Thinklog Wargafikir

Our guest this week was an Islamic finance industry insider. Harris Irfan is currently the CEO of Cordoba Capital Markets www.ccmkts.com. He has 29 years of investment banking and consulting experience. He was the former co-founder of Deutsche Bank's world-leading Islamic finance team and CEO of Deutsche's Islamic finance subsidiary. He is the Former Global Head of Islamic Finance at Barclays, and Then Head of Investment Banking for the Rasmala group. He is also the author of"Heaven's Bankers: Inside the Hidden World of Islamic Finance", the critically acclaimed best-seller about the Islamic finance industry. https://youtu.be/f13mgKVjJsU?si=yarjDY5kGx6h1x8L

When UberCab decided to ditch the word Cab from its name, it was a revelation in the importance of stepping back and doing less and not doing more. This is something that our education system in Malaysia can learn. We are at the time  when doing something different almost always mean doing something new, the idea of doing away with unnecessary baggage as a way to progress is almost unheard of. In 2011, when Uber CEO decided to change it's name from UberCab to Uber, one of its team asked "If we ditch the word Cab from UberCab, then we are Uber what?", as if Uber cannot stand on its own as a word. Nevertheless the company proceeded changing the name. The move was quite significant in the history of the company. San Francisco Municipal Transport Authority has been threatening UberCab with many potential lawsuits due to its unconventional practice in cab service. By getting rid of the idea of the company as a cab service, and reposition itself as a non cab service,  it simply

Today I watched a documentary on climate change. The narrative is all too familiar to me, since it is part of the subject matter I teach. However s omething struck me as a resonance, of another narrative I have been dealing with. The documentary tells of an obstacle, in the early days, namely the reluctance of government, industrial players, and even scholars to acknowledge the harm of fossil fuels, in the face of mounting empirical evidence. After almost sixty years since the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, only recently has the green sentiment begun to take hold in civilisation. I have been talking about reductionism in academia for so long. In doing so, I found similar symptoms in the economy, education, medicine and science itself. Despite the mounting evidence of their relationship with reductionism, it is hard to wean people off the reductionist mindset. I cant help but draw a parallel between the two narratives, our addiction to fossil fuel, and to reductionism. I

Today I tested ChatGPT with a proposition the answer to which  i already know, but has not been clearly stipulated in thermal comfort study (which means you cannot simply google it to arrive at the conclusions). ChatGPT gives the correct answer within 3 seconds. I am impressed! If scholars today focus only on gathering data and forming obvious conclusion, then they are dispensable...😀 We should allow students to use AI apps in exam. Then we have to reform our teaching and assessments to develop new skills and assess them beyond what these tools can do. If we cannot do this, it means our program or even the whole university is dispensable. Looking at the way our curricula and assessments are being developed now, be ready for an unmanned universities, universities without professors and lecturers. Without expensive pay for glorified scholars, They are much cheaper to run, giving the same kind of results We dont expect our graduates NOT to use these tools when the

Discussing whether sustainability should be a niche for an architecture program. After years of  claiming our focus on sustainability, with a certain degree of success, by now sustainibility should be in our DNA already. On another hand, now almost all university programmes has to embed SDG goals. Its a matter of implementing it that its found wanting. If we still put sustainability as our niche, soon it will be like a medical school putting health as its niche, which should be given already. Yes, we should always strive for sustainibility. Perhaps the reason it could not be a niche is  because only a few subjects insist its use. Because we currently understand sustainibility only its technical and environmental dimensions. Whereas current wisdom shows that it is humannes aspectthat make or break sustainable agenda itu berjaya. So i believe if we strive for human dimension, sustainibility will be a strong component in it. Perhaps Its not clear what i meant by humanness. It stems from m

Dalam perbincangan kemelut ketandusan "makna" di menara gading. Jarang kita ingin melihat masalah sistem yang ada, kerana kita andaikan sistem yang ada telah dibina oleh "pakar". Mungkinkah segala masalah ini berpunca dari kesilapan "pakar"?. Semalam tonton dokumentari tentang kapalterbang Lion Air yang terhempas di indonesia pada 2018, membunuh kesemua 181 orang di dalamnya. Semasa siasatan, segala aspek diselidiki, dari kelayakan pilot, aspek latihan, kelemahan pengurusan dsb, KECUALI, masalah pesawat. Kenapa? Kerana pesawat itu di buat oleh BOEING,  syarikat yang "pakar" dalam pembuatan kapal terbang. Ternyata selepas segala aspek diselidiki, akhirnya terbukti ia adalah kesalahan Boeing, pakar dalam pembuatan pesawat udara. Setelah itu barulah Boeing membaiki masalah itu. Bayangkan sekiranya Boeing enggan mengaku, dan terus dengan sistem yang sama, tentunya tragedi akan berulang. Andaian bahawa sesuatu masalah tak mungkin berpunca dari kesilap