We are not ready for Future Shock

 SOME early planners such as Public Enterprise and State Investment Minister Ben Micah could never have foreseen or anticipated the changes brought about because of the advances in science  and technology.

The social and communication changes mobile phone technology have brought about in Papua New Guinea still elude our full understanding. 

The full impact of such technology, both good or bad, has yet to pan out.

The internet is now available to all who own smart phones. 

News, gossip, knowledge and pornography are transmitted and received at the push of a button.

Criminals organise crime from behind bars using mobile phones and know whether or not the deed has been carried out by monitoring it on their phones.

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other social media sites offer old and young instant contact with each other and  the world at large.

Knowledge, once the domain of universities which catered for the rich and the privileged, is now available to all at their fingertips.

A would-be child molester and rapist was recently photographed with his genitalia severed and pushed into his mouth. 

The photograph, with all its gory detail, was uploaded on Facebook and available to all and sundry to see. 

No self-respecting mass media publication would have gone near the photograph but the publicity was instantaneous and available to all who access the site. 

When three huge waves crashed over the Rabaul Queen on February 2, 2012 and tipped the ship over, causing  the loss of more than 160 lives, a passenger was able to, in that space of time before he went under, transmit pictures of the waves towering over the ship before passenger and phone were lost forever.

What ordinary people see and experience daily has crossed the threshold of the rigorous editing employed by those of us in the media industry.

Today, what one person sees through the lense of his or her mobile phone, or digital camera, is shared instantly with others.

Out will go concerns about decency, morality and innocence. The truth, in all its myriad forms, is forced on us. 

No place, no profession will be spared.  Future Shock about which author Alvin Toffler wrote in 1970 is here and there is no sparing the very young, the infirm, the innocent or those who hold fast to rigorous religious beliefs and practices.

And that is how it is going to be for the future. More and more of our lives will be dictated by the fast pace of technological changes.

To plan our lives – individual, corporate or national – without accounting for the scientific and technological developments going on around the world would certainly be to our own detriment.

The question is whether we want to enter the fast and furious world of the truth as it arrives the way it does today or do we want to slow down, to accept truth by slow degrees as we have done in the past. 

Planning for a country’s progress in such a world must incorporate the changing technological arrangements in the world.

Legislation in PNG, for instance, is way behind some of these developments. Matters pertaining to cybercrime, for instance, need to be provided for.

Others dealing with HIV and AIDS, transnational crime, access  by school children to pornography on the net, internet content and so on need closer control and legislative protection which are yet to be introduced.

Before the 2050 vision is realised in PNG, there will be changes that will beggar description by even today’s standards. 

Homes will be intelligent. Newsapers will be interactive. Roads will be intelligent, assisting driverless cars to negotiate roads. 

Body parts will be grown in bio-engineering labs so that wheelchairs and missing limbs might be history. Most of the food on our dinner plate might be biologically engineered.

More and more of what we consider science fiction might be non-fiction within the lifetime of today’s teenagers.

All of these developments will impact our transportation system, our agriculture practices, our food security and health and education policies. 

Our planners today will need to be more searching, more practical and looking at global developments before drawing up plans for the nation.