Wednesday 16 December 2015

Junk half or even more of what you are learning at your undergraduate college – avoid growing into a dinosaur

Although rather unfortunately, while the academic councils or boards of most of our Universities take years to change syllabus, technologies change with an ultra-rapid speed turning the life we have planned for completely over its head. We are living in a world where even the Moor’s Law which states that ‘computing power doubles every 2 years’ is going to be dead within a few years. And the future? Well, we are looking at three-dimensional carbon nanotube chips which can multiply the processing power of today’s average computers manifolds. Then there is a possibility that we will get the optical chips which may help you put a super computer inside your laptop.

We started talking about junking half or more of college education, so why this talk about computing power?
Because its ultra-relevant for you, something which your teachers are not telling you at your college. Either they are not aware or they are hiding it from you lest you stop going to classes altogether!

More computing power means better and more ‘intelligent’ computer
Take a few seconds and realise that technologies, in particular, information and computer technologies are driving our life, business and economies today. The more processing power we have in our computers, the more routine work could be done faster and better. The more computing power we have, the more will be the capacity of the computers to do ‘intelligent’ work. 

Computers becoming like humans
Ultimate what does human brain do? Processing information only. What else? And it’s really superfast. Recently some MIT researchers found that human brain can process information and identify an image in just 13 milliseconds. Yes, Sir. You read it right. One millisecond equals 1/1000 of a second.
So imagine a computer with such or closer to such speed. What do you get? You get incredible life changing technologies.
In computing capabilities, we are going there. Heard of cognitive computing?

Well, how do all these affect you?
Well, every field of work will be completely driven by information and computing technologies. The trend is already very clearly visible. You have better, faster and easier ways to communicate; your cars are driven by computer chips and we already have the driver-less cars being tested; your home appliances are driven by computer chips and soon there will be an IOT (Internet of Things); your entire office work could be packed inside your 1 TB laptop and soon work of large scale organisations will be all on the cloud; many routine medical surgeries are getting automated and even complex surgeries will become in the near future; you shop a lot online already and this will only grow. The possibilities are humongous.
A large part of manufacturing and manufacturing process control are driven by automation or information and computing technologies. Operations in manufacturing and service industries are completely driven by software. Research and discoveries in the field of Life Science, Medical Science and Physical Sciences are driven by information and computing technologies.
So, of course, anything and everything about technologies affect you very much, very hard.

Is your education built around technologies? Do you just ‘study’ instead of using the technologies which are used in your chosen field of work?
Whatever be your field of education and whatever future you may want to build for yourself, technologies or information and computing technologies precisely, must be at the core of your existence.
Your study content should be built around technologies and problem solving using technologies.
Unless you have learnt how various technologies are used in your chosen field of work and know the trends in technologies used in your field, you are merely studying for a degree which might be of no use.
(By learning I mean learning by doing or using the technologies, not by cramming notes. Hardly anything, which you learn by cramming, stays with you after a couple of years).

Technologies must be at the core of college education curriculum today. Or else you are growing into a dinosaur sooner or later.
Hey have you studied Geography without using sophisticated geospatial technologies? Have you studied Biological Sciences without learning Computing Biology?
Have you studied Marketing without learning the technologies used or about how real time and digital marketing are done? Have you studied Finance without learning to use financial analytic software? Have you studied Operations without using Operations Analytics and other computing technologies?

End state

I can go on asking. If your answers to the above and similar questions are not in the affirmatives, well, then pray to God for his mercy. Check your skin, you might already have started to grow into a Dino.May I have to day more or justify why should you junk half of more of your college education?

No comments:

Post a Comment