Dept of digital economy needed

DIGITAL ECONOMY

WE have had a series of 10 lecture on Modernisation of PNG Economy using digital technology.
In this 11th lecture we will summarise all those lectures to be followed by recommendations in next Friday’s publication.

Definition of digital technology
Prior to defining digital technology and digital economy we have to ask ourselves why we embark on such a topic and phenomenon. Does it have any significance in our time and age? Yes, of course it has huge significance that impacts the current age or the contemporary world and we are beneficiaries.
This is the technology age whereby computing power is increased by improvement in the integrated circuits with miniature computer chips of silicon crystals. Most astoundingly the nanotechnology and nano-computing on atom-like graphites have prototype circuits built for a processor with microprogramming and operations as microinstructions included in the computer. These cater for instances in interrupts and supervisor calls from terminals to and from microprocessors and operating systems.
The above procedure is made portable with the current usage of smartphones as ipads and ipods. That is, a huge computer that can fill a whole room is reduced to a size that can be carried in your earpiece, for instance.
Two distinctions can be made specifically from the types of electronic mediums we know but do not know their differences and thus get stuck and defensively argue that we know all about technology and cannot allow for new ideas to make way to innovate. We are stuck with the analogue world and say that at least we have a phone in ours office or fax machines that can send and receive information. We obscure the fact of the marvels of a digital world.

On the contrary we call this the digital technology age. So you can see the difference that this is not the analogue technology age which is where your comfort zone is. Our current digital technology age is more superior and has innovations and applications in brain surgery, cinemas, arts, ecommerce and trade, engineering of all sorts, space explorations, etc. The digital economy is all of what is mentioned above in brief.

Reason to modernise economy
The human mind can reason to justify any action and that has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is prima facie. A similar approach has to be the narration that experiments are designed to orchestrate a hypothesis from its theoretical basis to an empirical result after following through a domain of a function following from a set of axioms.
The reason to modernise the PNG economy is that we cannot replace all our non-renewable resources which are currently being harvested at an alarming rate exceeding any ability to replenish. These non-renewable resources have taken so many years on a geological time scale to form and we just came on the scene and are fuelling their depletion in a short span of time upsetting the natural cycle in pursuit of short term profit.
Further to this, we have harvested the most readily and economically available supply. When all the available supply is constrained just like a digital bit or an integer for a database, surely there will be alarm bells ringing in this nation. That is, a computing machine fails to terminate if its instructions are not constrained. Thus, our natural resource supply will start to diminish at that juncture.
Only this time will we see and know that our actions and decisions are now flagged and that will give us time to rid any uneducated and unmerited decisions from ill-informed decision makers to be placed on notice at least.
Only in this given scenario as explained above will we come to understand and appreciate the reason to modernise our economy because modernisation of our economy has the answer to a flagged economy in crisis state. This explicates the fact that modernising the PNG economy is an innovation and therefore it will replace the diminishing non-renewable resource sector which is the windfall earner of our economy.

Scientific, architectural, computerised and engineering components
Digital economy has derivations from a complete set of the principles of science whether it be about the study of rocks, minerals, forces of nature like the electromagnetic radiations with gravity, plant and animal life as well as the micro-organisms. Further to this the chemical compositions of what is actually found on earth and the universe.
For instance, we are children of the stars infers that suns burning nuclear fusion reaction of two atoms of hydrogen gas (H2) combines in the formation of a helium (He) nucleus which has three helium atoms combing to give a carbon (C) nucleus. Now remember that all living things are made of carbon atoms and carbon compounds called organic compounds in hydrocarbons. The fossil fuels are decayed storage of plants and animals which lived long ago and are called hydrocarbon fuel. That is the reason why we are called the children of the stars.
In architectural design, we refer to data abstraction in computing. Every computer programme follows a particular programming language that specifically is designed to produce the desired outcome whether it be in deterministic or non-deterministic computing of a Turing machine and a particular machine with an its identifiable compiler software which come from a homomorphism of algebra sets for a finite sequence or string. A detailed design is followed with the functions, operations of q-ary, binary such as concatenation or unary complements and null data sets.

A computerised system will repel any un-programmed action on the system and thus keeps the system in order from intrusion by anyone. It thus avoids unnecessary impediments from delaying the fast-tracking of intelligible ideas progressing quickly to produce results. It is highly organised with its own algebra sets and polynomials that follow programmed operations whether it be linear or concurrencies as a way of traversing a tree or graph filtered through the terminal and nonterminal nodes following certain production rules and grammars for a syntax and semantics functions and operations.
As in engineering, the principles applied are analogous to most system elucidated above. A revisit of the entire process to amend or correct any aberration is a foremost task in a computerisation exercise to enable the system to be more efficient.

How PNG can benefit
We stated that a diminishing resource base will see an ever augmenting infinite supply of resource base brought about by digital technology. Some countries have been very smart by capitalising on this idea. Such countries do not have a resource base or a natural resource in abundant supply like we do but become rich from other activities like shipping. Singapore is one such country.
To see all economic activities progressing in PNG the necessary tool to work with is the current creativity of the application of the digital technology. The leftist views of progress versus the extreme view to the right need a rethinking and hence re-shaking as one’s analogue comfort zone is now inundated and overpowered by the silicon crystal circuit integration of so many millions of transistors in a miniscule micro-chip of a very large scale integration in digital technology.
The one innovation to replace our LNG supply is the digital technology. After the closure of all our mines digital technology will take this country to the next level by aiding sustainable business practices and agriculture and to take these and other economic activities to interface with the rest of the world.
A word for decision makers is to think about ways how you would connect PNG to the rest of the world so the web is our rescue package. And try as much as possible to stop working in isolation to protect your ego but have an altruistic mindset to outsource and synchronise for the good of PNG.
That is, facilitate innovative ideas to rescue PNG because PNG is a consumer of innovations and not a creator or innovator. How can we progress if we do not innovate like Singapore as we have alluded to? We should emphasise more on innovations and creativity and less on traditional conservative ideas.

Working team and timeline
We require a processing centre to have a control to carry out all activities resembling a pervasive resource allocation and use centre. Structurally there should be a chief programmer as an overseer followed by a team of programmers, analysts, strategists and managers to effect the programme. Thus we need a Department of Digital Economy.
It will be a whole department planned to engineer this nation through the rough waters to the shore. The onus is on the elites of this nation to have the sentiment to safeguard this nation, not just in words but in deeds as well. Therefore digital technology has demonstrated to be the superior innovation the world is currently living in.
If any decision maker is not making any mention of digital technology, then it is a very sad for this nation because we are not making way for innovation. This failure will lead this nation to an unpredictable future and our hope of hopes of becoming better will be dashed.

Next week we will look at further original insights and these will be the recommendations after this summary of our 10 lectures on digital economy.

• Michael Uglo is an avionics and aircraft engineering lecturer in Port Moresby.