Is the future colonised?

Now that the heading has got your attention, let’s begin by saying that this note has got nothing to do with the archetypical colonisation of the yester centuries. It is not about how the Mughals came to rule this region. It’s also not about the British; nor about the notions of neo-colonisation led by Uncle Sam and Bretton Wood sisters; nor even about China and the CPEC as some naysayer would like to emphasize. It’s about technology.

Pakistan and many other sovereign nation states like her had little say when central bankers in sleepy towns like Basel wrote the rules of engagement for the country’s financial and banking community. Nor did she and all other developing countries have their sway in the green rooms of the WTO. The country is already at least two decades behind in the race called knowledge economy. But while there are good reasons to race on that front, a new race has also long begun: information technology.

Unlike the previous two races of industrial development and knowledge economy, the good thing about the IT race that it is fairly new, which means Pakistan still has a chance to win it. The race of IT also requires relatively lesser capital, which is another reason why Pakistan has better chances of winning some laps, and potentially has much quicker knowledge transfer and technology spill over compared to many other industries.

The world is already moving fast in the space of technology including not only information technology but also bio-technology – all of which is increasingly changing the blurring lines across various disciplines of knowledge. Lab grown meat, test tube milk, medical textile, silicon chips implants for your body without which health insurance and other such things won’t be possible – this is not science fiction. These will be a part of common lives in a not too distant future.

There is a reason why new local market firms on the block like Zameen.com are valued at around $600 million (according to market sources), whereas traditional sector companies like Nishat Mills is valued at around $400 million (based on AKD Securities’ fair value estimate of Rs158/share), and Interloop the hottest IPO is valued around $376 million (based on average fair value estimates of Rs60/share).

Anyone who doubts the age of tech domination should ponder why they cannot live without this ubiquitous programme called WhatsApp. Anyone who is afraid of tech must learn swimming or sink like a stone: remember the hunter and gatherers were also afraid of farming as a technology and the invention of stone knife; those hunter and gatherers who didn’t adapt, exist no more.

Whether the makers of technology remain privately-owned, state-owned, or state-controlled, unless Pakistan ups its ante in the technological race, it will come to be dominated by it – just as it had no say in the global affairs and found itself on the receiving end of the WTO or Basel or whatever. Already the likes of Google, Facebook, WhatsApp know worryingly too much about Pakistanis than the state of Pakistan itself.

If ten years ago, the famous trolley problem was something that only moralists and photospheres used to think about, today coders of self-driven cars also have to think about it: whether in the case of accident-type situation a self-driven car should swerve to the right and kill a child, or swerve to the left and kill an old lady or keep going straight and kill a happy go lucky teenager. Whose moral lens would these coders write? The one held by Pakistanis or some western tech whiz kid.

The point being whoever builds new technologies and makes it ubiquitous still has a chance to avoid being colonised by global tech producers, whether state-backed or privately-owned. There is a reason why the US is campaigning against Chinese mobile tech producers; for good reasons or bad; it is matter of independence and dominance for them.

If 23 March 1940 was about safeguarding the future, then in today’s technologically advanced world, Pakistani citizens and that state must invest in technology; unless of course they are comfortable with being colonised and want to give up on fair representation in the future. (See also ‘Cute ideas’, 24 March, 2017)