Personal Blogs
Talk I delivered at The Apprentice Program
Respected Guests, Dignitaries, fellow partners, teachers, and students, good morning to you all.
After my basic info…
My personal beliefs are:
I will be talking on the “Role of technology in education shaping the future of Bharat.”
Technology is a breakthrough that is initially in very few hands, and eventually, it spreads to the masses. Every time it reaches the masses, disruption happens—e.g., the printing press, radio, TV, internet, blockchain, and now AI.
My friend and colleague from IIT Bombay, Dr. Ravi G, was on a mission to search for the next Ramanujan. He believed this person would come from a rural village, so he started going to rural villages in Karnataka, giving logic tests to students, and mentoring the ones who performed well. But then COVID hit, and they had to move to screens. Ravi, who was very skeptical about online education, welcomed it and went online. That move helped him expand his program to a much bigger base. This was all possible because of the spread of the internet and handheld devices, even in remote villages.
My personal experience comes from a couple of courses I took online. They helped me break the daily routine and learn new things that were very useful in the future. E.g., coming from an engineering background, I always felt the gap of not knowing the foundations of finance. One of the courses I did almost 20 years ago helped me pivot into the fintech domain.
Recently, I finished learning basic Sanskrit online and enrolled into advanced one now. This happened because the classes were in the late evening when working professionals like me could join, and exams were conducted online with emotion, gesture, and screen monitoring so people couldn’t cheat.
As they say, always learning new things keeps you in the game.
Just as there is a bright side to technology in education, there is a darker side too.
These devices & apps are addictive and co-exist with other apps designed to seek attention from users. It’s not just kids—parents and elders also fall victim to it. Unlike physical harm where you see smoke or blood, digital harm is invisible. By the time we notice the damage, the addiction is already deep, and it is difficult to identify early. I know individuals among my extended family & friends who have been treated for this addiction, and it is tough.
Because power’s true nature is to centralize itself, a very few Big Tech companies are controlling the entire show; it’s like a monopoly. The model is very clear: it begins free of cost to accumulate data and identify patterns from users, and then algorithms keep targeting individuals for subscriptions, going even to the level of manipulating thoughts and controlling individuals or groups.
There could be multiple solutions to a problem, and often there may not be a one-size-fits-all answer. E.g., using & teaching only open-source free software like GNU/Linux in schools could be one approach, where by its license, it is open to study, modify, and share.
Or guiding digital boundaries and monitoring the usage of handheld devices for your kids & family until they develop the maturity to navigate it safely.
AI is the biggest elephant in the room now. Its challenges are even harder, and the solutions will be harder still.
However, technology keeps changing, and we should be preparing the new generation of Bharat for the problems of tomorrow that we have not yet seen. Technology can give our youth skills, but only character-building education will give them wisdom.
I would love to end my talk with the words of Swami Vivekananda, which I feel are even more relevant in today’s world of AI:
*“Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life.
We must have life-building, > man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas.”*
Thank you!