I am not an expert in technology. However, I have been curious about it for a long time.
My curiosity did not diminish when I came across an observation by Horus, which he expressed on this forum a while back. He wrote: Ethiopians have no time for science and technology! That won't happen until they sort out their identity crises! In the mean time the Chinese and American will do the technology! It is that simple, it is that sad!
One of the valuable experiences I have gained in life is to start very simply in order to get meaningful results. I presume that goes for advancement in technology as well. After all, the on and off switch and the orderly pattern out of it are the basics of computer science and subsequently information technology.
I am sure there are many bright minds among young Ethiopians that can quickly grasp this simple logic. At the same time, it has been also my experience that many young people are presented with ideas as if they are more complex than they really are in practice. If there is any grain of truth in this observed experience, we can fairly say that a paradigm shift of going from simple to complex instead of starting with virtual complexity in order to understand how simpler they might be in reality is long overdue.
About a year ago, I saw a simple piece of artwork, a painting of two persons, in a public place at a private enterprise. One of them had his eyeglasses lifted off his eyes as he appeared having a hard time reading something. The other person, dressed like a countryman, appeared busy on a gadget, paying no attention to the other person or unaware of the difficulty the other person was having.
Below the painting, I read "88 MPH" on one line and "Shield eyes from light" on a line below it. The "88 MPH" is written in big fonts, using electronic display bars (computer wizards out there can have fun looking at how many display bars it takes to write each number and letter.)
After reading the two lines, I went back to look at the paintings. I quickly noticed a little shade of the late Michael Jackson's famous zipper jacket in the painting of one of the two persons.
I have no expertise in interpreting art. So, I may have a very wild imagination of interpreting all of them together. I could be totally wrong and wish to be so.
My wild imagination led me to think of the two persons as Michael Jackson, the icon of entertainment (ET,) and Bill Gates, the iconic leader of coding in computer science and subsequently information technology (IT.)
The countryman outfit with a gadget in hand, intently handling it, would have you mistake George W. Bush in his ranch in Texas as a cowboy if you didn't know that he was President of the U.S. once upon a time.
I do not wish my wild imagination to cloud the real interpretation of the artwork as a whole. Only the person who did the painting or those who are behind it know the real interpretation of that piece of work. If my wild imagination at interpreting it is any close to the intention of the painting by any stretch of the imagination, I can only say that such are the bipedal that walk among humanity as civil.
The painting has been taken down for a while now but the two lines are still there. Taking it down after displaying it for a while didn't diminish my wild imagination. If anything, a selective takedown of the painting while leaving the writings still on the wall made the intent suspect.
I wish that my interpretation is wrong for two reasons.
First, it would be sad for the people that are toyed around thinking that they are dealing with a technologically advanced system that functions smoothly and steadily without any possibility of discretionary data fitting and misfitting by management. It is a place where both human and robotic labor are used heavily.
Second, if that possibility exists, without any doubt, it is showing the middle finger to the county's highest legislative body by stepping on the laws that they have passed or ought to pass.
While looking at data produced at the interface of human and robotic labor, I had to make a quick judgment that the data didn't appear to add up accurately.
So, herein comes what is very simple for bright young people who may become experts and policymakers in the future. Understanding the data produced at the human and robotic interface of this place only takes understanding how to calculate an average well enough.
Then again, here is a very simple question for many. How many people take a long time to understand what an average means? Not many. How many people take it that it is a simple idea that doesn't deserve a lot of time to think about? Many. How many realize that just this simple idea is a very powerful metric in practice? I imagine that it is fewer than should be, which is my main point here.
This is one of the examples of what it means to start simple.
In that place, I have come across only one person who took the time to review the data at the human and robotic labor interface and felt that a particular set of data produced at that interface didn't make sense. That is without any knowledge of my personal observation.
It is a very simple observation but a rare one.
Now, imagine the traction that can be gained from that set of data by policymakers and professors. I see an epic new frontier of research into the interactions between humans and robotic labor, how human productivity influences and is influenced by robotic system efficiency. It would be a frontier of research that doesn't give interested researchers time to spare for watching playing dolls.
Can robotic systems influence human behavior at both the interface with robots and those delegated to robotic actions? Can this interface redefine the essence of good faith in human behavior in positive ways? Take for example Simon Biles in competitive sports. When you know that she has achieved a certain level of record performance, you have good faith in her that she is more likely than not to repeat, in a short span of time, what she has already shown to achieve. Can robotic systems reveal the good faith that humans readily establish in Simon Biles' performance and give them second thoughts every day?
Can robots dispel this kind of age-old observation of good faith in learned human behavior or can they be foolish gadgets that can't tell apart foolhardy human behavior that is delegated into robotic actions from wonderful human and system productivity?
Imagine someone in a position of authority going to an associate in a production line to talk about a defective product. Imagine the one in a position of authority not knowing whether the defect was identified by a human source or a robotic source but knows that either is possible. Imagine also the same person in the position of authority not knowing the state of the identified defect before the identification of the defect.
Doesn't this leave room to spend time on artificial data and artificial attribution?
Talk about corruption, this is an out-of-this-world corruption. I don't know if some people are willing to operate an out-of-this-world corruption in order to be named the richest enterprise in this world. If such an out-of-this-world corruption takes one to the outer space, would one be proud of it or be ashamed by it and get some figment of imagination for the capacity to evolve out of it. One doesn't need to be and can't be the most humbled human being ever born on this planet in order to gain that figment of imagination in the outer space.