The cartoon makes a jibe at the fad about machine learning and artificial intelligence. However, the issue runs more profound in the scholarly community or otherwise
Seems familiar? The situation is not restricted to the countries with developing science community but reflects how big names, gimmicks, and fads sway millions of people.
Very early on in our lives, we are taught to start associating a sense of hierarchy among different disciplines. When it comes to making a career decision, even the so-called ‘analytical people’ hardly use any critical judgment about the quality of the information we base our life decisions on.
Not convinced? Let’s elaborate on this a bit more.
When one looks around; broken roads, overflowing drains, ill-planned constructions one’s instinct says that we need well trained civil engineers to fix the most glaring problems of dilapidated infrastructure. Unfortunately, many civil engineers would instead prefer IT jobs. No doubt that there are plenty of benefits of working in an IT sector, but does it need to come at the expense of losing the bright minds in another stream?
Similarly, we need decades worth of hard work and restructuring to fill the void being created in the primary sciences education. A country has no future in engineering, medicine or anything without developing a strong base in fundamental sciences. However, here again, many of us queue up at the gates of engineering and medical colleges. Fundamental science is pursued, almost universally, when the HOT APPLIED SCIENCE colleges close their doors.
It’s daunting to imagine such a skewed society!
Nurturing a delicate balance is essential. We need excellent scholars among us who can uplift different perspectives of our society and aesthetic means of expression, that make any other scholarly pursuits meaningful. Of course we need equal scholarship opportunities, infrastructures, generous support and security for a field to flourish. However, lucrative incentives are not enough to sustain in the long run.
One of the keys to turning our destiny is to start using our wisdom and judgment in choosing our calling. Great careers and great nations are built by the people guided by a larger-than-self vision, driven by passion and steadied by confidence, not by herds driven fear and buzzwords.
About the cartoonist
Sujit is currently a member of the faculty at IIIT Bangalore. His research interests are in software engineering, programming languages, and education technology. When he is not teaching, building computer software or doing research, he indulges in a variety of other passions. Cartooning, sketching, and watercolor come at the top. But not much lower are writing blogs and articles for newspapers, mostly on topics centered around education. All this is an output of hours and hours of idle conversations with himself and friends. This activity is called adda in Indian languages and is every Bengali’s real passion.
About the editor
The contents of Club SciWri are the copyright of PhD Career Support Group for STEM PhDs (A US Non-Profit 501(c)3, PhDCSG is an initiative of the alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The primary aim of this group is to build a NETWORK among scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs).
This work by Club SciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
