Thinklog Wargafikir

Intrigued by this magazine, said to be the seed of innovative culture in Silicon Valley. An excerpt from Wikipedia: "The title  Whole Earth Catalog  came from a previous project by  Stewart Brand . In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have  NASA  release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of  Earth  as seen from space, the first image of the "Whole Earth." He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The  Stanford -educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be."

(This is a continuation of my discourse on acade mia. You might want to read   part 1 and part 2 ) There is a general despair in academia.  Examining news headlines, popular blogs, viral Facebook postings, excluding those coming from academia glorifying itself, of late we get a generally bleak perceptions of Malaysian Academia. While local universities are wax lyrical about their amazing jumps in global ranking game, we keep hearing public complaints. Among the complaints we keep hearing are, universities are out of touch with industry and society [i] , low job competency of graduates [ii] , low employment rate of graduates [iii], slow conversion of innovations into commercialisation [iv] , stressful working environment for academic staff [v] , low impact of knowledge outside academia, etc. I recalled recently the top management of a public university was summoned by a minister to explain a damaging online article that alleged the university is no longer relevan...