present. By and large, most of the current models do not fully accommodate students as social beings. Furthermore, in that world where knowledge transfer would supposedly be more accessible and effective, existing universities would have to re-engineer their processes and policies to do the following:
The UWI’s Strategic Plan has identified the potential realities and has set its sight on significant growth, with the objective of “Revitalising Caribbean Development.” Its implementation plan includes a range of initiatives: joint projects with industry – we will soon sign an MOU to provide for a “hack space” of sorts in the Faculty of Engineering, creation of posts of Professors in Practice for placement of industry captains in the university system, online delivery to be significantly expanded, and plans for the expansion of our Centre of Export Entrepreneurship and Innovation to leverage all of UWI capability to provide a conduit for moving student, staff and stakeholder ideas to reality. Close your eyes and try to imagine 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050. It can be an exciting vision if you choose to be part of creating it. I encourage everyone to try this exercise. It was, for me, a bit more difficult than I first thought it would be. But it helps, because when you visualize the future, it allows you to set your strategy to enable our young ones to better prepare for it. EDITORIAL TEAM Contact us: |