What is needed in society is for there to be adequate diversity of intellectuals to play roles in transforming society in all its economic, social, technological and political dimensions.By Tshilidzi Marwala
Intellectuals are broadly de ned as thinkers in society. According to Wikipedia, “an intellectual is a person who engages in critical study, thought and reflection about the reality of society”. The term intellectual invokes other concepts such as cognitive intelligence, logic, thinking and rationality. The word intellectual implies active utilisation of one’s cognitive infrastructure to analyse a situation, to decide on the course of action and to structure an argument. These are high level skills that will not be substituted by machines in the near future.
In his work on bounded rationality, Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon states that the utilisation of the intellect whether to make a rational decision or to analyse a complex situation is never fully rational. The reason why it is not fully rational is because the mind is not perfect and the information is neither complete nor perfect. So all analyses and decisions that these intellectuals make are deformed one way or another and have limited implications. This is because all the advice, decisions, and analyses that these intellectuals give are bounded rationally. Recently the theory of flexibly bounded rationality which states that machines make better decisions, analyses and give better advice than human beings has been proposed; but this is beyond the scope of this paper (Marwala, 2014 and 2015).
There is a problem with the definition of intellect which tends to restrict it to the social domain. A poll by Foreign Policy on who are the leading thinkers produced only 2 scientists in the top 10, Richard Dawkins and Jared Diamond. The list was dominated by journalists and social scientists. This suggests that intellectualism has been appropriated by the social scientists, especially those social scientists that have close proximity to the mass media. Is this the correct reflection of the state of affairs on who are the leading intellectuals especially in the light of the role technology has played in transforming social and economic change in the last 200 years?
Why is Tim Beners-Lee the discoverer of the internet not in the top 10? (Beners-Lee, 2014) Who has transformed society more for the better: Tim Beners-Lee or Noam Chomsky? Society is a broad term and has many dimensions including economic, social, scientific and technological dimensions and, therefore, intellectualism cannot just be restricted to one of these dimensions.
A utilitarian perspective
There is a philosophical theory called utilitarianism which basically evaluates objects/ideas by their usefulness in society (Mill, 1998). Using this utilitarian frame of thinking, economists have come up with theories such as the theory of rational expectation which prescribes that a rational being acts to maximise his or her utility. Taking a utilitarian view then the usefulness of intellectuals is based on their ability to transform society. Their ideas must transform the greatest number of people for the greatest amount of happiness. Using this utilitarian view, has Noam Chomsky transformed more people for the better than Tim Beners-Lee? Have the ideas of Noam Chomsky played a more pivotal role in resolving the contradictions in society than those of Tim Beners-Lee? The internet has liberated society, and has thus played a more pivotal role in resolving contradictions in society such as unequal access to information than Chomsky’s generative grammar. Evaluating intellectual projects is a complex process. A utilitarian view is, however, limited and requires caution because we are unable to evaluate the usefulness of concepts into the in nite future of human existence with any degree of certainty.
Transforming Society
How then do intellectuals transform society? And what is the meaning of the expression transforming society? Is there an end point as far as the project of transforming society is concerned? Again taking the utilitarian view, the trajectory that should guide the transformation of society is the maximisation of the total good in society and minimisation of the total bad in society. What is then this total good? Total good is all good things in society such as extended life expectancy, reduced disease burden, high economic activities and increased levels of happiness. What are then the total bad in society? These are all the bad things in society such as unemployment, inequality, violence, and high preventable death rates. Then the usefulness of intellectuals can be measured by the degree in which they play a role in minimising the total bad in society and/or maximising the total good in society. The question of minimisation and maximisation is a broad eld and requires a separate conversation.
Diversity
Now that we have de ned what is to be done in society by intellectuals, it is important to reflect that intellectuals should be diverse in terms of knowledge, discipline and experience. The principle of the indivisibility of the sciences whether natural, life, social or physical is important but this should not mean that society should focus on one discipline at the expense of the other.
What is needed in society is for there to be adequate diversity of intellectuals to play roles in transforming society in all its economic, social, technological and political dimensions.
The African continent has produced its fair share of intellectuals in the social space. The annals of African history are full of role players in fields such as psychology (Fanon, 1961), history (Diop, 1974) and politics (Biko, 1986). It is not an accident of history that there has been an over-emphasis of the social sciences in matters of leadership and education. It was because of the nature of colonialism which was intended to make the colonies consumers and the colonisers the producers that the investment into the intellectual pursuit was limited to the social sciences at the expense of science and technology.
The consequence of balkanising intellectualism to the social sciences resulted in former colonies not industrialising.
Even in South Africa, there is no single historically disadvantaged university which offers a degree course in engineering.
The extent of this investment into knowledge systems that did not encourage production was such that even in cases where the colonised had the means and ways of producing they were forbidden to do so. The Salt Satyagraha (1930) was a protest in India led by Mahatma Gandhi against the British, primarily to stop the colonial relation of importing salt from Britain even though Indians were quite capable of manufacturing salt (Gandhi and Dalton, 1996). This strategy by colonisers to undermine or discourage building productive forces in the colonies resulted in education in the colonies being biased towards the humanities and social sciences often at the expense of science and technology. It was only after the independence of India that the Indian Institutes of Technology were created by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The consequence of balkanising intellectualism to the social sciences resulted in former colonies not industrialising. This remains true of many of them until today.
Lessons from China
It is only now that countries such as China have realised that a more scientific and technological educational base as well as leadership are needed to transform society economically, technologically and socially. In the 12th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party led by Deng Xiaoping the party actively replaced the elite drawn from the revolutionary generation by a technocratic elite generation who were almost wholly trained in engineering and technology (Jungwon Yoon, 2007). This Deng Xiaoping called Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which in the final analysis means a technologically infused technocratic China. This strategy has transformed the Chinese intellectual space to be biased towards science and technology.
In his book The Governance of China, President Xi Jinping states that “...the Third Industrial Revolution would be a Robot Revolution.....big data, cloud computing and 3D printing...driven by artificial intelligence” (Jinping, 2014). Clearly, Chinese intellectuals and leaders are not leaving anything to chance.
Do we as a continent have intellectuals who can meaningfully understand such vital emerging fields that will drive the economy in the 21st Century, such as big data, 3D printing, cloud computing? Can we claim to be intellectually robust if we have limited expertise in fields that are shaping the 21st Century? There is clearly a need for correction, to move intellectual investment from the social sciences to science and technology.
The African continent lacks critical skills in vital areas such as technological leadership. Of all the 25 universities in South Africa there are no more than three universities with formal qualify cations in technology management and none in technological policy. As we reflect on the need to deal with the transformation of society we should not be blind to the scientific ingredients that are necessary to transform society, and these ingredients are not just in the humanities and social sciences but are most importantly in technology and science.
Industrialisation
Why is it important for us to focus on science and technology? It is important because we urgently need to industrialise. There cannot be industrialisation unless there is a strong base in science and technology. It is only through industrialisation that we will be able to liberate the productive forces that are needed to mobilise sufficient capital to transform and resolve contradictions in society. There is an old dictum that states: “Seek ye economic freedom and all else shall follow”. It is only when we have mobilised enough capital that we will be able to deal decisively with the problems of underdevelopment, gender discrimination, race inequality and class exploitation.
What is to be done?
The league tables of top universities indicate the dominance of science and technology intensive universities. According to the Times Higher Education rankings, the top universities in years 2014-2015 are: 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 2. Harvard University 3. California Institute of Technology 4. Princeton University 5. University of Cambridge 6. Imperial College 7. University of Oxford 8. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) 9. University of California, Los Angeles 10. University of California, Berkeley. All these universities are in the top 15 in the world in science, engineering and technology. This is an indication of the dominance of science and technology in economic transformation and development and consequently in university rankings.
In South Africa the only universities that offer degrees in engineering are UCT, UKZN, Stellenbosch, Pretoria, UJ, NWU, Wits and to a limited extent NMMU. There are other universities that offer technology programmes but these do not lead to professional registration as professional engineers. Can we execute our industrial strategy
competitively without expanding our engineering training? Can we achieve this without involving previously disadvantaged universities? The answer to both these questions is a resounding no. The National Developmental Plan is silent on capacitating our previously disadvantaged institutions to offer engineering and expand their scientific offerings. This will not be achieved with an internally focused strategy and will require massive importation of skills.
How do we produce intellectuals that are skilled in new areas such as big data, 3d printing and other related areas? We need to create new qualifications and import skills that will teach these areas. Degree courses in areas such as big data and artificial intelligence which currently do not exist should be introduced in our institutions. The CSIR has introduced a Division of Digital Modelling and Meraka which deals with this matter and this expertise should be strongly linked to universities using mechanisms such as joint appointments and programmes.
Do we as a continent have intellectuals who can meaningfully understand such vital emerging fields that will drive the economy in the 21st Century, such as big data, 3D printing, cloud computing?
To reconfigure the science, engineering and technology architecture will not only require people who are skilled at the technical level but also at the policy level. We need to introduce degree programmes in technology management, innovation and industrialisation. Again this will require the importation of skills.
This is the overriding factor which will determine if we can succeed in tacking these problems. There are new ways in which skills are imported through the cloud and not physically. This means we can have someone teaching a course in Johannesburg while being physically in Beijing. This is what is now called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) which were started at Stanford University and are expected to revolutionise teaching and learning. The University of Johannesburg is developing these with leading universities in Europe, USA and Brazil. This will require the Department of Higher Education and Training to set aside funding for universities to participate in such initiatives in order to enhance teaching and learning.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we, as a continent, should invest in key areas that are defining the 21st Century and these are in science and technology. Moore’s law states that computer technology doubles every 10 years (Moore, 1965). We now know that it more than doubles and indeed society will in many ways follow Moore’s law and therefore change drastically as a result of rapid advances in technological innovation. What intellectuals need to do is to ensure that the pace of this technological change is constructive and not destructive. Can Africa afford to ignore technology, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and robotics? The answer is absolutely not!
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