Thinklog Wargafikir

There is an exciting debate spurred by the appointment of Nadiem, the Go-Jek founder to the post of a Minister in Indonesia. In one speech by a Malaysian leader, his success was attributed to him being IR4.0 ready. And the ripple effect created within Malaysian academia is that this shows the importance of universities to produce IR4.0 ready graduates.I disagree.  Nadiem is a product of Harvard MBA program. Maybe the key is to look at what Harvard nurtured him to be. Harvard is not known for ICT or IR4.0 stuff. But it prepared Nadiem for something bigger. Nadiem did not invent any of the IR4.0 stuff, he just used it to create Go-Jek. We never hear Harvard or any US universities shouting about IR4.0. It is a mere buzzword so often talked about in Malaysia.  With Nadiem Harvard education,  if we were to surmise its philosophy, it was not about industry skills, it was about creativity and strategic thinking skills. Harvard produce creative and bold innovators. This is why I ...

Sharing an article. the original site can be found here https://stanfordreview.org/reductionism-and-the-future-of-the-humanities/?fbclid=IwAR31GNkFdKZ8_ZVf7I8YQ8KOSAZvAmXkSdiPYoc2SvLu0Oe4an_QI-McYOc by Christoper Fish The humanities may have been in decline for several decades now, but recent events are signaling that a critical period lies ahead for these disciplines.  The recent [cancellation of programs in literature and foreign languages at the University of Albany](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/04/albany) was only the most recent example of colleges aggressively cutting their humanities departments to skeletal staff, often transferring the funds to more “practical” majors like business or IT administration. Many answers have been trotted out to evaluate and presumably solve the problem.  Stanley Fish, a prominent English professor at Florida International University, has argued that  the humanities are essentially useless , but  in a respon...

Recently, a director of Bank Negara Malaysia announced that the house prices in Malaysia is very unaffordable. [i] This is not news. The issue of high price of houses has been plaguing the nation since the 2000s. Simple economic theory dictates that if supply overweight demand, price will fall. Somehow this principle does not work here. Overhanging properties (those already in the market but remain unsold) are being flaunted to foreign buyers which seem to have very deep pockets, thus negate the supply demand curve price fixing mechanism. In a way it is a manipulation of the curve that push developers to wait for price increase. So, the people, whom the right for housing should be accorded to, will still be left in socioeconomic wasteland. How else do we push the price of houses down? given that the need for housing is ever increasing? One possible way is to push the rental sector to provide for houses. This would compete with the demand for properties for sale. Sound neat h...

Photo Source:  http://infocarnivore.com Watched an interesting talk entitled The Surprising Habits of the Originals   by Adam grant about the originals. Originals are people who change the world through bizarre and fresh ideas and innovations. There is this interesting study by  Cornerstone’s researchers    that reveals those employees who use chrome and firefox web browsers significantly outperform  internet explorer and safari users. They even stay  in their job 15% longer.  The reason, according to Adam: IE and safari come preinstalled default. So these users are people who just accept the default, without thirst or hunger to search for better option. People who use chrome have doubts on the the pre-installed internet explorer and wonder whether there are better ways of browsing.  To be clear, it is not about the browser, it is the type of people who don't merely accept what is given as the best. they inherently have the thirst ...

This business of ‘publish or perish’ has been a catastrophe. People write things which should never have been written and which should never be printed. Nobody’s interested. But for them to keep their jobs and get the proper promotion, they’ve got to do it. It demeans the whole of intellectual life. — Hannah Arendt This is the opning remark in article by samantha Rose Hill. the full article is here.   https://medium.com/quote-of-the-week/crises-in-academia-today-74fcbe1a80f4