TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: Education, Healthcare and Delivery of Justice systems which are offered in ‘factory like settings’ will one day be affordable and available for the common man thanks to information systems, the founder of Rediff Ajit Balakrishnan told a packed audience at the last lecture of the D D Kosambi Festival of Ideas.
Speaking on the issue of “Preparing for the Information Age”, Balakrishnan sought to explain how the world is in the stage of transition, as it has been many times during the past over the issue of new technology upsetting and replacing the old.
“If you closely follow the protests that the world is undergoing these days you will see that there is something bigger happening other than just, turmoil in individual states,” Balakrishnan said, referring to the protests around the world including that of the Arab Spring, in Egypt, Tunisia, they Occupy movements taking all across the world as well as the anti-corruption protests in India.
“You need to ask them, besides corruption what are your issues and you will get some very interesting answers,” Balakrishnan.
Balakrishnan explained his theory, using the technological revolutions of the past — be it the textile revolution that shifted from the handloom and the spinning wheel to the spinning jenny and then to the power loom which led to protests by the luddites, the steel and rail revolution which led to labour unrest and gave rise to movements that led to labour unions and worker rights, the chemistry and petrochemical revolution led by Germany that led to the protests like the Champara protest of the indigo farmers led by Gandhi in India and the like.
“A lot of high paying jobs are being threatened by the use of machines and technology,” Balakrishnan said hinting that a lot of the unrest is fuelled by the middle class feeling threatened.
To elaborate he explained how today the kind of technology available and machines and algorithms have made it possible to detect colon tumors with 96% accuracy making a radiologist, who needs to complete a five year MBBS, a two year MD and another ten years of experience redundant — something that was in principle similar to what the spinning jenny had done to the workers leading to protests by luddites.
Balakrishnan also predicted that concrete infrastructure that supports education, health care and justice systems will soon be dissolved by technology.
“The factory was an invention of the industrial revolution, where the entire infrastructure is in one place to make it efficient. Todays schools, hospitals and courts are all in factory like settings that require large concrete infrastructure. Today the whole concept of factories is being questioned,” Balakrishnan said.
He also elaborated on how the internet is challenging the concept of nation state especially with the servers that host content located across borders making it necessary for changing in legislation and for human systems to cope with the changing technology.
