Atool Dupta in the age of major disruptions: part 2
In this concluding part of an article that uses metaphors of the concepts of change, greed and power to exemplify the current malaise in society, PROFESSOR DHIRU SONI writes that the gap between those participating in an era of change and those who deny it seems to be getting wider.
AGOVERNMENT sponsored smart training facility for children was set up on the plot where Atool Dupta’s compound once stood.
This smart centre was established earlier for the upskilling of adults who had lost their jobs as a result of a lack of skills necessary for the digital era. The facility trained individuals for mid-skill and high-skill jobs such as IT, health informatics, game development, animation and shared services which, at that time, were expected to more than double in demand.
At this facility children were trained for new job types that did not yet exist. The mission of the facility was to boost children’s learning competency and employment opportunities. Basically children were taught computational thinking and computer science for coding, as the initiative was expected to prepare the younger generation for the new technology-driven economy.
More specifically, in expectation of the new jobs, children were also being trained for such things as big data and data science, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, cloud computing, cyber security and machine learning.
In the evening the facility was used to train adults to become more relevant in the new job markets by bridging their skill gaps to fit into the world of the digital era.
As Atool stood motionless in front of the new “Smart” centre his thoughts wandered to the halcyon days of his business empire where he was kingmaker for both government and the private sector. Rhetorically, he wanted to know what had happened to his family and the compound which housed his majestic buildings.
Unfortunately, no-one could answer those critical questions. He was alone in the word and penniless. Reality then struck him. He could not understand his unfortunate plight – one minute he was overbearingly in the prime of his life and what seemed to him a few hours later, he was aged and a pauper who had lost his “paradise”.
He was shocked and began to wail uncontrollably like a child. Passers-by hardly noticed the old man crying. Atool looked like a beggar seeking attention for alms and therefore many avoided him. In the new era begging was illegal.
Finally, a teenager who had just left the Smart centre stopped to find out if the old man was having a problem. She addressed him affably as grandpa and enquired whether she could assist. Sobbingly and almost in a tantrum Atool responded that he was robbed of his property and that he wanted it returned, immediately.
The teenager’s body language said it all – she assumed that Atool was mentally deranged. How could a beggar own such a property? She immediately called the social services department and requested that Atool be removed and taken to a mental asylum for safe-keeping.
Within minutes, a social services vehicle arrived with two robots that fetched Atool, who protested and shouted profanities. He was taken to a state place of safety for the mentally ill.
On arrival, Atool was admitted as a patient and the doctor recommend that he be removed to a “coma” ward where terminally ill patients were kept.
On arrival at the “coma” ward Atool was drugged and put to sleep. While in a state of semi-consciousness, he heard the doctors talking about harvesting kidneys, lungs, hearts and brains for transplant purposes. As a nurse took his vital recordings to transfer his biological statistics to the data bank, he became violent and started screaming as if his life was at stake.
Suddenly, Atool was awoken by his wife, in his palatial home at the Dupta compound. He was drenched in perspiration. He had had a nightmare and tried to explain to his wife what had transpired.
Initially, she was also traumatised by Atool’s loud cries and shrieks, which violated the silence of the night. She assumed that her husband was in cardiac arrest.
She assured her husband that everything was all right and that he had just recovered from a terrifying dream. She also assured him that nothing was amiss at the Dupta compound. As his wife fetched some water, she prayed that the nightmare was not a premonition of things to come and mutely rationalised to herself that Atool Dupta was God-fearing man and nothing would happen to him.
After all the Duptas were regarded as icons, newsmakers and socialites and they were happy, all powerful and untouchable.
The very next morning, unfazed by the previous night’s harrowing experience, Atool asked his wife to arrange a lunch meeting for a delegation of “high-powered” guests led by the chief executive of a major parastatal. Atool’s wife did not protest. The rest is left to your vibrant imagination.
Thus ends this melodramatic tale of Atool Dupta and his nightmare against the backdrop of the metaphors of a changing world, the Rip Van Winkle effect, power and greed. Accordingly, there are a few intrinsic valueladen takeaways from this story.
There is an old saying which suggests that the only constant in life is change and the world we are living in is changing at a phenomenal rate. As humans, we need to embrace change because we have the necessary endowments such as conscience, independent will and creative imagination to respond to a transforming world.
As Muhammed Yunus, the guru of social entrepreneurship avers, “Unprecedented technological capabilities combined with unlimited human creativity have given us tremendous power to take on intractable problems like poverty, unemployment, disease, and environmental degradation.
Our challenge is to translate this extraordinary potential into meaningful change”.
Unfortunately, the world has many of the Dupta ilk, who are transfixed in a life of corruption for irregular wealth accumulation, and cannot see the inevitably of change. Artificial intelligence of the digital age will simply not tolerate crime. Sooner or later their comeuppance will silently creep in and catch up with them, and by that time it will be too late to change. Fate, in the end, becomes the preordained leveller.
In life we have a tremendous respect and admiration for people who are authentic and never forget where they come from. A great number of these people have made it big in business, professional life and in service to humanity.
It would seem that Atool Dupta has conveniently forgotten from whence he came. If he had continued with his modest computer company, he would have amassed the wealth that he aspired to. He did not have to resort to crime to build his Dupta empire.
His meteoric rise to power, together with greed, captured his soul and hence his arrogance and thirst for power corrupted him totally.
It is sad that despite the fact that humanity has evolved in an all-embracing sense, there are still the Duptas of the world who, in haughtiness, continue to think they are a cut above the rest and continue to be driven by primal urges of power and greed.
As someone once said, ultimately, there is nothing wrong with being well off as long as money has a social and ethical value, and is not the object of one’s own greed and power.
On a more positive note we have to acknowledge that the history of the world is about major disruptions.
The Digital Age or the Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us and has begun restructuring our lives.
It is the era where technology and artificial intelligence are beginning to take hold. We could either deny it or change for the better. However, this new era will not affect adults to the extent it will affect our children and their children.
If we embrace the concept of the inevitability of change, then we owe it to our children to prepare them for the future, especially in terms of the skills that will be required for jobs that do not currently exist.
We are presently living in a world of “internet of things” and this will also change as artificial intelligence begins to dominate the workplace and almost every sphere of human activity.
To prepare the younger generation for the new technology-driven economy, especially in expectation of the new jobs that do not currently exist, children must be trained for critical thinking, mathematical and computational sciences, computer coding, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, cloud computing, cyber security and machine learning among other things.
The progress we make towards this end will be as a result of the choices we make as a collective, today.
Finally, we have to acknowledge that the gap between those participating in an era of change and those who deny it seems to be getting wider and the indifferent attitudes of the latter gets less grounded in reality.