CBA President Moneeza Hashmi opens workshop on Pandemics and broadcasting, Manado, 28 May 2013
The discussion on the role of information and communication in disaster situations continues. Media-based communication is vitally necessary, but not sufficient, in meeting the multiple information needs of disaster risk reduction and disaster management. Other forms of participatory, non-media communications are needed to create more resilient communities.
During the past decade, the world’s humanitarian and disaster management communities have acknowledged the central and crucial role of communications — not just for outreach, but as a frontline activity and a core component of response.
It was organised by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD), and held on 28 May 2013.
Perhaps the most significant sentence in the booklet is this: “WHO believes it is now time to acknowledge that communication expertise has become an essential outbreak control as epidemiological training & laboratory analysis…”
It is preceded by this candid appraisal: “Communication, generally through the media, is another feature of the outbreak environment. Unfortunately, examples abound of communication failures which have delayed outbreak control, undermined public trust and compliance, and unnecessarily prolonged economic, social and political turmoil.”
The document is certainly a leap forward in thinking, but eight years since it was published, the ICT and media realities have changed drastically. As I noted in my opening remarks, social media, then fledgling, have exploded and completely changed the dynamics of emergency communications.
In a recent op-ed published in SciDev.Net, Rohan Samarajiva and I made this point: “The proliferation of ICTs adds a new dimension to disaster warnings. Having many information sources, dissemination channels and access devices is certainly better than few or none. However, the resulting cacophony makes it difficult to achieve a coherent and coordinated response…”
We added: “The controlled release of information is no longer an option for any government. In the age of social media and 24/7 news channels, many people will learn of distant hazards independently of official sources.”
That was the central message in an op-ed I wrote in March 2009 to mark the first death anniversary of the late author and visionary.
Having worked with him for over 20 years, I know for a fact that Clarke never sought grand edifices in his memory. When a visiting journalist once asked him about monuments, he replied: “Go to any well-stocked library and look around…”
He knew his place in history was well assured by his ideas and imagination expressed in over 100 books, 1,000 essays and short stories, as well as numerous radio and television appearances. He achieved iconic status not just in literature, science and technology, but also in popular culture –- the latter largely thanks to the movie
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I pose a simple yet important question: why can’t Lankans wait for their turn? Why don’t we, as a society, practise ‘first time-first served’ principle? Why is everyone pretending to be a VIP seeking to jump their turn?
I then cite personal experiences from my travels to show how it works in more mature democracies where everyone — including the heads of state and real VIPs — respect people’s rights when out in public space. At the risk of name dropping, I cite examples of how Queen Elizabeth II travels around in London, and how the Dalai Lama was occupying the opposite room at my New Delhi hotel…
L to R – D S Senanayake, Queen Elizabeth II, Dalai Lama
Text and photos by Nalaka Gunawardene
In San Diego, California
As a science fiction writer and scientific visionary, Sir Arthur C Clarke was widely respected and acclaimed for his perceptive reflections on humanity’s near and far futures. From his exceptional imagination stemmed over 80 books and hundreds of short stories and essays.
This week, the University of California San Diego and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation launched a new Arthur C Clarke Centre for Human Imagination (ACCCHI) to study and understand human imagination in all its many forms and dimensions.
The centre, located at UC San Diego campus, will work across a wide range of disciplines such as technology, education, engineering, health, science, environment, entertainment and the arts. It will seek to bridge science and arts in trying to harness imagination for human progress.
Officially, the new centre’s mission is to develop, catalyze and be a global resource for innovative research, education and leading edge initiatives drawing upon the under-utilized resources of human imagination.
UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K Khosla
“We are pleased to create the first and only Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination,” UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K Khosla said at the public opening of the new centre on May 20.
“At UC San Diego, innovation plays an integral role in our education and research, so our campus is ideally suited to launch and grow a major center to better understand, enhance and enact the gift of human imagination,” he added.
The creation of the new centre is the culmination of a decade long process that the Arthur C Clarke Foundation (ACCF), when the non-profit organization set out looking for the best way to celebrate the legacy of legendary author.
Clarke personally endorsed the initiative before he passed away in March 2008. A series of public events and activities at UC San Diego throughout this month pay tribute to his many literary and scientific achievements.
Tedson Meyes, Chairman, Arthur C Clarke Foundation
Tedson Meyers, ACCF Chairman of the Board, said several excellent US universities had responded to a call for proposals to host the Arthur C Clarke Centre for Human Imagination. Among them, UC San Diego had made the most compelling case.
He explained: “UC San Diego and its faculty provide both a practical as well as theoretical framework to put imagination under a microscope, to find its historic limits and go beyond them, and to promote its positive use in education, commerce, science, social change and more. Clearly, ACCCHI will also put Sir Arthur’s spirit back to work in a significant way.”
Meyers also suggested a slogan for both the Foundation and the new Centre: “Science forges fiction into function”.
“The Clarke Center will be a focal point for active collaboration on current and future research and an intersection of disciplines for the purpose of identifying and advancing creative and innovative solutions for the challenges of contemporary and future societies,” said Sandra Brown, the university’s vice chancellor for research.
The new centre is being headed by Sheldon Brown, a professor of media arts in the Department of Visual Arts in UC San Diego’s Division of Arts and Humanities. For him and team, this week’s public launch came after two years of planning and ground laying work.
“In our proposal for the new centre, we brought together connections from all divisions of the campus to show how the subject of imagination could be pursued through an engagement of the arts, literature, sciences, medicine and technology,” he said.
Understanding the brain will be a key plank in the new centre’s multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work. Among the big questions the new centre will address are: what is the neurological basis for imagination and creativity? How does imagination occur in human societies? And does it vary from culture to culture?
The impetus for probing and understanding human imagination came from cultural research, Brown added. In recent years, the University has regularly brought science fiction writers and scientists together in a series of meetings that explored the interface between science, technology and society.
According to UC San Diego sources, it has produced more science fiction writers than any other university in the United States, many of who are already involved in developing the new centre.
Seth Lerer, Dean of Arts and Humanities, described UC San Diego as the ‘campus of possibility’. He quoted Arthur C Clarke’s famous Second Law: “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
Sheldon Brown, Director of Arthur C Clarke Centre for Human Imagination, speaks at opening on May 20
Director Sheldown Brown said he wants to develop international collaborations in exploring myriad ways in which human cultures and societies respond to a fundamental question that is at the root of imagination: “What if?”
As part of the launch events, the centre hosted a two-day “Starship Century Symposium”. It was a scientific meeting devoted to discussing a ‘big idea’ of developing an inter-stellar ‘starship’ in the next 100 years. Space scientists, astronomers, science fiction writers and other experts explored the challenges and opportunities for humanity’s long-term future in space.
Among the speakers were physicist Freeman Dyson, futurist Peter Schwartz, and science fiction authors Neal Stephenson, Allen Steele, Joe Haldeman, Gregory Benford, Geoffrey Landis and David Brin.
Other events included an exhibition of Arthur C Clarke books, book cover paintings and signed photographs, as well as a public screening of the 1997 BBC documentary on him titled ‘The Man Who Saw the Future’.
Tedson Meyers, Chairman,and Monica Morgan, Executive Director of Arthur C Clarke Foundation
Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 19 May 2013
“Hey Mom, Look! There’s a negro woman on TV — and she ain’t cooking dinner!”
So exclaimed a young Whoopi Goldberg when she saw an unusual kind of TV show which started airing on US network television in late 1966.
It featured a black woman character named Uhura in a technical position – as communications officer — on board an advanced starship exploring the universe in the twenty third century. This was unique at the time when minority women, if they appeared at all, were shown doing domestic work.
That show, named Star Trek, was well ahead of its time — not just in the technologies it featured, but also in the utopian ideals it projected.
Years later, Goldberg thanked the show for inspiring her to take to acting. Mae Jamison…
I return to China’s massive environmental woes in my weekend column in Ravaya broadsheet newspaper (in Sinhala).
Last week, we looked at China’s air pollution problems; today, we discuss serious contamination of food and water caused by widespread pollution unchecked by lack of regulation and local level corruption.
We also compare China’s current experience with Japan’s pollution problems in the 1950s and 1960s. The big difference: democratic system in Japan enabled citizens to effective protest industrial excesses, petition courts and force government to enforce strict regulation. Can this happen in China?
Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 12 May 2013
Tuna Wars are hotting up in the Indian Ocean.
At stake are the jobs of tens of thousands of fishermen, and nutrition of hundreds of millions of people living in Indian Ocean rim countries.
Last week, as government officials, scientists and fisheries managers from these countries converged in Mauritius for the annual meeting of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), environmental groups again cautioned that overfishing is driving these fish stocks close to a collapse point.
Greenpeace, the most vocal among them, claimed that IOTC was not doing enough to control fishing fleets and prevent illegal fishing. The activist group reiterated the need for stricter controls to protect remaining tuna stocks.
IOTC, an inter-governmental body, covers the catch of 16 tuna and tuna-like fish species in the Indian Ocean. Their annual…
My latest column in Ravaya broadsheet newspaper (in Sinhala) looks at China’s air pollution problems that keep getting worse, taking pollutant readings off the charts. Urban air quality in Winter 2012/13 was so bad that Chinese themselves called it ‘Airpolcalypse‘.
Children wear anti pollution masks at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Feb 2013
Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 5 May 2013
May 3 was World Press Freedom Day – a misnomer in this multimedia age, but nevertheless a cause worth celebrating and defending.
There are various indicators of media freedom including direct and indirect censorship, diversity of media ownership, and physical attacks on journalists and media organisations. A growing concern is how governments and large corporations are trying to control freedom of expression on the web.
Another useful barometer of media freedom can be the level of satire in a society. Satire and parody are important forms of political commentary that rely on blurring the line between factual reporting and creative license to scorn and ridicule public figures.
Political satire is nothing new: it has been around for centuries, making fun of kings, emperors, popes and generals. Over time, satire has manifested in many…
I look at general knowledge quizzing in Sri Lanka in this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala).
It’s a mind sport where I have played all the roles possible — as a participant, Sri Lanka’s national quiz champion, quiz compiler, quizmater, quiz programme designer for radio and TV, and chronicler of the game.
Providing vital context to our discussions was the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Outbreak Communication Guidelines of 2005 [WHO/CDS/2005.28].
Open Minds! 