Start emulating ‘big brother’

DIGITAL ECONOMY

By MICHAEL JOHN UGLO
LIKE any good event and story our discussion/lectures on modern digital economy of PNG must come to an end.
As stated last Friday the following comprise the recommendations for a digitalised economy of PNG as an integral component of the progress of this country to prosperity unaltered with an unprecedented economic growth.
PNG may be boasting about its existence and survival contrary to doomsday prophets foretelling a failed state. We could look at its survival not without our bigger brother countries like Australia with a combination of our non-renewable resource extractions which are our huge revenue earners.
To make recommendations for PNG to be a digitalised economy lets stem out from two of the many reasons for our survival among others like good political stewards.
Firstly let us look at Australia as our bigger brother and as a world record and pace setter. It is currently holding the world number one record in rank in terms of a 27-year unprecedented economic growth without a recession after transcending Switzerland which holds a 25-year unprecedented economic growth ranking as a world number one.
A major task Australia is undertaking is to be technologically advanced in its economy including its military, education, manufacturing, farming, businesses and many other aspects. Australia is placing its priority in technology and specifically in the latest technology developments like artificial intelligence as in expert systems and robotics.
These technologies are concerned with delivering results with high accuracy ratings and precision. An example is in medical application as in drug mixing and surgery for perfect results.
Secondly, without our natural resources we may not have survived to acquire the current development status. Credit is rightly or wrongly accorded to the Creator God who does not provide free ‘manna’ unlike in the Old Testament of the Bible. His commands are that we have to work to have our daily bread. He said he will use our effort to complete the job for us.
Our efforts have been on the natural resources which are none of our making anyway. Therefore our effort is yet to be realised and that this effort is to help ourselves and not depend on Australia or on our natural resources anymore.

The question is when would that be possible?
The answer is that it is possible when we emulate Australia and start innovating. This includes the use of digital technology in our major development agendas just like Australia and many affluent countries. Until then we will continue to make unambiguous decisions which will have little or no improvements in our drives to prosperity. One such example is we cannot expect prosperity in a problematic and trouble-torn environment like most sectors of PNG.
We have to use precise mechanisms to generate quality data to address and correct the problems. The answer rests in the use of digital technology with development of software and hardware controlled with hard wired system together with database and database management systems.
The above is a replica to a computer software in an expert system which learns while being exposed to unchartered waters and most importantly it configures as its adaptive mechanism. Through ubiquitous computing upon receiving signals it can self-configure and automate through configurations made possible by transducers that constitute algorithms which are composites of computer programmes made possible through sensor configuration and communication in the ambient computing environment.
Given the above account the obvious answer that can be intuitively derived is innovation. Some vindication for innovation is, the world is developing through ideas put forward, supported and implemented to improve on them to see innovations.
We are the beneficiaries in advancements such as space travel, sea travel, electricity, justice in rule of law, air travel, telecommunications, education, etc. We have to be innovators to have a sense of security in our economy that given an event like an economic recession like the world economic recession we should be resilient and uphold the buoyancy even if others fail.
If we do not innovate and create we will deplete what God has blessed us and destroy our people. I am saying destroying our people because in the Old Testament in Hosea it says “My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge.” Here it is incumbent on us to nurture research and innovation to acquire knowledge to rescue our people. That is in using technology like the Digital Technology.
Currently we can see the importance of innovation and creativity and upon not innovating and creating we will see our non-renewable resources being depleted. Also our soil nutrients will dwindle because of the stress we apply to our arable land for farming to feed the surging and our alarming population growth. Thus we are unashamedly going to keep seeking help all the time although we are almost years independent and a sovereign state.

Marvels of technology
Technology is the scientific development on numbers. Therefore digital technology is simply scientific development on numbers. The numbers are only zero and one. So we are only looking at numbers one and zero. That means we are not looking at other numbers like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 etc. Because it is only 0 and 1, we say that it is a
binary numbering system whereby binary means only two.
One may begin to wonder how on earth there is scientific development on just the numbers 0 and 1. Of course, this is the most staggering and prolific advancement with algorithms made in the contemporary world through bistable in flip flops and this is its era called the digital technology age we are living in now.

That is apart from the green revolution era which involved agricultural production in abundance to feed the increasing population and industrial era which improved so much of human lives like the development of steam engines. We should preclude repeating history by going back to the green revolution age again.
In digital technology, all decisions have to be made based on 0 and 1 because there are only two figures (i.e, 1 and 0) we are dealing with, it is a near perfect calibration in terms of making calculated decisions which is almost perfect as insinuated above using mathematical functions with recursions and recursive enumerations with iterations.
The one and zero can resemble any composite that has two parts to mean just the same as one and zero are like true and false, yes and no, high and low, etc. It is seen that when you are just saying yes or no for an answer then the answer is going to be almost perfect with a very high probability of your answer gaining a very high significance and merit.
This averts any explanations that will add impurities to attain a near equivocal answer. The above account in brief defines how certain you are going to expect your answer to attain a very high degree of confidence. All this boils down to the use of computers which basically process information to give an answer in these extremes.
So therefore, computers will be thinking and assessing our problems rather than the largely biased human minds who use extravagant reasoning to make imprecise decisions all allowed by their intuition by computer standards.
It can be recommended without a shadow of doubt that digital technology will surely help PNG just like Australia and other advanced nations including United States Great Britain, China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Russia and others rise to greater zenith.

Working team, timeline and recommendation
We have to apply an accurate engineering skill to produce tangible results. Computer algorithms that scavenge transcendingly are actually the unique property akin only to a software simply because it displays iteration, recurrence and computability to terminate in loops from all areas of proofs.
Thus the team as discussed in lecture 11 of this series of article is the team to effect the much needed and lasting changes to create a resilient economy that can absorb all turbulences and shocks. Hence, the recommendation eminent here is that we should create a Department of Digital Economy or Digital Technology to administer the dispensation of this innovation or to embrace this innovation and surely like other countries, its applications will make this nation progress to become richer.
In order to become rich we are sure of the structure we have in place and overconfident that the results are achievable and we have a reason to be hopeful and commemorative about. The most obvious emphasis is on digital technology and its application our economy can configure and reconfigure or even self-automate to adapt to changes way ahead in development and progresses that the rest of the world is acclimatised to and progressively living through its excellences in sequences and patterns by way of philosophical and business diversifications leading to incremental affluence or its inverse.
The prominence for a recommendation is that our development agenda is achievable in a few years as exemplified in any innovation like the development on a slow magnetic tape versus a solid state drive of a client/server environment. Facebook is one such exhilarating and invigorating modern innovation that makes its inventor Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire.
PNG can similarly benefit if it innovates in digital technology just like Face book in a miniature of a paradigm.
Please do not hesitate to contact me on [email protected] if you have enjoyed this series of lectures or have any business or tasks for us to look at before more information on digital technology is forwarded to you for your good understanding and implementation. Recapitulating, the text in Hosea says “My people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge.”

• Michael Uglo is a Port Moresby-based lecture in Avionics and Aircraft Engineering.