"Commentary: Humanities at the heart of a holistic education in a tech-driven world - Prof Tommy Koh
The fourth revolution began at the turn of the 21st century. It builds on the third industrial revolution as it is also being driven by technology and digitalisation. New technology and innovation have given rise to companies which disrupt the status quo, for example, Airbnb, Grab and Alibaba.
The world is being transformed by robots, artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, big data, smart cities, block chain, the sharing economy, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, nanotechnology and financial technology.
In diplomacy, I have learned that, as human beings, we think with both our heads and our hearts.
“In an age of hyper-technology, all the more reason why we need the humanities – to remind us of the glory and frailty of humanity, to retell the meaning of being human … Where robots can dispense medicines, and chatbots replace human conversations, the jobs that will withstand the fourth industrial revolution are precisely the ones that require an understanding of human nature and a reliance on human empathy.”
As long as we are human beings, the humanities will always be at the heart of civilisation."
For me as long as we r human beings, we will think with our heads n our hearts - diplomats or otherwise!!
All the creations of human beings through technologies r to serve or meet the needs of human beings, who can pay n make the providers money n wealth. At least that is the current prevailing wisdom.
Will there b a day when creations n innovations were just to make life better without any expectation of "pay back"??
When things r made n services provided through robots, AI, big data, blockchain (even needed if trust is complete?), etc. automatically, with absolute precision n maximal efficiency n effectiveness, what do human beings do?
Will robots n AI take away the error-proned illogical decisions human beings made where the hearts overruled the heads?
Whatever Bezos, Tony n Jack Ma, late Jobs, etc. created needs to satisfy human consumers n users, what would they do if their hearts say i should do all these for free n for the betterment of the human race? Will they b accepted by the business human beings? Or they will b called lunatics n mad people?
Nah. In the hard cold logic of biz, heads ruled over hearts. The only time hearts ruled over heads is when the ego driving the people to do great damages to ptotect their egos when doing the right things mean sacrificing super profis!
Do we need technologists that understand humanities? No. A technologist is STILL a human being unless he/she had been replaced by a robot!!
ps: learning history has not stopped many students if history committing the same, or worst, crime or cruelty to the human race forging wars!!
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