A presentation by Bro. Riduan Tony Lim Abdullah, a lecturer at UTP's Mgmt & Humanities (M&H)is an eye-opening one for me. Being someone who like to read on philosophical subjects, Futures Studies could be the next extension of my interest. Actually, other than surface reading of futuristic works of Huntington, Naisbit, Toffle in the 90s, I have never thought of Futures Studies as a discipline by itself.
In the presence of other lecturers of M&H Dept, I have the chance to interact with the experienced especially Prof Murad whose profile I admired. While presenting his points, Bro. Riduan has stimulated the audience to explore more of Future Studies as a new potential field in UTP. The fact that I am not myself a lecturer does not stop me from making myself an active part of the discource.
Some points worth to note :
- Futures Studies (FS) has been a discipline in developed nations and possible, probable and preferred future in significant number events has taken place in accordance to the results of researches in Future Studies.
- Experts in FS has influenced many important policies and decision-makings at the highest government levels as well as globally.
- Future is an extension of the past.
- Prof Murad shared the idea of circular evolution of the past, present and future as being the theory put forward by Ibnu Arabi and Jalaluddin ar-Rumi. Based on that theory, past, present and future are not view as linear especially in the religious context.
- Among the popular methodologies in FS research is the Delphi method.
- Futures, as it connotes, should be seen as possibilities/probalities of many future events, not singular, based on the past and current scenario.
- Many reputable higher learning institutions has taken FS seriously due to the important role of FS experts in helping to guide the direction of other disciplines of study to encounter future events. So, basically, FS is an inter-disciplinary field that is accomodative of whatever background a researcher was earlier trained in.
- A question poised by Puan Khalidah of whether is significant difference between economic planning and FS is quite bugging. I think Bro Riduan has handled that question accurately by poniting out there may be similarities between the economic planning from the economists point of view where the two disciplines intersect but being a holistic/encompassing approach studying the future, FS does not equate economic planning as a whole.
- The intriguing question about FS is about where the FS graduate can apply their field of specialty is so much influenced by the commercialisation of knowledge nowadays. I think Mr Asriddin has pointed out a good argument when he mentioned that the problem arises when people tend to tied up learning and job prospects. In my opinion, that is where intellectual capacity is kept captive. People lose interest in anything that shows no monetary return to them. I am not surprised to hear such a pragmatic way of questioning for reason that a field FS promise no future for the enthusiast due to the present trend of learning in Malaysia.
As for UTP, I personally feel that FS should be at least a subject to learn. It will be more interesting if is a programme offered at PG level to support UTP's TP to accelerate the UTP's phase in achieving full-pledged RU status.
I believe everyone in the room enjoyed the mind-boggling discussion and I hope to have opportunity to be part of any similar discourse in the future.
Thanks, Bro Riduan, Prof Murad and all my colleagues in M&H.
No comments:
Post a Comment