The Change Agents

Scientist, by intention or not, is the most important catalytic change agent of our time. We all recognize that much of the present is the future that was created by scientific researchers of decades past. We can safely forecast that scientists will change our future.

No scientist alone can propose the whole science agenda for the 21st Century. It is however clear that many scientists can agree on some overarching goals that serve the future and that give us pause for reflection as they expand the frontiers of knowledge and uniquely see their own opportunity for discovery.

What scientists achieve is the understanding about the way nature really works. They use powerful methods of defining and solving problems. They use the method of multiple working hypotheses to ferret out the truth about how nature is and the way it operates. Scientists have the exhilarating opportunity and experience of being able to routinely walk each day where no footprints have ever existed before. They extend that paradigm to additional utility to not only enlarge our understanding and build our knowledge but to provide amenity in the form of new technology.

From Galileo to the cellular user in Gujranwala, scientists make social change occur abruptly, often inadvertently. As new knowledge is discovered, and foundational research impacts others around us, they create and alter the future and how everyone around us perceives it. Their research regularly leads to changes unimagined by our institutions struggling to adjust to them.

The highest priority of all science and social, economic and political institutions on this planet is to develop and establish a morally acceptable, politically stable and economically feasible decrease in the world human population of 1 billion persons during the 21st Century and to continue that decrease by another 1 billion during each of the succeeding 2 centuries. This is a daunting challenge, but one from which we cannot turn aside. All our institutions are driven by growth. Opposition to this population decrease will develop from the world capitalist systems whose only mantra is growth. The immense power wielded by that economic mantra and its leaders may draw the battle lines for the soul of the 21st Century.

Sustainable aquatic and land based agricultural production systems, sustainable energy production systems, sustainable industrial and post industrial production systems, sustainable habitation systems and others are areas of major needs for research that ultimately establishes a sustainable world.

The 21st Century will require our population to think for a living. Thinking skills have become the most important skills for the workplace. The employers and nations of the future will rise and fall in their competitive effectiveness based on their skill as learning organizations and the rate limiting factors for their future success will be the rate of learning of the populations engaged in productive work.

Our education systems must be understood as whole systems and changed even revolutionized to accept and optimize what we learn about learning in the first five years of life, our teaching adapted to the neurobiology of learning, our curriculum redesigned around creative problem solving as its core curriculum, ensuring lifelong learning becomes a societal norm, our cyber schools and virtual universities designed around how we learn and for no other primary convenience.

Healthier lives is the third overarching goal that seems to be a consensus among leaders of all the scientific disciplines as important for the 21st Century to make great strides. Since infectious diseases are once again worldwide scourge, we must provide worldwide treatment and preventive medicine successfully.

Ideas not yet thought of, will become multibillion-dollar enterprises in the 21st Century. This requires us to foster entrepreneurial education to ensure there is a sufficient population of business adventurers to make certain the public sees ongoing benefits flowing from it that they can understand, and new jobs are a benefit that is readily understood.

National and world security has been the most important drivers of the old social contract with science. We have still the need to defend the free from the rogues who have the power to take away freedom. As we see that military superiority is no longer the driver for the scientific future, scientists should reassess their need to be involved in its destructive exterminations.

Scientists can do so much more for the future of the world and its people and environment with all the challenges. Their role should be to support the very strong leadership and creative problem solving needed by the military and political institutions and durable new institutions that would lead to highly certain world stability. The rise of the concept of the nation-state requires it to defend its borders and culture. Evolving thinking into newer concepts that enhance cooperation more than pathologic competition may become worthwhile at some point in 21st Century.

Scientists can do everything to provide for a world of well-fed, healthier and fewer people, to provide that populations are economically secure and stable, to provide for our great-grandchildren an environment with as durable a future as our great-grandparents received when they were born, and to ensure the lifelong learning that provides all the self-actualization and inner peace we can want.

The role of scientists should be to lead the political system, not follow it, and do this via a long range vision that they develop, conceive and believe, so that it becomes compelling to the public and future resource allocators.

Scientists’ own future depends on effective development of appreciation for science by the political decision making institutions and science illiterate general population. They should not leave it to others to do what needs to be done. It is their future. It is their obligation. Their role has never been of watching the future happen. They are the change agents of future and they can make it happen. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

21st Century Schools

Although a lens to view the future is clouded, and must be filtered through the past and present, the ability to stand back and think about the impact of technologies on student learning will under-gird research in technology for the education of children, youth, and adults in the 21st century. We must view the coming changes, and they will be massive, from the perspective that technology provides access to learning but does not control it; that technologies are not the content of education rather, they provide a cornucopia of tools for learning.

The technologies we know now will change and merge, at an increasingly rapid pace. In 1965 Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, predicted the exponential growth of technology. Moore's law postulates that the processing power and speed of any electronic calculating device will double every 18 months. At the same time, the price for that technology will decline approximately 35% a year relative to the power. If this continues to be true, researchers will have an abundance of exciting new tools to use as they study the curriculum and children of the future. Those tools will not only be more powerful than we have now, they will cost less, making them affordable for research, for schools, and for business.

Educational research will undergo massive paradigm shifts we can only imagine. Because we live in a revolutionary time of astonishing advances in technologies, a world of constant and unrelenting change, new paradigms appear before the implications of their predecessors are digested. We know that schools must make changes to accommodate the technology revolution. West is already making changes in curriculum, teaching, and learning.

Living in a world of constant change is not easy, and predicting the nature of the coming changes brought about by the accelerating pace of technology advances, the accompanying information explosion, and the future's research agenda in education is a little like going backpacking in a primitive wilderness area. We must explore technology applications with children and youth and attempt to keep abreast of the rapid advances and potential uses in education and anticipate increasingly interesting possibilities.

The critical gear we carry on the research trail into the future is our mindset, one of exploration, of investigation, of accepting new ways of doing new things.

The literature on change describes levels of initiation and acceptance of innovations. Educators are divided into at least four groups, quite similar to what one experiences on the trail: the forerunners, the trailblazers, who innovate; those who come along and build on what others do; the middle ground who try what the first two groups find out; and those who lag behind. As we negotiate the wilderness trails ahead, accepting and adjusting to paradigm shifts in teaching and learning will become the survival tools for schools of the future.

The focus of the future's research agenda must remain on children and youth, the learners and the teachers, and how to find strategies to harness the power of the technologies in this endeavor. Education must come to grips with the technology revolution quickly, design and use new learning experiences, and teach more process skills than ever before. A mindset that encompasses creativity and subsequent innovation will be required if we are to explore and harness the potential offered by technologies. Futurists and educational reformers argue that new schools are needed for a new age, that the social power of technology will force us to redefine education, a task that will require a different mindset than educators have today.

There are those who espouse standards-based testing, founded on the knowledge of the past, and there are those whose position is firm in the process-based curriculum for the future. This differential is the critical point in the redefinition of education. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, children and youth must develop process skills in problem solving and critical thinking, communication, technical reading and writing, applied technical reasoning, information literacy, using technology as a tool, new personal skills, new mindset skills, and new curricula.

Crucial questions revolve around new strategies related to making changes, to applying what we already know about change, and to bringing research findings to practice quickly. How will we instill a mindset in educators so they will incorporate the potential of present and new technologies into the curriculum quickly? What are the most effective ways of bringing about changes that reflect the new curriculum?

Technology is not another turf, another subject, and another class. It represents a pervasive set of changing tools for learning and teaching. Given the power and potential of new technologies, if we continue to do the "same old thing," and use the "same old" paradigms, then the outcomes, no matter their age, will be less than favorable, much less than possible, and much less than we dream.

Technology is a tidal wave flooding the whole world, not a passing fad. It will not disappear in the next few years.

Computers and their accompanying applications, as well as other technologies, are the basics for children. Schools are not just "getting children ready" for technology use at some later date. In the West children can and are using technology now and they are connecting. It is preparing children for the future.

Old ideas die hard; however, we must not forget the lessons history teaches, or we--and each generation following us--will be relegated to repeating the work and mistakes of the distant or recent past. Educators must move away from entrenched positions. We must not only do things differently, we must do new things and do them quickly, or schools are likely to succumb to businesses that see education as a profitable enterprise. One of the most critical needs at present is that of finding new ways to connect learners and teachers with the results, implications, and procedures of educational research. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

The Changing Face of Public Management

There will be absolutely changed conditions under which public managers will operate in the future, some of the areas of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they will be required to possess, and some of the pathways public managers might explore in order to move toward the future.

There will be an extraordinary explosion of new knowledge and technological innovations, especially in the areas of information sciences, genetics, materials, instrumentation, automation, and space. Our public managers will wade into an age of extraordinary technological change and have to accommodate themselves and the institutions to dramatically different bodies of knowledge and technological innovations.

They will not only have to cope with and employ their expanded knowledge and technological capacity, they will have to learn to use this knowledge and technological capacity for the benefit of society. In the technological world of the future, there will be even greater temptations for them to be captured by technology, to fall prey to “technological imperative,” and to allow rational technical interests to supercede human concerns and those of values. Finding ways of employing advanced technologies so as to enhance rather than restrict their capacity for leadership, creativity, and personal responsibility will be a serious challenge.

In the future, knowledge and information will prevail. And if information is power, then those who have information will indeed have power. But who will have information? Information will be increasingly centralized and controlled and marketed through traditional economic and political processes. It will be widely distributed throughout society, so that increasing rather than decreasing numbers of people will have information and in turn have power. Such a possibility will lead to “the twilight of hierarchy,” to be inevitable.

Combining these issues, we can safely predict that the knowledge or information that our public managers will be able to access will be tremendous, to the point that the quantity of information will no longer be the most important issue. Rather the key question will be how to organize this information for human purposes. This means that public administration will have to learn to organize information in a fashion that will facilitate the pursuit of important public purposes. The great challenge will be to organize information so that we can enhance the process of democratic decision-making, of consensus building, and of dialogue and deliberation.

There’s no question that we will have the capacity to organize information for dramatic new public purposes, to restructure our structures of governance in dramatic ways. But what will our choices be? Imagine a computer in Islamabad that could reach out into every home, so that on any occasion that a major policy decision was required, an appropriate message could go out to all the citizens and their answers could guide public policy - a process that would approximate pure democracy.

The globalization of society is obvious today, though in twenty-five years or so, we may experience trans-globalization or beyond, as the frontiers of the oceans and space are extended even further. Already we are thinking more in global terms. However, our managers are still thinking in terms of traditional institutions operating in a new global context. They are not yet asking how they reconfigure businesses and governments so as to carry out a global vision. How do they encourage businesses and governments to assume global responsibilities rather than those defined in terms of one’s own self interest? For example, how can Pakistan move toward sustainable development and environmental justice on a global basis?

One obvious casualty of the global age may be the nation-state, replaced not necessarily by a new global or interplanetary federation but possibly by new forms of governance far beyond those we can imagine today.

In future our public administration should know the importance of “responsibilities” rather than “functions” of government. While a large part of the current worldwide debate over privatization or outsourcing speaks to the question of which “functions” belong where, the new debate will necessarily focus on public responsibilities and speak in a language of ethics, citizenship and the public interest.

In reinvented government or the new public management, customers shall replace citizens - or, to put it differently, the integrative role of citizenship has been reduced to the narrow self-interest of customership - in government as in business.

Indeed, we think the job of all public managers will increasingly be more than directing or managing our public organizations. It will be not merely “steering” or “rowing” but “building the boat.” The new public manager will construct networks of varied interests that can work effectively to solve public problems. In doing so, it will be the job of the public administrator to promote pluralism, to create opportunities for constructive dissent, to preserve that which is distinctive about individuals and groups, and to provide an opportunity for diverse groups to share in establishing future directions for the community. The administrator will play a substantial role in diminishing polarization, teaching diversity and respect, building coalitions, resolving disputes, negotiating and mediating. The work of the top public managers will thus be - to build community.

There are two broad areas that public managers will need to explore in order to fashion a response to the trends. These emerging trends will turn public management both “inside-out” and “upside-down.” Public management will be turned “inside-out” as the largely internal focus of management in the past is replaced by an external focus, specifically a focus on citizens and citizenship. Public management will be turned “upside-down” as the traditional top-down orientation of the field is replaced - not necessarily by a bottom-up approach, but by a system of shared leadership.

In the past public administration has been largely focused on what happens within the public bureaucracy. The future will require that it dramatically refocus its attention on the world outside, particularly the world of citizens and citizenship. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Up and coming Fashion

Fashion is really just starting to interact with the world of information technology (IT). Today there are already ‘cool’ gadgets and wearables, but in future, we will see whole new domains where fashion can play a key role. The biggest of these is the duality of appearance - where we may appear one way in the physical world, and have a whole range of digital appearances in the augmented reality and virtual environment worlds. This will lead to many people designing for themselves.

Along the way, electronics will continue to shrink in size to a point where it no longer significantly need affect the form of the object that carries it. Form and function will be separated at least as far IT is concerned.

Fashion is often at the forefront of technology usage. Many new materials and technologies are used in textiles and accessories when they are still too expensive or primitive for other uses. Technology development is accelerating quickly and shows no sign of slowing down in the foreseeable future, so fashion designers will have a lot of fun over the coming years. The next decades will see the gradual convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive technologies. Typical results will be materials with different tensile, thermal and optical properties, integration of IT into fabrics, and linkage of our bodies to the network for medical and communication purposes, via clothing or skin-wearables.

Thin, flexible displays are becoming available already, and we will undoubtedly see them built into clothing with increasing frequency. This will be both for body adornment and functional uses.

A wide range of electronic devices can already be built into clothes and this will increase. New fabrics are already being developed to provide power generation - using solar power, electromagnetic, thermal and mechanical means.

Storage technology is improving extremely quickly and we may expect massive amounts of storage to be available in very small volumes, so that people can take all their files, music and videos with them - integrated invisibly into small devices or clothes.

Haptics technology (the technology of enabling the remote sensation of touch) will also become available as part of clothes. A variety of electro-responsive materials exists already, albeit sometimes in primitive forms (for example, muscles wires, polymer muscles, shape memory alloys, etc), and these will progress quickly into routine fabric technologies.

Clothes will be part of the ambient intelligent environment we will inhabit in a few years’ time. There will be myriads of chips all around us - in building infrastructure, furniture, gadgets, clothes, foods, packaging, even on our skin and inside some peoples’ bodies (for medical and security purposes).

Chips in the environment or on our person will offer processing, storage, sensing identity and communications. The resulting smart environment will know who we are, what we are doing, where we are, to the nearest few millimeters, and all about us, subject only to our own preferences and privacy or security laws.

Chips will be physically very small, so have it in their power to be hidden anywhere, and any functionality that won’t physically fit into a device can be accessed via the smart environment. This means that fashion designers can add a wide range of functions to something without needing to change its design.

Various sensors on and about our person will monitor our behaviors and physical characteristics, and respond accordingly. One of the areas that computers may want to go in with other people’s digital bubbles is that of personality characteristics. An ego badge would alert us to other people that are likely to be of interest to us so that our social and sex lives would improve. A related device is the active contact lens, which uses tiny lasers and micro-mirrors built into a contact lens with circuitry and power supply, to raster scan a high resolution image onto our retinas. This is called direct retinal projection.

Any computer generated images could be superimposed on what we see in the real world. We would be able to modify how we see other people so when you meet people you could change how they look. Come hell or high water, beauty will quite literally inhere in the eye of the beholder.

We will not be limited by the properties of physical materials, or have to have the same appearance for everyone looking at us, nor even have the same appearance all day. Our appearance can be different to each viewer and different each time they look at us. So fashion designers will need to design virtual fashions, and these will need to be dynamic and context sensitive. Through and through, dual appearance dictates dual fashion.

One of the accessories that we might need in such a world is the digital ‘aura generator’. This will act as a sort of wireless web server that radiates our digital appearance into the nearby space. It is almost like the hologram generators that science fiction fans will recognize from Red Dwarf. The main difference is that it will make us look different to different people.

With increasing assistance expected from AI in all walks of life, we should expect that people would often want to design their own clothes - making most of the artistic decisions and letting the computer sort out the technical stuff.

As local production becomes more widespread, self-design may become very popular indeed. How much this affects the market for professional fashion designers will thus depend on how much relative skill and creativity they really have, as well as on how much effort people can be bothered to invest in designing themselves.

These developments bring us to the heart of how fashion will change. Such future is near at hand when we will have to worry about both our digital appearance as well as our physical looks. And on that account indeed our digital appearances can be infinitely diverse. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

English in 21st Century

The future of today’s global language, English, is more complex and less certain. It will retain its excellence in the 21st century and is unlikely to be displaced as the world’s most important language. Its usage is an intricate system in which many factors act together in ways that are not easily foreseeable. Just the same, recent progress in shaping the behavior of complex systems, like weather, could help us understand the patterns that may emerge in the globalization of English.

From north and south and east and west, there are more than 1,400 million people living in countries where English has official status. One out of five of the world’s population speaks English at some level of competence. Demand from the other four fifths is bumping up. English is the main language of books, newspapers, airports and air-traffic control, international business and academic conferences, science technology, diplomacy, sport, international competitions, advertising and pop music.

Almost all those who are professionally associated with the English language worldwide acknowledge that there is no imminent danger to the English language, or to its global attractiveness.

Yet with the emergence of new world order and global transition, the next 20 years or so will be a critical time for the English language and for those who hang upon it. The structures of usage and public attitudes to English will have long-term consequences for its future.

The future of English will be more complex, more demanding of understanding and more challenging for the position of native-speaking countries than has up till now been thought.

The global popularity of English is in no immediate danger, but that it would be unwise to see in the mind’s eye that its predominant position as a world language will not be threatened in some world regions for use as the economic, demographic and political shape of the world as it transforms.

The future of English will however be a complex and plural one. The language will grow in usage and variety; yet simultaneously diminish in relative global importance. To put it in economic terms, the size of the global market for the English language may increase in absolute terms, but its market share will probably decline.

Additional reasons that have resulted the reduced fervor threaten trends of increased usage of English. The growing adoption of English as a second language, where it takes on local forms, is leading to disintegration and multiplicity. No longer will be the case, if it ever was, that English unifies all who speak it.

The future is going to be a bilingual one, in which a growing ratio of the world’s population will be eloquent speakers of more than one language. There is little to help us understand what will happen to English when the majority of the people and institutions who use it do so as a second language.

Native speakers may feel that the language belongs to them, but it will actually be those who speak English as a second language or foreign language who will determine its world future—the fact that 19th century futurologists failed to foresee that the growth in second and foreign language speakers would be a much more important phenomenon.

As the number of people using English grows, second language speakers will be drawn towards the inner circle of first language speakers and foreign language speakers to the outer circle of second language speakers. All through this status migration, attitudes and needs in respect of the language will change; the English language will diversify and other countries will emerge to compete with the older, native-speaking countries in both the English language-teaching industry and in the global market for cultural resources and intellectual property in English.

The future and globalization symbolizes a significant discontinuity with previous periods. The Internet and related information technologies, for example, may upset the traditional patterns of communication upon which institutional and national cultures have been put together.

In four key sectors, the present dominance of English can be expected to give way to a wider mix of languages: first, the global audio-visual market and especially satellite TV; second, the Internet and computer-based communications including language related and document handling software; third, technology transfer and associated processes in economic globalization; fourth, foreign language learning especially in developing countries where growing regional trade may make other languages of growing economic magnitude.

Computer technology has changed the way people act together both locally and globally. At the present we are at the core of personal and group communications. The Internet will remain the flotilla leader of Global English and it will be a quite different language from what it is today. Nevertheless, there seems to be developing a new, global English-speaking market in the knowledge-intensive industries.

At this point in time there is a significant increase in the numbers of people learning and using English, but a closer examination of driving forces suggests that the long term growth of the learning of English is less secure than it appears to be.

Overtly and covertly, the use of English language is most ubiquitous amongst professional groups and middle class families are most likely to embrace English as the language of the home.

By and by, no single language will occupy the monopolistic position in the 21st century, which English has—almost—achieved by the end of the 20th century. As communications infrastructure ameliorates and relative costs plunge, more telephone conversations around the world will be held in languages other than English.

English must keep up a range of corporate roles and identities and must be usable for both team working and service interactions. Not surprisingly, demands on an employee’s competence in English will rise.

The ELT industry needs to respond to changing international social values—to ensure that the reputation of English language is enhanced rather than diminished. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

21st Century Crime

Innovation unfortunately brings opportunities for crime. Innovative technologies will transform the future of crime and is likely to occur on two levels: (a) the continuation of traditional, age-old physical crime; and (b) the new form of electronic crime.

The types of household property that will increasingly be targeted by physical crimes are high-value, high-tech electronic and computer products. In the future, traditional physical crime will be counterbalanced, and perhaps surpassed, in scope and social impact by the theft from consumers and businesses of intangible property, in particular electronic services, knowledge, and even identities. These types of thefts will increasingly be committed via computer-based telecommunications vehicles. It is the theft of intangible products and services, through traditional physical means, and more significantly, by way of computer-aided vehicles, that represents the most dramatic change in the complexion of property crime of the future.

Whole new information markets are being opened up as playing fields for computer criminals. Much of the Internet economy revolves around advertising. And using databases of personal information targets much of this advertising. This information is extremely valuable, and could be stolen, and a black market of information created.

Many Pakistanis in urban cities now use ATM cards and credit cards for a large percentage of their purchasing. As we move further from a paper-money society, to a purely electronic economy, new types of crime will emerge. What types exactly will depend on what new forms of security tomorrow's criminals will need to break. Will people be synthesizing voice authorizations? Or even learning to imitate a victim's typing style? All we can be sure of, is that criminals of tomorrow, like those of last century and those of today, will keep on innovating.

Meanwhile, other possible malicious uses of computers have become available. One of the most worrying is the likelihood of terrorists moving online, and engaging in what is called cyber terrorism. The methods of producing terror, destruction, mayhem, and fear will be much more destructive online than conventional methods in the real world.

The terrorists will remotely access the processing control systems of a cereal manufacturer, for example, change the levels of iron supplement, and sicken and kill the children of a nation enjoying their food. They will be able to perform similar remote alterations at a processor of infant formula. The terrorist does not have to be at the factory to execute these acts. He will be able to place a number of computerized bombs around a city, all simultaneously transmitting unique numeric patterns, each bomb receiving each other's pattern. The future terrorist will not have to be strapped to any of these bombs; no suicidal bombings; the encrypted patterns cannot be predicted and matched through alternate transmission; and the number of bombs prevents disarming them all simultaneously. The bombs will detonate.

A cyber terrorist will disrupt the banks, the international financial transactions, and the stock exchanges. Unlikely would be immediate arrest. The terrorist, the perpetrator is sitting in another continent while a nation's economic systems grind to a halt. Destabilization will be achieved.

Advanced telecommunications technology will allow offenders to reach a greater number of victims. There are also fears that the ongoing organization, sophistication, and globalization of crime may pose a greater threat to financial markets, economic stability, and even the national security of target countries.

An important predictor of the types of products and services that will be targeted for theft is the extent to which a product is desired. Products attractive to both consumers and criminals are sometimes called hot products. The characteristics of goods will make them highly vulnerable to theft. These are summarized in the acronym CRAVED (implying products which are Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable, and Disposable). Based on this threat assessment, some examples of hot products that may be targeted by offenders in the future include portable digital virtual disk (DVD) players, the wearable personal computer, automobile digital stereo systems, laptop computers, and handheld personal computers.

The Internet will provide computer-literate offenders with new opportunities to commit crimes directly related to networked systems. E-mail abuse, viruses, and hacking are expected to grow in prominence in the future. Companies are likely to face Internet attack from both within (by employees) as well as externally (by hackers). The facilities will be vulnerable to electronic vandalism, and theft and the potential for loss of or damage to such data can be immense.

There is a growing fear that well-organized criminals will launder their ill-gotten gains through e-commerce transactions, sending electronic cash to cyber-accounts located all over the world. With vast wealth at their disposal, criminal organizations will be able to buy almost any kind of technological resource or expertise.

Copyright fraud is expected to greatly increase in the future. In particular, the illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted materials from the Internet, such as music, movies, and games, etc., will be an area of immense growth. This is accompanied by more traditional forms of piracy, such as illegal copying of software, videos, and computer games. Traditional and Internet-based forms of product piracy are problematic because both are so widespread, hard to detect, and difficult to police.

Technology offers us a chance to beat crime - but it will take innovation, understanding and education. It is today's research and development that will produce the crime-resistant products of the future. We must take every opportunity we can to use science and technology to reduce crime and improve the quality of our lives.

The weakest link in crime control is the lack of education in law enforcement relating to computer-technology crimes. The law enforcement community in Pakistan has not yet devoted itself even to start thinking about technological-aided crimes.

Are Pakistan’s police and other criminal organizations prepared for sophisticated use of new technologies for countering more sophisticated crime of the future that heavily involves computer-related crimes, especially in crimes against modern times? Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

21st Century Business Leaders

In comparing the desired characteristics of future business leaders with the desired characteristics of the past business leaders there are both similarities and differences. Many qualities of effective leadership are seen as being important for yesterday, today and tomorrow. Characteristics like vision, integrity, focus on results and ensuring customer satisfaction which are still alien to Pakistan, are factors that were critical in the past and will be so in the future.

21st Century leaders will be thinking globally, appreciating cultural diversity, demonstrating technological savvy, building partnerships and sharing leadership.

Globalization is a trend that will have a major impact on the leader of the future. In the past, even major companies could focus on their own country or, at most, their own region. Those days are soon going to be over. The trend toward globally connected markets is likely to become even stronger in the future. Not only would leaders need to understand the economic implications of globalization; they will also have to understand the legal and political implications.

Two factors that are seen as making global thinking a key variable for the future are the dramatic projected increases in global trade and integrated global technology. There will be difficulty buying something made in one country because it will almost be impossible to determine what percent of the product is actually made in that country. Future leader will need to spend time in multiple countries to better understand how multi-country trade could help their organizations achieve a competitive advantage. In an environment where competitive pressures are rapidly increasing, producers will have to learn how to manage global production, marketing and sales teams.

New technology is another factor that is going to make global thinking a requirement for future leader. With the use of new technology it will be feasible to export even office and "white collar" work around the world. Computer programmers in Pakistan will communicate with designers in Italy to help develop products that will be manufactured in Indonesia and sold in Brazil. Leaders who are stuck in local thinking will be hard-pressed to compete in a global marketplace. Leaders who can make globalization work in their organization's favor will have a huge competitive advantage.

As the importance of globalization increases, future leaders will also need to appreciate cultural diversity. They will have to understand not only the economic and legal differences, but also the social and behavioral differences that are part of working around the world. Respect for differences in people is one of the most important qualities of a successful global leader. Developing an understanding of other cultures will not be just an obligation, it will be considered as an opportunity.

The appreciation of cultural diversity will need to include both the "big things" and "small things" that make up a unique culture. For example, few Europeans or Americans who work in the Middle East have taken the time to read (much less understand) the Qur’an.

The ability to motivate people in different cultures would become increasingly important. Motivational strategies that are effective in one culture may actually be offensive in another culture. Leaders who can effectively understand, appreciate and motivate colleagues in multiple cultures will become an increasingly valued resource in the future.

Technological savvy will be a key competency for the global leader of the future. It means that every future leader will be a gifted technician or a computer programmer. It also means that leaders will need to understand how the intelligent use of new technology can help their organizations; recruit, develop and maintain a network of technically competent people; know how to make and manage investments in new technology and be positive role models in leading the use of new technology.

New technology would become a critical variable that will directly impact organization's core business. I however feel pity for Pakistani executives who stubbornly think that they are either "too busy" or "too important" to learn the power of new tools. The organizations that have technologically savvy leaders will have a competitive advantage over organizations that did not.

Many of the future leaders will see the management of knowledge workers to be a key factor in their success. Knowledge workers are people who know more about what they are doing that their managers do.

In dealing with knowledge workers old models of leadership will not work. Telling people what to do and how to do it becomes ridiculous. The leader will be more in a mode of asking for input and sharing information. Knowledge workers of the future may well be difficult to keep. They will probably have little organizational loyalty and view themselves as professional "free agents" who will work for the leader who provides the most challenge and opportunity. Skills in hiring and retaining key talent will be a valuable commodity for the leader of the future. Sharing leadership may be one way to help demonstrate this skill.

To successfully prepare for the next millennium, tomorrow's organizations will have to either change the mind-set of many leaders or change their employment status. For leaders who are near retirement, this may not be an issue. For middle-aged leaders who lack the needed new skills this may be a challenge. Leaders will have to learn why the new skills are important. They will have to understand what they need to learn and be shown how they can best learn it.

The "bad news" is that many existing leaders do not see the value of these new competencies. The "good news" is that almost all of the top high-potential future leaders do see the value of these new competencies. Future leaders may be recruited to help mentor and develop present leaders. If future leaders have the wisdom to learn from the experience of present leaders and present leaders have the wisdom to learn new competencies from future leaders, both parties can share leadership in a way that can benefit their organization. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Seeking new Pastures in Education

The state of education in Pakistan is depressing. Today we cannot compete even with third-rate countries in standard indicators of academic achievement. Weak curricula and discipline have guaranteed educational failure for tens of millions of our children. The nation should therefore look to itself and conclude that something must be done.

We are perhaps after increasing the number of educational institutions and ignoring the future of education, which is about the demise of the classroom-based teacher, and an information technology lead revolution in schools, colleges and universities.

For meeting our future economic needs, we must not lose sight of the fact that education is a process, not a commodity. It benefits the individual, and society as a whole, in all sorts of ways that are not necessarily quantifiable in terms of our national balance sheet.

Developed societies use teachers not as objects, but engines of education reform. Contrarily, our policymakers use them not as engines but tail cabins. Thus teachers are not involved in policy process for education. We need to see teachers as custodians of intellectual and cultural tradition, not servants of a government mission.

The report of the Pakistan Task Force on Improvement of Higher Education estimates that 18 million people are in the age between 17 to 23 years, eligible for tertiary education. Out of them, only 475,000 (or about 2.6%) are actually enrolled in higher education institutions. This proportion is among the lowest in the world: India (in 1990) had a tertiary enrolment ratio of 6.2%, while Iran (in 1994) had 12.7%. This is pathetic. It asks for direction and relevancy of higher education research.

Higher education in Turkey is worth talking about. The average annual growth rate of students in higher education in Turkey during the period 1980-85 was one of the highest in the world: 14.1% as compared to 7.8%in Canada, 5.0% in the UK, 1.4% in Italy, 0.2% in the US, -0.2% in Hungary, and -5.3% in Poland. The number of students enrolled in engineering is high: 18.33 %of the total enrollment as compared to 8.20 %in Italy, 7.90 %in Austria, and 3.29 %in France. In the area of higher education, can we seek some route from Turkey’s experience?

People need more education than ever before, and distance learning—connecting cable and classroom—offers a way to meet that need. Internet delivers course material to homes or offices. Discussions, assignments and exams are being done online. Some of these are courses offered by traditional universities, of which the University of Phoenix is the largest, some by accredited virtual universities with no on-campus instruction and some by unaccredited institutions. For many students, however, especially those with full-time jobs or those far from campuses, the savings in commuting and the flexibility to make their own schedules make the total cost less than that of alternatives.

The concept of virtual university is not a bad idea, which Pakistan must adopt at a large scale. It can distribute cheap Internet access and classroom content to modular learning kiosks in several thousand villages. Distributing several thousand simple, mass-produced kiosks might be less expensive than creating even one old-style university campus.

Pakistan has recently allocated resources greater than ever before. Nonetheless, it didn’t fully utilize even what paltry had been allocated earlier. Owing to intricate bureaucratic labyrinth drawing money is like pulling teeth. Consequently, the trend of spending in Pakistan is far less than the allocated money in all eight plans. There are around twenty-two steps to draw the allocated money. For survival in the new world, Pakistan has got to adopt new ways of governance.

South Korea offers an interesting paradigm in modern history. Most observers agree that it's spectacular progress in modernization and economic growth since the Korean War is largely attributed to the willingness of individuals to invest a large amount of resources in education.

Korea's liberation from Japan marked a turning point in the history of education. As the country underwent a transition from totalitarian rule to democracy, a primary concern was to provide everybody with equal educational opportunities. The period from 1945 to 1970 witnessed a dramatic expansion of education. In spite of the widespread destruction and economic suffering brought about by the Korean War (1950-1953), Korea succeeded in virtually eliminating illiteracy. Such a rapid expansion was naturally accompanied by problems, the most serious being deterioration in the quality of education. As the 1960s drew to a close, Korea's educators turned their attention to these problems and several projects were launched to improve the curricula and the methods of instruction

Although only primary school was compulsory in Korea, proportion of age-groups of children and young people enrolled in primary, secondary, and tertiary level schools were equivalent to those found in industrialized countries, including Japan. The percentage of students going on to optional middle school the same year was more than 99 percent. Approximately 34 percent, one of the world's highest rates of secondary-school graduates attended institutions of higher education in 1987, a rate similar to Japan's (about 30 percent) and exceeding Britain's (20 percent). The number of students in higher education had risen from 100,000 in 1960 to 1.3 million in 1987, and the proportion of college-age students in higher education institutions was second only to the United States.

Can Pakistan learn from the South Korean experience that explains the important role of education in its evolution from one of the world's poorest countries 50 years ago eating dogs to fuel the stomach, into a major economic success today?

A serious look at the state of the world raises a question regarding the thought process of Pakistan’s decision makers. Years of traditional education are no guarantee of a mature intellect. Entrenched mentalities need to change or institutions will continue to play the same old games and repeat the same old tunes. Schools of the future have an opportunity and responsibility to change the tune. Asif J. Mir Organizational Transformation

Nothing for it but . . .

Ever since independence technology has sneaked in tardily. Paradoxically, these years have produced equally strident laments concerning the state to which Pakistan’s education has sunk. The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.

When information technology was approaching in the sixties the US changed the school curricula for preparing students for the future. Contrarily we continue to turn our eye from the need to adopt new technologies and consequently our students are not being prepared (IT students included) to live in a competitive world.

We have managed to survive without adoption of IT for forty years. It will be impossible to continue to exist even for a day if we failed to adopt the approaching technologies. For instance Nanotechnology—examining the world at a millionth of meter and utilizing the ability to manipulate our universe at a molecular or atomic perspective—has united scientists across developed world in the belief that the worlds of medicine, computers, biotechnologies and eventually all manufacturing will never be approached in the same way again. We can’t afford to respond as laggards and follow the same doom which ancient civilizations faced. They perished for resistance to new technologies.

In ancient Greece then, all of the energy sources in use today, with the exception of nuclear power and hydroelectric power (both used exclusively to produce electricity) were known, available, and in limited use. Why then did it take so many centuries for energy sources and technology to come together to produce the Industrial Revolution?

From ancient Greece into the early Renaissance technological development was not only frowned upon, it was downright discouraged. People with money did not invest in it. It was socially unacceptable for the elite to involve themselves in what they considered a degrading activity.

The Greek philosophers, for all of their delving into how the world was made up and how things worked, had a strong aversion to the development of technology. They called it banausikon, meaning, fit for mechanics. It was considered a filthy business beneath the dignity of any intelligent, thinking person. Aristotle held that industries that earned wages degraded the mind and were unworthy of the free man. He would not stoop so low as to attempt to verify by measured observation his reasoning concerning physics or dynamics. As a result, some bad science went unchallenged for almost 2,000 years.

The Museum and Library at Alexandria, established in 290 BC by the rulers of Egypt, was a research facility that attracted scientists from around the known world. Researchers would use valves, expanding gases, solar thermal power, cams, screws, pulleys, levers, springs, siphons, and cogs—the basics for an industrial revolution. They developed double-action pumps and a compressed air cannon. It was there that Hero demonstrated a steam reaction turbine in 60 AD. The Library at Alexandria could have been an ancient model for Silicon Valley, but the research did not lead to improved manufacturing processes, better machines for industry or agriculture, or even for increasing wealth. Rather it was used to amuse royalty or to amaze worshipers in temples.

A valid argument can be made that metallurgy, manufacturing processes, and transportation facilities were too primitive to allow for exploitation of energy and technology at that time. But, absent the social barrier to technological development that existed, it is likely that the great minds, the available wealth, and the power concentrated in the likes of Alexander the Great, and the Roman Emperors could have laid the groundwork for a much earlier development and diffusion of technology.

We are accustomed to resist technological change with full force. We not only refuse to recognize it; we close our eyes to evade it. The attitude that we demonstrate confirms our nasty characterization as a nation of laggards.

Embracing technology is a laudable objective for which our society must aspire. It should provide a classic demonstration of the principles of the Technology Adoption Lifecycle and attempt to explain the pros and cons of investing in new technology. It must transform itself as innovators, early adopters, and not as laggards on a technology adoption timeline.

We should inculcate education of technology at every level of learning. If we claim to know more about how people learn, if we have better tools for facilitating learning, why do so many studies of technology in education show no significant difference from traditional methods? Why are we producing graduates less able to cope with the issues facing them?

Making matters worse, the criteria for success have changed. Our institutions were designed not for an industrial society. Now we've entered the Information Age. Increasingly, even blue-collar jobs require critical thinking, rather than monotonous task performance. To meet these demands, our graduates need different competencies than we typically provide. Intuitively, one would expect technology to be a powerful tool for meeting these new requirements.

We are entering a world in which jobs are requiring technological competency--a world in which they must continue to update their occupational and technological skills in order to be successful. We must enable them to become technologically competent. We must take advantage of the capacity of technology to enhance our traditional classroom presentations and to engage our students in active learning.

Pakistan’s decision-makers must focus on new challenges and issues instead of waiting for emergencies to react. They need to focus more on policy than management issues. They need to be knowledgeable about what rest of the world is doing to achieve change. They should know that change and implementing technology often go hand in hand. The key to success in both is a thorough, inclusive planning process. The disregard of new technologies by ancient civilizations offers us a choice: to embrace new technologies or perish.(www.asifjmir.com)

Child Labor

We often hear about goals of education relate to ‘meeting our children’s needs,’ ‘responsible citizenship’ and ‘equipping students for the future.’ Yet, what do such goals mean when millions of our children are forced to work? How much actual attention is given to the circumstances of this segment of our future? How much consideration is given to the needs not only of this generation but future generations? How seriously do we care about human values when we see around innocent child laborers selling newspapers at traffic lights, serving tea at kiosks, or weaving a carpet? Is this the future we are talking about? How might we enhance the quality of our responses to unmet poor children’s needs? How might we begin to contribute more effectively to building cultures of peace and sustainable futures? No easy answers.

That the shameful practice of child labor should have played an important role in the Industrial Revolution from its outset is not to be wondered at. The displaced working classes, from the seventeenth century on, took it for granted that a family would not be able to support itself if the children were not employed. The children of the poor were forced by economic conditions to work, as Charles Dickens, with his family in debtor's prison, worked at age 12 in the Blacking Factory. In 1840 perhaps only twenty percent of the children of London had any schooling, a number which had risen by 1860, when perhaps half of the children between 5 and 15 were in some sort of school, if only a day school (of the sort in which Dickens's Pip finds himself in Great Expectations) or a Sunday school; the others were working.

Child labor is a pervasive problem. Children work for a variety of reasons, the most important being poverty and the induced pressure upon them to escape from this plight. Though children are not well paid, they still serve as major contributors to family income in Pakistan. Schooling problems also contribute to child labor, whether it is the inaccessibility of schools or the lack of quality education which spurs parents to enter their children in more profitable pursuits. Traditional factors such as rigid cultural and social roles in Pakistan further limit educational attainment and increase child labor.

There are 19 million working children in Pakistan, 7 million below the age of 10 and 12 million between the ages of 10-14. Everyday sun sets by shoving over 100 children into the labor market. The number of child workers under 15 years is estimated to be not less than 8 million. Punjab accounts for 60% of the total child labor. More than two-thirds of child laborers are working in the agricultural sector. Of 20 million bonded laborers 7.5 million are children and 1.2 million children are bonded in the carpet factories. Nearly 250,000 children working in brick kilns are bonded laborers, driven into a miserable state by the fact that their entire families have been 'pawned' to the owners by virtue of their having pledged their labor in return for some money taken. Children are sometimes kidnapped to be used as forced labor.

The newly emerged affluent class in urban cities employs some 6.7% of female child workers in domestic help. These domestic workers generally have to work for 15 hours a day, seven days a week.

Bonded labor, a contemporary form of slavery according to the UN definition, unfortunately holds strong in certain sectors in Pakistan, such as brick manufacture, construction, sports goods manufacture and carpet-weaving.

Demand for child labor is so high that children are often sold by desperate parents. They are then forced to work long hours, day and night, unable to attend school, and often subject to abuse and malnourishment. This perpetuates a cycle of poverty since most of these children never get the education and training needed to obtain a livable wage.

As a peace educator, human rights activist and a father of seven year old son, I am the first to admit that we have done nothing to halt child labor and just about 19 million child laborers continue to work in Pakistan. What inconsequential the government has done is measly cosmetics. This is just to show to the West that child labor is not involved in the production of export oriented goods. We have done nothing to remove the horrific and reckless conditions that push children to child labor. Rather than working together to help build a better world, in which poor children have the possibility to live, to laugh, to play, to share, to care and to transform into responsible citizens, we may fatalistically accept a foreclosed future. Rather than building intergenerational partnerships, the well being of children today and of successive generations may be stolen or colonized through our lack of quality responses.

We can, we must, and we should stop the exploitation of children. In 1999, when the member states of the ILO unanimously voted to adopt Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, the world community made a commitment to stop the suffering of millions of children. It was recognized that ending the commercial exploitation of children must be one of humankind's top priorities. It was accepted as a cause that demands immediate attention and a high priority action. Caught in a nightmare that never seems to end, a significant part of Pakistan’s future endures the worst forms of child labor. More than just words and passing resolutions, child labor is a part of the reality of our world today. No one will say that children should suffer. No one will support that children should work 14 hours a day. But who will step forward to stop this? (www.asifjmir.com)

Bureaucracy and Change

While new technologies, new paradigms of governance, and new management structures are being put forward the bureaucracy of Pakistan is driving into the future using only rear view mirror.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, change is everywhere. The reality of yesterday proves wrong today, and nobody really knows what will be the truth tomorrow. Social, political and economic change has come fast like a small boat dancing on the waves. People feel that they do not have any influence In the mainstream of this environmental milieu, people of Pakistan are detesting bureaucracy, from inside and outside: red tape, punctiliousness, delay, extra social overhead, unresponsive monopoly of authority; professional deficiency; and obsolete policy planning.

Below the politically appointed ministers is the civil service. Efforts to reform and modernize the traditional civil service were never made to improve the professional competencies of senior civil servants. The prevailing unanswered issues demonstrate that the training acquired by government officers at NIPA or Pakistan Administrative Staff College is ineffective, redundant and unproductive. Thus the need to reform has fallen behind its expansion in size and functions, making Pakistan an over-administered society. All governments pared back the state's control over the economy but failed to restrain the growth of the state bureaucracy and allowed its standards and efficiency to decline.

Our bureaucracy tries to fulfill government strategies, which had been formulated years ago, under totally different baseline conditions. Service quality is often not more than an empty phrase. The competence of our bureaucracy can be measured from the fact that it could not workout a policy for urbanization. Consequently, luckless consumers continue to be treated worse than one-time colonial rulers. Everyone has tales of dealing with bureaucrats who seem utterly unsympathetic to real problems and explain why the rules don’t allow a solution.

Our bureaucracy has utterly failed in using creativity in policy making. Thus, it could not generate new ideas for issues like unemployment, economic development and poverty alleviation. Management creativity is about using simple techniques to find innovative solutions to prevailing problems. And creativity, which is extraterrestrial skill to our bureaucracy, isn't just nice-to-have. In a fast change, furious public administration, it's a matter of survival.

Change happens. And while we can't control much of the world changing around us, we should know how to respond. We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. Resisting change is like trying to push water upstream. Our bureaucracy is recognized as the one that resists change. It's much harder for bureaucracy to admit to its own change resistance.

Pakistan’s bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status. (Status Quo Ante Erat is, literally, state of things as it was before, meaning the present current, existing state of affairs. "Maintaining the Status quo" usually connotes to "keep things the way they presently are").

There are some problems with bureaucracies: red tape, duplication, and waste. Red tape is the existence of complex rules and procedures that must be followed to get something done. Duplication occurs when two government agencies seem to be doing the same thing, such as when the Customs Service and the Narcotics Control Board both attempt to intercept illegally smuggled drugs.

Our bureaucratic structure has failed owing to lack of management scientists, competent economists, and outstanding professionals. Brain drain is another reason. No institution has ever attempted to develop a national agglomeration of competent managers. All academic institutions are ineffective.

Today's bureaucracy continues without an object, multiple layers of unneeded staff, endless reports with little value, and gridlock. The basic managerial models and practices within government are behind those used today. The system itself facilitates entrenchment, mediocrity, decay and inertia. Given these assertions as premises it should be explored what can be learned and translated from the private sector's organizational structures and practices to cause a renaissance in bureaucracy. Organizational schema as well as leadership and managerial practices can be explored for their potential to contribute to bureaucracy.

The amount of information and data is doubling every few years. Even in poorer economies Intranet is being used for inter-department data transfer, files exchange, and information share, but our bureaucracy is far from the fundamental concepts of Management Information Service. In this situation of sheer chaos, suddenly computer network offers a new order. When the world has largely benefited from the fruits of computer use, a question might be asked: do our government managers know computer basics?

The bureaucracy of Pakistan should move away from rule governance to value-based management. Value-based management seeks to give employees more freedom when carrying out their job functions. In a time of radical change, increased public expectations and many new tasks, the bureaucratic structure needs to be able to provide a flexible service. Rules and procedures, which are far too rigid, can prevent the public obtaining a service that matches their needs and wishes. But if value-based management is to work, a common set of values is required.

The goal - or vision - for value-based management should be the set of values adopted by Pakistan’s civil bureaucracy. These values require that Islamabad, as the capital and influential center for South Asian Region, must act as the driving force behind human, cultural and economic development. It is imperative that our bureaucracy can provide services, which transforms it to a role model.

We need to inculcate professionalism, expertise, competence and systems to make our civil services, meet the realities of the 21st century. This is high time to part ways from poor governance, inertia, lack of knowledge that spawned a culture in which wasteful expenditures, leakages of resources and low efficiency are the norm. Sound policies cannot see the light of day until our institutional capacity is strengthened and reoriented. Change in the brass tacks of our bureaucracy provides a way into the future. (www.asifjmir.com)

Perishing from Earth

As in the experience of all other civilizations it can be with us if we do not recognize the principles for survival. If we failed to learn from history and recognize the future trends we will eventually go back into darkness from whence we came, and we the people will perish from the earth.

If you retrace your thoughts back to where there were those old civilizations, some five or six thousand years ago, the Egyptians, you will find that they were very intelligent, highly advanced but through corruption, selfishness, prejudice and moral degradation went into the debris of ancient history. We, in this advanced civilization, are representing similar predilections, can also follow the same destiny and go back into the dark-age from whence we came.

Egyptian civilization has been forgotten. It went down, not just mentally, scientifically, intellectually, but also physically, to let us see and know that those who go down mentally and do not alter their ways also go down physically.

After the Independence, we lost our vision, transformed into one of the corrupt nations worldwide, all the nasty crimes once akin to the West are now dominating our national life, and last but not the least each individual of Pakistan seems to be on the looting binge. Instead of contributing our role in nation building, we started pillaging our own land. When we are nurturing the same traits that caused extinction of Egyptian Civilization, why then our destiny would be any different?

The societies that sustain physically, mentally, and otherwise are those which undergo a series of divergences in development, much like the branching of a tree. The dynamic people are those who are responsive to issues, essentially open, fast paced, balanced, and tend to survive and prosper on a fairly reliable basis. Problems come to them, but they usually manage to work them out.

The struggling society of Pakistan, contrarily, outdoes the people in narrow areas of endeavor from time to time, and becoming more retarded in overall development as time goes by.

Outwardly, we are a developing society. But like a muscular athlete with a terminal cancer, a disease is eating away at us from the inside. A well-balanced nation cannot be destroyed from the outside until it falls first from the inside.

No matter how well we might arm ourselves against enemies outside our borders, we need to primarily identify the more detrimental enemy. And this greatest enemy is none else but us, who place destructive devices inside our destructive minds, causing us to morally implode, like an imploding building.

Ever since independence in 1947, we have experienced a complete abandonment of our sense of good and evil. The true crisis of our time has nothing to do with monetary troubles, unemployment, or terrorism. The true crisis has to do with the fact that we have lost our way.

If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out. But if you place the frog in a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, the relaxed frog will just swim around, growing accustomed to the increasing warmth until it eventually boils to death. This is what is happening to us and our cultural decay. It is a gradual process that slowly dulls our senses until what was once seen as unacceptable somehow becomes acceptable.

After the death of Quaid-e-Azam, we have allowed corruption to creep into our society as a way of life. Thus, we have become desensitized to corruption and our moral judgment is impaired. Even worse, at each step along the way, we eliminated Islamic injunctions from our lives and culture.

What will remain of civilization and history if the accumulated influence of Islam, both direct and indirect, is eradicated from literature, art, practical dealings, moral standards, and creativeness in the different activities of mind and spirit?

Consequently, a flood of immorality, corruption and violence has entered into our national life, and we have unfortunately been recognized as a culture of death from the womb to the streets. Many of our young people have no concept of the true spirit of Islam and are connoting falsely to satisfy their political agendas. Hence, many are tragically engaged in dying or killing the innocents. A sense of hopelessness prevails, a feeling of fear surrounds.

We have forgotten our true nature, divinity, because scientifically it cannot be proved! We are ignorant of true purpose of life. Values like solidarity, natural love, forbearance, compassion, generosity, and altruism do not find any place independent of an 'individual'.

The culture shows signs of degeneration into lawlessness, disease, and want on one hand, and affluence and sense gratification of wanton degree on the other. With this decline in cultural values, ethical values are also eroded. Not one particular field is afflicted with this 'virus of corruption'; all departments of human interaction show the same trend. It is difficult to find an isolated island of purity in the sea of corruption all around.

Ethics is the reflection of cultural health of the society. In course of evolution of human societies, man creates progressive cultural and moral ethos. But then a stage comes when cultural growth slows down for want of fresh ideas. Consequently ethics also remain a mere shadow of its own previous glory. However, when matter is worshiped as supreme and privileges are sought after, ethical decline is not a surprise. The remedy lies in adding spiritual dimension to existing culture and in course evolving a new moral and ethical code for coming generations. Time is still not gone. We can learn lessons from Egyptian civilization or else face extinction. Choice is only ours. (www.asifjmir.com)

The Evolution to Academic Excellence

In 21st century there is a need to develop a new entity in higher education - one that educates and develops graduates for meeting the challenges of this century. Such an institution must emphasize the creation and development of knowledge into practical, sustainable solutions to today's problems, and the commercialization of those solutions to create wealth. This must be done within a learning community that emphasizes communication and teaming skills leading to creative problem solving and within an environment that emphasizes a sound appreciation of humanity’s ethical and moral principles. Anthony G. Collins, President of Clarkson University, has expressed this in: “The Evolution to Academic Excellence.”

He asserts that with the advent of the industrial revolution during the nineteenth century, some liberal arts institutions added faculties that supported economic growth and spurred business development. At the same time, technological institutes sprang into action to create manufacturing professionals and some colleges even specialized in the art of business itself. After WWII a new emphasis began to emerge on research - the creation of scientific knowledge.

Those who have a vision to track the process of economic development – the connection of science to engineering to business coupled with liberal arts to provide the humanistic elements are best suited to create this type of institution. Ideally this type of institution would have engineering at the core of its being and value interdisciplinary activity rather than a culture that wants to retain disciplinary purity. The very interdisciplinary intellectual capacity and fundamental mathematics and sciences needed for engineering, technology and business degrees create the academic institution of the future.

General Francis Walker, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology once said: “In the present stage of social and industrial change, change almost bewildering in the rapidity of its movement and in the extent of the field over which it is taking place, it is most reasonable to believe that great gaps exist between the public needs and the supply of those needs by the existing institutions of learning. As a result of their freedom from obligation to the general system of education, they not only will be at liberty, but they will be strongly impelled to search out those real needs of the people in the matter of education which are at present unsupplied. It is essential to this function that they should remain in a state of flux; open to all impressions; mobile under all influences; not too soon assuming that they have found their ultimate resting place and have taken on their distinctive character.”

The mission of the institution has to be of graduating and developing students who lead and practice technology. Our focus must be on this “product.” While we must recognize the influence of nanotechnology, we have to fully grasp that “technology” and also the engineering to embrace a new knowledge-age definition that includes biotechnology and info-technology. We have to broaden our vision of technology to include contributions from the life sciences, to embrace the vitality of new disciplines within engineering, and to appreciate how businesses operate with the sophistication of integrated technology systems.

We have not recognized the dramatic changes in demographics - the changing fraction of underrepresented individuals, the geographic shifts in population centers, the socioeconomic profile of our constituents - nor have we fully recognized the need to introduce new majors to draw more women into the technological workforce so that their talents can be developed and utilized. In short, we need to and should be obligated to deliver education that is appealing to a broader range of potential students.

In addition to lagging behind in reacting to changes in student interest, the marketplace, and the demands of employers, we have failed to react to the roles our educational institutions must play in the economy. We must now recognize that the creation of knowledge can no longer be our end goal. We must also develop intellectual property, transferring technology to the marketplace, and become a central part of the economic enterprise that values innovation, creativity and creates wealth. Implicit in this direction is the development of research at all levels of the institution.

Given this unsettling background of an institution dependent upon its external environment, our institutions must revitalize higher learning in order to provide a more comprehensive, unique image that remains true to core mission and values.

The students ought to know that they are the center of the educational process and all academic staff demonstrates an unparalleled commitment to creating a person-to-person connection within our living, research and learning environments. The faculty needs to collaborate, innovate and create knowledge across disciplinary boundaries and educate students to have a particular appreciation for the opportunities that lie at the intersection of traditional disciplines.

Our campus community must stimulate the intellectual environment that attracts a diverse pool of exceptionally talented women and men who will rise to be leaders of the 21st century with the passion to create enterprises that benefit society.

The evolving strengths and vision for the future must intersect precisely with the growing technological needs of the society – a society that must depend upon a workforce capable of creating, adapting and managing technology regardless of discipline of study or natural individual talents.

To fulfill this vision for academic excellence, our educational institutions should uniquely position to further stake their legacy to society based on commitment to technology and leadership in marrying coursework, research and extracurricular pursuits in engineering, business, science, health sciences and arts.

We should create a distinctive place in the higher education order as attainable as we each ought to continue to promote and explore innovative ways to arrange the basic building blocks of traditional fields of study to reflect new avenues for interdisciplinary education, research breakthroughs, and solutions for society.

Our education system is a pack of confusion disorder. Can we transform it for delivering academic excellence as envisioned by Anthony G. Collins? (www.asifjmir.com)