Brace for the future
THE BANGALORE Palace in the Indian state of Karnataka stands as a stark reminder of a bygone era – a time of great splendour and luxury – for a few.
It was built about 150 years ago for the child king, Chamarajendra Wadiyar X. His lineage goes back centuries. As the 23rd Maharaja of the Kingdom of Mysore, he reigned between 1868 and 1894.
No expense was spared when the palace was built. The opulence remains visible, although it is interspersed with leaking roofs and peeling paint.
What changed the fortunes of the maharajas was India’s independence from Britain in 1947. With democracy came principles like the equality of all men and women. Grants royalty were once entitled to became a trickle and then dried up. Most of India’s royalty lacked the means or skills to make a living. The world changed and they failed to keep up with the times.
Today, the dynamics are once again changing and you don’t have to travel too far from the Bangalore Palace to see our future. Everything is smart – smart cars, smart homes, smart cities – and comes with the 2.0 tagline to denote a superior version of the original.
There is also talk of artificial super intelligence (when computers can do more than humans can), de-extinction (when we can bring back species that have become extinct) and radical life extension (the science of anti-ageing).
People like Kirtika Murugesan are thinking about the future and how technology can improve human lives.
“Technology will change a lot,” she said. “Unless people evolve and adapt, it will become difficult for them to find jobs.” Murugesan is a director at Nasscom, the National Association of Software and Services Companies.
In 2013, it launched an initiative called 10 000 Start-Ups, aimed at entrepreneurs in the technology sector. But the future is not just confined to Earth. There is an undeclared race to conquer our solar system and deep space.
Weeks ago, the Chinese accomplished another first when they landed a probe on the dark side of the moon.
The Indians have a decorated space programme – the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which started in the 1960s. In the ’80s, the Indians developed a communications satellite they called Apple. Since the humble beginnings ISRO has put 269 satellites in space.
The Indians plan to put a man on the moon by 2022, and explore Mars and Venus. They acknowledge that the future of man is in space.
By contrast, South Africa’s space programme (yes, we do have one) is modest. We were the first on the continent to launch a satellite although, in more recent years, Ghana, Nigeria and Angola have also put satellites in space.
None of us Africans has the ability to launch satellites and the chances of that happening in the near future are slim given the costs involved.
It is a worrying situation because space is the future. The countries that get there first will reap the benefits. The rest will suffer a bleak future on a dying planet. If anyone understands the pitfalls that come with being “discovered” rather than being the discoverer, it is Africa.
What the continent needs is a strategic partner that can help us get a foothold in space. India represents our best bet given the historic bonds between Africa and India, as well as the special bond between South Africa and India.
Our education system also needs to be overhauled to prepare our children for the future. It is a system that should be centred on Stem – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The future is upon us and we need to adapt quickly. A failure to do so will leave us like the maharajas of India – relics of a bygone era.