Advantages of digital economy

DIGITAL ECONOMY

By MICHAEL UGLO
TWO weeks ago we started a series of discussion on the question of digital economy in the country. In this article, we will look at four sub topics; tangible benefits of a digital economy, intangible benefits, advantages for the nation, and advantages for citizens.

Tangible benefits
Anything tangible is what you can practically see and experience. Going from a theoretical concept into reality was the concept of an automaton we looked at last week which is called the von Neumann machine. Before this machine was produced a thinker who is the father of this automaton, an English mathematician, Allan Turing was theorising this concept.
If any will or thought is to be sequentially represented for a perfect answer then we are anticipating digital technology which is the talk of the day. We get a perfect answer in any area of decision making.
Likewise, the results produced are as neat as true or false and do not require any explanation that might be plagued with inefficiencies. For instance, a hardworking farmer would like to know where on earth a price for his or her produce would be determined. Firstly, the farmer has to know the quality of the produce and secondly, the price for such produce at the world market as determined by the demand and supply elasticity.
The above information is not made readily available to the hard working farmer. Instead communication barriers continue to keep farmers in a trap of economic poverty because they do not have the means to know the worth of the fruit of their labours. The answer is now in digital technology because we already have a global communication called the world-wide-web (www). The prices are determined at the world trade centre in the United States. Or in our case, for an organically grown crop, its vital organic nutrients can be determined in a lucrative European or Asian market.
These prices will be sent through the indexing system to your mobile phone that has the very large scale integration (VLSI) or simply terminal devices with computing capabilities. This amounts to trading across borders using digital technology unlike our conventional approach to business in which we do not embrace technology simply out of ignorance.
We are introduced to a concept of a broker who may take some of our earnings but with digital technology we refer this phenomenon to an idea of interfacing through the information communication system provided by the International Standards Organisations(ISO) called the communication seven-layered protocol which is there to serve anyone like us in PNG. The international worldwide communication protocol does not require any restriction from anyone as long as you are trading a legally certified good following the procedures as put forward by the ISO and the internet regulating community.
After you have got the international pricing for your good then you are going to make money with a good sustainable and ethical code of good farming practice.

Intangible benefits
In economic terms with the flow of goods and services, we are going to stem poverty and hunger that result from laziness and ignorance. The nation will have people actively doing something that have international market value and the economic return will be enormous. People will be attracted into engaging in those activities and have enough for daily survival and have savings for the future. Our people are seeking such opportunities the digital technology can bring.
When we buy goods and services we are going to increase government revenue in terms of taxes GST, income tax, import duties and export levies. This is what digital synchronisation with our economic activities will bring about.
It can be seen from the above that our economy will be thriving with the use of this modern technology. We have not tried it so we cannot say that it will not work. For those who have tried it they are progressing at an unprecedented rate like Kenya, China and India.

Advantages for a nation
The nation is going to advance because directly or indirectly we are going to provide the incentives for our people to work harder to make ends meet to work for a reward. This reward is going to ameliorate their lives for the better.
That citizens of this nation are going to be opening bank accounts to do financial transactions and this is something that we were longing for the citizens of this nation to do. This is now the time for this opportunity to open up. Our people are naturally hard working and it only takes the decision makers to provide this platform of digital technology and its connectivity and PNG citizens will take it to the next level.
Taking to the next level presupposes that we have plentiful organically grown food here with a conducive year-round tropical climate to provide a good supply on demand.

The computer programming in parallelism as well as reduced instruction set will support for such target specific economic activity. The technology, whether it be a specific algorithm or an application, is the diverse modules of programmes with concatenations iteratively deduced to validating results. In summation, technology is at our finger tips.
Once when the people are introduced to using computer applications and access international pricing for the demands on these goods then it will open a corridor of prosperity.
The above is the opportunity people are looking for so we have to make digital economy a reality. In addition we have a vast land we need to farm this renewable resource to become reach.
If Israel can farm a barren land of rocks and dust to produce organically grown banana and export it to the United States of America, we can follow their example by exporting our tasty organically grown crops. We only need the technology office which should be a department that is a digital economy department to make this a reality.

Advantages for citizens
Obviously the people are going to work harder to earn more from farming their land. One of the three most important factors to shape in the country is to enable our people to work harder by providing the necessary incentives.
We might take a lot of time and resources to educate our people to behave sensibly or to be skilled to make up our skilled workforce of which we would now realise that most people are not conditioned properly into schooling and the obvious way to curb that is to provide this economic opportunity of computer network-based economy.
When we are good specialising in doing one thing successfully like selling a produce to an international market, this is mastering of skills and education in many ways.
We have examples of such specialised farming skills and farming families like grape farming and wine making families, apple farming and cattle ranching just to name a few in the world like in Australia, US, England, France, New Zealand, etc.
In those countries that produce such agricultural produce, they have been doing that for centuries and we have modern generations of farmers who inherit those specialist farming techniques and product making practices from their ancestors and even making them better as societies evolve into the contemporary state.
We are not far from getting into a culture determined to prosper in terms of wealth given our richness in oil and minerals to be considered with farming or any online trading with spin-offs from our minerals and oil.
The examples above are of organic farming but the idea is to demonstrate that this nation’s portfolio of wealth can be leveraged when we factor digital technology into decision-making, particularly with computer database creation, computer applications to use on the worldwide data-network and its protocols.

• Michael John Uglo is a lecture in avionics and aircraft engineering.