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

Preparing Students for 21st Century

How can we best prepare students to succeed in the 21st century? This is a question that should be of paramount importance to Pakistan’s educators, employers, parents and the public. Alas, this is nobody’s priority.

The accelerating technological change, rapidly accommodating knowledge, increasing global competition and rising force capabilities around the world, make 21st century skills essential. There is a forceful need for a calling on schools to change dramatically.

Today’s education system faces irrelevance unless we bridge the gap between how students live and how they learn. Schools are not even struggling to keep pace with the astonishing rate of change in students’ lives outside of school. Neglecting the fact that students will spend their adult lives in a multitasking, multifaceted, technology-driven, diverse, vibrant world, they are not equipping them to do so. They are seldom committing to ensuring that all students have equal access to this new technological world, regardless of their economic background.

We know more today than ever about how students learn. Our researchers and educators are not making the grades on mapping the remarkable territory of the human mind. They lack scientific insights that can inform educators about the cognitive processes of learning, effective teaching strategies for engaging students in learning and motivating students to achieve. We must incorporate understanding into classroom teaching and learning on a broad scale for preparing our future.

Educators in other countries have focused on improving student achievement—the perennial top priority of their public concern. They have established rigorous academic standards, assessments and accountability measures—a concerted effort that has involved educators, employers and community members. Schools in the West are responding with strategies to improve teaching and learning. They are now closing a gap between knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century. They are thus encouraging development of curriculum and assessments that reflect 21st century realities.

Literacy in the 21st century means more than basic reading, writing and computing skills. It means knowing how to use knowledge and skills in the context of modern life.

The nation needs a compelling vision for education capable of inspiring leaders, teachers, parents and students alike. Clearly we must work together to help schools fully address the educational needs of the 21st century.

A broad-based public-private partnership needs to be forged contributing to improving education in several distinct ways. It should synthesize research, insights and best practices about 21st century knowledge and skills into a powerful vision and sharing this information broadly. It should also define a framework and create a common language for understanding and promoting 21st century skills. The education leaders should be provided with tools, examples and a strategy for action, not rhetoric. It should also build consensus in the public and private sectors about the nature and need for 21st century skills.

We need to increase emphasis on the additional knowledge and skills students need for the 21st century. This is an opportune time to align standards, assessments and accountability measures with 21st century skills.

We can build momentum with following flight of stairs: 1) Embrace a powerful vision of public education that includes 21st century skills. 2) Align leadership, management and resources with educational goals. 3) Use this tool to assess where schools are now. 4) Develop priorities for 21st century skills. 5) Make sure students have equitable access to a 21st century education. 6) Begin developing assessments to measure student progress in 21st century skills. 7) Collaborate with outside partners. 8) Plan collectively and strategically for the future.

There are also some key elements for fostering 21st century learning. Emphasize must be laid on core subjects. Knowledge and skills for the 21st century must be built on core subjects that are mathematics, science, languages, civics, government, economics, arts, history and geography. The focus on core subjects must expand beyond basic competency to the understanding of core academic content at much higher levels.

As much as students need knowledge in core subjects, they also need to know how to keep learning continually throughout their lives. Learning skills comprise three broad categories of skills: information and communication skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, and interpersonal and self-directional skills. The challenge should be to incorporate learning skills into classrooms deliberately, strategically and broadly.

21st century tools must be used for developing learning skills. In a digital world, students need to learn to use the tools that are essential to everyday life and workplace productivity. Skilled 21st century citizens should be proficient in information and communication technologies literacy.

Teaching and learning must be in a 21st century context. Students need to learn academic content through real world examples, applications and experiences both inside and outside of school. In the networked environment of the 21st century, student learning also can expand beyond the four classroom walls. Schools must reach out to their communities, employers, community-members and of course parents to reduce the boundaries that divide schools from the real world.

21st century content should be taught and learnt. There are three significant, emerging content areas that are critical to success in communities and workplaces: global awareness; financial, economic and business literacy, and civic literacy. Much of this content is not captured in existing curricula or taught consistently with any depth in schools today. An effective way to incorporate this content is to infuse knowledge and skills from these areas into the curriculum.

The use of 21st century assessments that measure 21st century skills must be practiced. Schools need high-quality standardized tests that measure students’ performance of the elements of a 21st century education.

Economic, technological, informational, demographic and political forces transform the way people work and live. These changes together with the rate of change will continue to accelerate. For survival and to thrive in 21st century, our schools must adapt changing conditions. 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

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

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)