FACULTY SEMINAR, 2003.
Prof. Yuthavong addressinglhe Faculty Seminar on May 26.

The President Emeritus givinghis speech at Bang Na campus on May 26.

The President speaking during Faculty

Keynote speaker with administrators at BangNacampus.

Speech by Professor Dr. Yongyuth Yuthavong, President, Thai Academy of Science and Technology

Good Morning Rev. Bro. Martin, Bro. Bancha, Dr. Srisak, Rev. Brothers, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great privilege and pleasure for me to be giving this talk to you at the Assumption University. The Masters of Ceremonies, did not tell you that before I went to any universities, I was a student at St. Gabriel's College from Prathom 1 to Mattayom 8, at that time it was called Mattayom 8 and now it is Mattayom 6. So not only me but my whole family; my 2 brothers. I have 2 brothers, both in the Navy, also went to St. Gabriel's. Not only our family, but my uncles, including the famous Dr. Pauy Uengpakorn also were graduates of Assumption College. So I'm very happy and honored to be here.

The theme for my talk today will be technology trends and the impact on universities of the future. And I must say that I'm a little bit apprehensive because I'm no astrologer, I cannot tell the future all that accurately. So who am I to talk about university of the future. But anyway, I can talk from expectations or what's going on right now. I think we all know that we are in the new economy where flexible production and services are becoming more and more important, more so than mass production in the old economy we used to know. And we know that technology and innovations are becoming more and more important, having a leading role; while labor and capital which are, of course, very important factors in production still have a role but much less of a role than before, much less important. And as for products and services, now we are talking about quality much more so than quantity. And all these, we are talking not only about cost reduction but quality increase whereas cost may not be the important factor. And all this is made possible by the knowledge economy. Now what is the Knowledge Economy? It's an economy where you're talking about value, which comes not from resources, not from natural resources. Of course, they have value but from knowledge. And knowledge, we think we know about knowledge but we may not know all that much or we may not know it completely. Knowledge, actually, if you look up the literature, there are 2 types of knowledge and we are only used to the first type much more so than the second type. The first type of knowledge is, of course, the knowledge about contents. We come to the university mostly expecting to learn about the contents whether it'll be accountancy, or health, engineering, science and so on. But that's actually only a part of knowledge. It's knowledge about contents whereas we often forgot about the knowledge, which is much more refined; it's knowledge about attributes, that is knowledge about meaning and value and implications, about quality of products and services, about workers' diligence, about LABOR OMNIA VINCIT: Labor will overcome everything. That's knowledge about attributes, about the credit worthiness of firms and so on.

So this is just as important as knowledge about contents. And of course, Thailand needs both types. I've been talking about knowledge for a long time, and one day a student came to me and said "You've been reading TS Eliot" and I said "Eliot, Who?" I don't know Eliot because I don't usually read poetry. But in fact she taught me; my student taught me that Eliot did write some lines. So I went up to look some lines from "The Rock", the poem which I hope you can see from afar. I'm sorry that I did not produce the documents in time for you. Eliot wrote this, actually very long poem, but only 3 lines here; he wrote this:

Where is the Life we have lost in Living?
Where is the Wisdom we have lost in Knowledge?
Where is the Knowledge We have lost in Information?

These 3 lines, only 3 lines, but I think they really tell me a lot, tell us a lot because sometimes we think we have knowledge when, in fact, we only have information. We have not been able to really gather and analyze the information so that it becomes knowledge. And sometimes, we think we have wisdom, but in fact, we only have some knowledge. And of course, sometimes, we think we have lives, you know, some people tell you "Go and have a life", and we already have a life but in fact we're only living but we don't have a life. So system for knowledge generation, of course, wisdom generation, and management are needed. In terms of knowledge generation, of course, in Science and Technology as in other spheres of activity, you have technology transfer, you have research development, invention, innovation. But in the sphere of management ofknowledge, you would have to know about intellectual property; you have to respect other people's intellectual properties whereas you also expect other people to respect our intellectual property. We have to know about management of production, of services, information management and so on. With knowledge generation and knowledge management, which is the stuff that the universities both of the present and future talk about. We hope that we can go on to have what's called "Competitiveness". It's not time to talk about elements of competitiveness fully and of course every year, there are numbers of institutions which publish data on the competitiveness of the nations and Thailand is sort of.... If you were a student, if Thailand is a student, we would call Thailand a kind of moderate, medium student; but promising, with some promise. The elements of competitiveness, of course, knowledge is important. Political Stability is important. Not only do you need knowledge for competitiveness of a nation but you need other elements like political stability, human rights, democracy, a good legal system, transparency, good governance, internationalization and of course, sustainability in society and the environment. So these are the elements of competitiveness that are needed.

Now I would like to focus more on the topic that I will perhaps devote half of my talk to, and that's Technology Trends for the New Millenium. First I will start with the ideas of Prof.Freeman Dison - he's physicist and he wrote this book a few years ago called... Well, he wrote this book about technology trends, I'm sorry you may not be able to see from afar, it's called "Internet". Of course, Internet is only just part of the information and communication technology so that's one of the 3 important trends and of course renewable energy: the sun, which is eventual source of energy on earth will become more and more important as we run out of petroleum. And the generation here is one part, very important part of knowledge that we need to know to build our health and for our good nutrition.

The second person I'm going to bring up today, he's just visited Thailand a couple of months ago. Juan Enriques is not a scientist but maybe that makes his message penetrate even better. He wrote this book called "As the future catches you". It's quite a good selling book overseas, but it's very famous in Thailand because the Prime Minister Thaksin took notice of this book and in fact told his cabinet to read it. So it's kind of a gossip among people in the field that this is a required reading for the cabinet. If cabinet ministers cannot answer some questions, which come from this book, then they better look at their seat carefully.

The main message of this book, actually, talks about the future which is much more rapid and unexpected than before. If people are not careful, they will be caught. If nations are not careful, they will also be caught and they may disappear. So, of course, I cannot tell you the whole story of the book, only a few slides. Juan said that nations, companies and people will need to join in the knowledge society if they want to prosper. Indeed, if they want to survive, they would need to know about the knowledge society and join in it. And science and Technology are the major components of such society. And his ominous knowledge, his ominous warning is that those that fail will be caught by the future.

In one ofhis chapters, he began with the word "Technology is not kind, it does not say please." It sounds as if technology is reckless, is cruel but what he means is that technology is quite neutral. But if people or companies or nations do not take technology seriously, then it can be very cruel to those people because they are overtaken very quickly. Before they know it, they are already bankrupt. Before they know it, the nation's already crumbled. This is a very powerful message, hard-hitting message for developing countries like Thailand.

hi one of the chapters, he says data drives empires. We think we know about this already that data or information of course are very important. But indeed, if you go even deeper before the age of computers. If you take data in the broadest sense in terms of human communication, then language is in fact part of the data. It's a powerful medium, which can travel across distance and time. And he noted that man is the only species on earth that can communicate, not only across distance but also across time from history to the present and indeed to the future. So language is the main medium of culture.

But the digital revolution in the last few decades is only the starting and will change the world much more than before. Because it's not just ordinary means of communication through books, or through TV, but through the digital media, which is very powerful in terms of processing of that information. So he talked about the digital alphabet, which of course we know it's zero and one. Only two letter alphabets but it encodes and transmits information with extraordinary speed and accuracy; and has become the world's main language. Of course, we know about Moore's Law, thereby every 18 months, the cost of a computer chip drops, and it builds to process data double. This has been so for the last ten or twelve years and will remain so for maybe the next ten years. But then we will reach some limit of Moore's Law and I'll talk about that in a while. So cheaper and faster, so long as you know how to use it.

When Juan comes here, I think when he came on a stage like this, he had an orange in his hand and he was throwing it about, he was such a good presenter. So I don't have an orange so I put some orange from the web for you and to confirm it's an orange. And then he had some floppy disk, you know, he just took it up and then tore it apart and showed you the magnetic part that's inside. And his message was that the orange and floppy disk are becoming one and the same. So that message comes about because the orange also has alphabet, but it's not the digital alphabet of zero and one; but it's alphabet of four letters - A, T, C, G - are the basis of the nucleic acids or the DNA; that is the stuff of the genetic message within the orange. So this is equivalent to zero in one of the computers but in fact it can be more powerful and probably in the end will take over if people know how to change from the digital alphabet to the genetic alphabet. So all this is very confusing to the layman.

As I was elected President of the Thai Academy of Science and Technology which aims to communicate to the people so I asked our cartoonist to draw something that will communicate to the people what the biotechnology world will be like. What's the GMO, for example? And that's what he drew. It does convey a message. We talked about whether it will be a wonderful development for the future or whether it will be the real danger much more than the weapon of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein. This is something for the future.

(Transcript by YupaK.4313985)
To be Continued. 

	

	




	
	


	
			
	

	

	
	

	
	

	

		







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