Avinash Meetoo

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Technology

Emerging Technologies for a Sustainable Future during the National Science Week 2024

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On Thursday 28 March 2024, I was invited to make a presentation on “Emerging Technologies for a Sustainable Future” with the important subtitle of “And how important young people are for Mauritius”. This was during the National Science Week 2024 organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre at the Côte d’Or National Complex.

During my talk, I explained to a large group of young students of Grades 10-13 (Form IV to VI) what Vision 2030 is for Mauritius, how technology and innovation are important enablers to achieve this vision, how the country is facing major challenges (as is the rest of the world) and how, if we want to achieve a sustainable future, we need to have a critical mass of young professionals in green technologies and also in emerging technologies. I told the students that they are the “peopleware” of Mauritius and they are more important than hardware and/or software.

At the end, I also told them that while Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths are essential subjects, it is also important for them to develop their soft skills. Finally, I also told them to develop an artistic side in order to see further ahead…

A big thank you to the Rajiv Gandhi Science Centre for organising such an interesting event with a special mention for Dr Ellora Dhunnoo, Dr Aman Maulloo, Dr Bhamini Kamudu and Ms Natasha Nastali.

The Rise of the Dopamine Culture

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Here is a very interesting article on the rise of the dopamine culture in the world.

The author argues that everything is being replaced by mindless and endless scrolling and the effects might prove to be very detrimental for kids and also for adults, at home, at school and at work.

He also argues that people should start raising their voices against the likes of TikTok, Facebook and Instagram (Meta), etc. (and also YouTube (Google)) before it is too late.

My opinion

I’ve always been an adept of long form writing (e.g. this blog and my family blog but also my journal and my Obsidian second brain). I also love having long conversations and debates (ask my friends and family members!).

Therefore, you can easily guess that I am pissed these days by the lack of long interactions. Most just say hello and go back to their phones. Few wants to speak. Few have original thoughts that they want to share with others.

I know teachers are finding it incredibly hard to work with kids today because of their lack of attention span. I also know that businesses are having major issues dealing with their new recruits for similar reasons.

I think that the author is right to say that the only solution is to do a detox from time to time. People need to stop using TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. to watch endless clips, say, during a whole week and this will give their brains time to reset a bit. He writes:

“Unplug yourself from time to time, and start noticing the trees or your goofy pets. They actually look better in real life than in the headset.”

I agree.

What do you think?

Niklaus Wirth, creator of Algol, Pascal, Modula and Oberon, is no more…

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Niklaus Wirth passed away on 1 January 2024.

He was born in Switzerland on 15 February 1934, started his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at ETH Zürich, his Masters at the Université Laval in Quebec and got his PhD at the University of Berkeley in 1963.

Niklaus Wirth is known as the designer of programming languages such as Euler (in 1965), PL360 (in 1966), ALGOL W (in 1966), Pascal (in 1970), Modula (in 1975), Modula-2 (in 1978), Oberon (in 1987), Oberon-2 (in 1991) and Oberon-07 (in 2007).

In 1984, he received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Turing Award for the development of these languages. In 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM. In other words, he was the equivalent of a Nobel Prize winner for us, Computer Scientists.

For me, he was more than that. I always loved programming and I had a special interest for different kinds of programming languages and paradigms. Niklaus Wirth, as a programming language inventor, held a special place in my heart (and brain), together with people such as John McCarthy, Dennis Ritchie and Bjarne Stroustrup.

I never programmed in Euler, PL360 or ALGOL W. But I have to say that Pascal, which I discovered using Turbo Pascal 1.0 in 1988 (36 years ago!!!), was one of the most beautiful prose I had ever seen:

program Hello;
begin
writeln ('Hello, world.');
end.

The semicolon was marvellous (and it was a separator unlike in C where it is a terminator — so, strictly speaking, the one after the writeln is not needed. I loved the begin and the end. This was my first glimpse of structured programming (after having been exposed to spaghetti BASIC).

In 1989, I opted for Computer Science at School Certificate level. I did it privately. For my project, I submitted two programmes: a Mastermind game where one could play against the computer and an encryption / decryption program for files. I wrote both in Pascal which I had discovered and loved one year before.

And, ironically, both programs were rejected by the RCC Computer Science teacher because, well, he did not know evolved programming languages such as Pascal.

Still, I came out first in Computer Science in Mauritius in 1989 but I had to submit a crap program which I had written when I was in Form III. It was in BASIC.

Mauritius has not evolved much in terms of teaching. Schools (including universities) tend to always look backwards instead of trying to imagine and create the future.

Oh well.

Farewell Niklaus Wirth.