Death of substance

‘Let style be your substance’ screams at me from a billboard in Colombo as I find my way through traffic generated by one of our No. 1 imports – motor vehicles. Latest models pass me, blaring their horns in a hurry to get to their destinations and I know that no way are these magnificent crawling machines able to truly express their engine capabilities on most of our roads.

Even the Southern Highway is no autobahn. I prefer matching quality roads to needs than changing roads to suit vehicle models that are being made available. Daily lots of water plus lots of imported waxes, etc. will be consumed in keeping the exterior well cleaned, giving due importance to the occupant within. Seeing that we use purified treated water in bulk, once a Japanese engineer asked ‘why do you waste high quality water in this way?’

I walk on foot and pass many beauty parlours vying each other for business as I search in vain for a bookshop. When I find that elusive bookshop, what it usually stocks is what the curricula of a school dictate. I can pass towns and cities without seen the signpost ‘Public Library’ in Sri Lanka.

Knowledge society status

This reminds me of a statement by Dr. Abdul Kalam: Nations build themselves into knowledge societies by understanding the dynamics of knowledge and transforming it into wealth. We too are seeking this knowledge society status.

This statement needs to be analysed and when compared with certain developments taking place, makes one worry. The exterior is well looked after in Sri Lanka today and we should perhaps extend more care in looking after the interior.

I was speaking to an Indian engineer who has come to work in Sri Lanka. He had some strong comments to make and he made those in typical engineering fashion. One comment struck me quite strongly. In facing problems and even at times quite small issues, he said that we tend to look outside for solutions. He was also direct in one way – he was saying that we look at India now by default. I am yet to meet a Chinese engineer!

The lack of inventiveness was quite worrying, he stated. Hence when an issue crops up within a factory, his frank assessment was that what gets resolved in India quite quickly may take days and weeks in Sri Lanka.

He was also indicating the lack of support activities clustered around a facility. You may say clustering is quite natural. However, it appears in manufacturing this has to some extent disappeared now as we position entities based on financial aspects rather than on organic industrial development principles.

We cluster industries in industrial zones but take a close look around industrial zones for any interactions and you may find not much. With regard to surroundings, one may see only significant support for meals, unskilled labour and lodges. That was what this senior Indian engineer was driving at.

YouTube

The recent revelation of statistics on YouTube – Google Inc’s video website – is interesting. Of course these statistics are important as everyone is getting ready for their own IPOs or to boost up share standings. It is stated that there are more than four billion YouTube views every day now, a 25 per cent increase in the past eight months.

It is a sobering fact and we know that we are living in a world of seven billion plus with closer to two billion living with less than one dollar per day and obviously with no YouTube access or interest. Hence, there is a generation that is coming up which is seriously getting into consumptive practices.

It is no secret that YouTube’s business model is based on pampering our appetite for the visual. I know that we today are more into consumptive practices; this is a subjective statement and may not be applicable in general but I have digested the statistics thrown out by Google with the understanding of my own worldview.

Technologies like these can be used to speedup problem solving and create innovation networks, transfer ideas and definitely that too must be happening. Yet it is what the majority is doing that should be of interest as in democratic terms the majority dictates direction.

I took a simple look at what the majority is doing in Sri Lanka. These days with even people dying trying to voice their opinion on fuel prices, I was thinking that waste to energy and specifically biogas generated from waste being used to drive a three-wheeler should create much interest.

As I write this I noted the hits on such an exercise from Sri Lanka demonstrated in YouTube has had 714 viewers. In contrast Malinga taking his first ODI wicket beautifully captured and loaded to YouTube has scored 65,052 hits. Many, many more had viewed his hat tricks! I did not go beyond the subject of cricket and some other figures may be even more amazing and revealing.

Facebook

Sri Lankans on Facebook is also interesting, with us now being in the 75th position in Facebook user ranking in the globe. With more than 1.2 million users, the statistics reveal 42% of users come from the 18-24 age bracket. What is important is the consumption of time, electricity and the productivity.

While we may be pretty well engaged with connecting, interacting and sharing with cyber friends online, a new form of couch potatoes may evolve. As Cynthia Mascone, the Editor of the US Chemical Engineering Progress magazine, said in her editorial: Who says no to a Facebook account as to know what someone is eating for lunch, or where people shop?

I am sure marketers may say these are crucial bits of consumer information – the search of useful information via Facebook, etc. is a daunting task and as such not quite useful. Time management is important and being productive is being responsible and these are time honoured concepts and I am sure will not disappear.

What is disappearing is being conscious about such attributes as the new generation in a developing country is getting misled by irresponsible marketing and using opportunities in a way not beneficial to them.

With the other generation so much away from new technology, the new generation gives scant respect to old suggestions and the path is set for their own chosen way.

Importance of time

Time is a very important resource, which this column has reiterated many a time. The type of engagements that I discussed above definitely consumes time in the wrong way and the resource is gone forever with no hope of recovery. The engagement too will not offer any positive benefits to the user in my view, which need not be taken in because I write so, but could be analysed.

The impacts of not understanding the vital importance of not utilising time well implies we seek solutions from others as we are almost clueless when crunch time comes. We hope time will solve the issue and these price escalations are temporary events.

The experts on the subject of deep learning may say the value of repeated exposure to information is important, but their singular emphasis is on time for reflection to make use of the information. It is the latter that we are not doing. There is hardly any time for reflection.

Of course, with some of the information that we are repeatedly bombarded with, little time on reflection should indicate that the information streaming in is of hardly any use and the world can certainly go around without those streaming bits and bytes.

Yet the valuable human resources evolving to kill time rather than being raised to understand issues and with the resolve of solving issues is deeply worrying. It is important that one uses the tools of social media professionally and effectively and understands this at a very young age.

Synthetic pleasures

When the primary direction is leisure and enjoyment, it is not always possible to generate ideas which could be tools for building the future as rest and relaxation are given more prominence and you perhaps are not thinking on issues which are serious.

That is why speaking about austerity measures are so unpopular. We may need them yet we cannot understand the need. In the end we just go under glued to misunderstanding as we have not developed our thinking habits and we were trying to cling on to synthetic pleasures.

We should not forget while the information revolution is making the world go flat, we do have gross disparities within developing and developed economies. While we may have been now grouped into a middle income country, we should be aware how this economy is structured and the level of stability. Minus such understanding, the standing is not so secure in the long run.

I hope the writing is not considered as coming from someone who missed the fun and is now complaining. Abdul Kalam’s advice to students on not to indulge in ‘synthetic pleasures’ rings closer to my ear all the time when I pen this.

Hope the understanding does get conveyed and you make some quality time to think on this. That is indeed deep learning. Think about the last conversation you had – was it meaningful or purely artificial? Or perhaps the last social media site visit? Well, we will true to the concept come back again on this same topic as I truly dislike ‘substance dying’ in Sri Lanka!

(Professor Ajith de Alwis is Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. With an initial BSc Chemical engineering Honours degree from Moratuwa, he proceeded to the University of Cambridge for his PhD. He is also the Director of UOM-Cargills Food Process Development Incubator at University of Moratuwa. He can be reached via email on [email protected])