I can't possibly even summarize the great talk in my own words. Those at IIIT can see the video recording of the same which shud be available soon through Felicity organizers. A small introduction to the speaker is that he is the author of one of the most popular blog in the country http://www.deeshaa.org. Here is my attempt to summarize it in brief. Since it was a very general talk its difficult to emphasize every point.
Surplus of information: Example of how dietrician industry(?) has come up so successful with the availabilit y of surplus of food, by logic their will soon be a need of ppl who can provide ways to summarize the huge amounts of information. How nicely our sense and brain filter the use amount of data available to us and filter and store it so efficiently.
Monkey Fish Example: "The monkey wanted to save the fish from drowning so it kept the fish on top of a tree", telling the current state of our leaders (monkeys) who are claiming to be saving us (fishes) from drowning.
Importance of Increasing production power in the country
Rival good/Non Rival good: The difference between food vs information. Some one accessing some information doesn't effects others chances of accessing the information. Also talked about public good and private good.
Marginal Cost of Duplication of Information
Difference between knowledge and information: Knowing is the summary of information received by a human being, analysed and stored in the brain, its a private good.
Increasing Production vs increasing employment: The former one being more important.
Ability to adopt innovation Vs Information for Development: Explained it with the example that its important for end users like farmers to adopt the technology rather than knowing the science behind it in the first place. Once wheelbarrow was invented it was not supposed to be re-invented by each and every person who needed to use it. They can simply use it. Cost of innovation is high and that should not prohibit us from using the latest up2date technologies and growing at the equal pace as others in the world do.
Removing illiteracy: this one was a very interesting. Why could over government never actually tackle the illiteracty problem. How and why they should actually do it now. "A illiterate's children could be literate by a literate's children will never be illiterate" that explains how easy it is to get rid of the literacy if the government indulges in a proper investment at once rather than a slow/partial polity over 50 years which has failed. How goverment spends around 4000/- Rs per year for a child's literacy in the country and what if the government kept an offer to private sector to literate the children at say Rs 20000/- per child for all the 100 Million ppl in the country.
Some discussion went on for command and control vs property rights, but I was not able to get all of it.
Surplus of information: Example of how dietrician industry(?) has come up so successful with the availabilit y of surplus of food, by logic their will soon be a need of ppl who can provide ways to summarize the huge amounts of information. How nicely our sense and brain filter the use amount of data available to us and filter and store it so efficiently.
Monkey Fish Example: "The monkey wanted to save the fish from drowning so it kept the fish on top of a tree", telling the current state of our leaders (monkeys) who are claiming to be saving us (fishes) from drowning.
Importance of Increasing production power in the country
Rival good/Non Rival good: The difference between food vs information. Some one accessing some information doesn't effects others chances of accessing the information. Also talked about public good and private good.
Marginal Cost of Duplication of Information
Difference between knowledge and information: Knowing is the summary of information received by a human being, analysed and stored in the brain, its a private good.
Increasing Production vs increasing employment: The former one being more important.
Ability to adopt innovation Vs Information for Development: Explained it with the example that its important for end users like farmers to adopt the technology rather than knowing the science behind it in the first place. Once wheelbarrow was invented it was not supposed to be re-invented by each and every person who needed to use it. They can simply use it. Cost of innovation is high and that should not prohibit us from using the latest up2date technologies and growing at the equal pace as others in the world do.
Removing illiteracy: this one was a very interesting. Why could over government never actually tackle the illiteracty problem. How and why they should actually do it now. "A illiterate's children could be literate by a literate's children will never be illiterate" that explains how easy it is to get rid of the literacy if the government indulges in a proper investment at once rather than a slow/partial polity over 50 years which has failed. How goverment spends around 4000/- Rs per year for a child's literacy in the country and what if the government kept an offer to private sector to literate the children at say Rs 20000/- per child for all the 100 Million ppl in the country.
Some discussion went on for command and control vs property rights, but I was not able to get all of it.
The talk was gr8 indeed.. Such talks definitely motivate one to attend more in future..
ReplyDeleteHe even talked about the way that poverty should be calculated - Stuff/(No. of ppl), the definition of stuff in his sense..
Another part of the discussion was the wrong way that India's using to develop. "Spending more on Airways when it should do that on Super fast Railways" was one example..
And we forgot to mention - "He was a man of COMMON-SENSE".. A very impressive personality..