millionaires without a business card...... by @yekeme

We are now living in an age of networked intelligence, where young people are not only challenging but also disrupting the foundations of conventional wisdom with the power of technology. These breed of techies don’t need any business card to introduce themselves to anybody because their works and inventions are shaping the way we live our lives today.

 

Work is fun for them as they teach us with their disruptive innovations how to ease up our endeavours. They have become masters of their own destinies so much that they don’t need any one to give them direction. They don’t know the destination  themselves, but they understand that with technology as the driver, they’ll arrive safely. Funny enough, they are taking the rest of us along on this journey.

 

Many refer to these genius risk takers as tech entrepreneurs, but I find it safe to tag  them “Millionaires without Business cards.”  Truth is, this is an epoch of opportunities and just about anybody irrespective of background or any impediment can become a millionaire without business card.  The only qualification required is something within your reach which is your determination and vision.  How far you can see? 

 

Recently, I had a conversation with Bosun Tijani, the Co-Creation Hub (C-CHub)  Boss via social media(twitter). A fine gentle man blazing the trail in the Nigerian Tech space who never for once thinks less of how (mobile) Technology can and would transform Nigeria . Interestingly, he shared with me his insights as to the path technology will take in Nigeria and probably the rest of Africa.  His strong belief that tech is at the core of every society is indeed unwavering and for our society to truly tap into the benefits of technology, Bosun advocates , ‘‘we should invest in the cluster to serve as our nucleus for the maker movement.”  He stresses the need to adopt this module if Nigeria plans to encourage  smarter innovations.

 

Already, Innovations and tech Start-ups are springing up within the Yaba area of Lagos which fits typically as the model of clusters Bosun speaks of. The argument, however, remains that if there is ever gonna be a ‘‘maker movement’’, the proliferation of clusters such as Yaba becomes imperative. As these are the places that will give birth to many of these rare breeds – the ” millionaires without business cards.”

 

Nigeria’s tech space already has to its credit innovations such as Pushcv, Tuteria, Paga, Budgit, Wecyclers, and 500 shops, among others. They’re just about some of the smartest ideas strokes shaping life and business through technology. However, what is left is to create better enabling environment through building more clusters. Tech is the future today and no serious nation should treat it with levity. 

 

Besides,  study reveals the trend at which technology is revolutionising communications. If you are reading this piece, fact is, you are probably  one of the over 70% users doing so via platforms like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. To explain the power and pace of mobile technology, there is no better way than revealing that even “The Apollo”- the rocket that took the first men out of the earth-  can not  match, in computing power, the smartphone you are holding at the moment. It can’t even tweet from the space! What a time to be alive!

 

The beauty of it all is that people can from obscurity rise to stardom through the power of the “Internet of Things.” It’s now a world where unknown names are becoming instant celebrities just because of their unique contributions on the internet. Again, if we jealously claim that this is the best time to be alive, can we for once imagine what our world would look like within the next 10 years?

 

To this end, thus, as technology infrastructure expands in Nigeria and the rest of Africa and Startups continue to evolve via creating solutions and meeting the needs of the time more millionaires will emerge. This is in tandem with studies revealing that more brand new tech millionaires pegged within the ages of 20 and 40years old would emerge as innovations grow. We can only imagine what the coming decade will look like? Against this backdrop, I  got one question to ask : “Will you be among these millionaires without business cards?”

 

By….. yek keme

Interested in Culture, Technology and Governance

A CASE FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES.............2

Regardless of the various controversies surrounding the origin of language, the presence of the existence of several widely differing, mutually unintelligible forms of human speech today is undeniable. And although many languages are radically different from one another in structure, the differences are merely apparent since each and every one of them can be used creatively. All languages possess the same creative potential.   

Again a close analysis of the various linguistic groups reveals regularities, patterns and syntactic connections governing the combination of sounds to form words. However, and regardless of this, the representation of objects by sounds or words is arbitrary. The arbitrariness of attaching sounds to objects account for the different linguistic groups.

The sounds which speakers of a linguistic group use in representing ideas, thoughts, experiences and objects are arbitrary in the sense that there is nothing in the objects so called that is representative of the sound. This view that language is arbitrary and a cultural construct implies that an infant learns a language by listening to the speakers of the language of the particular community into which s/he is born; and the words used in the language as well as the particular grammar or syntax of the language have developed historically as a social product and been handed down by tradition. The idea that language is arbitrary is corroborated by various linguists:

 “What we call ‘horse’, the Germans call ‘pferd’, the Frenchman ‘cheval’, the Indian ‘misatim’, and so on; one set of sounds is as unreasonable as any other”.- Bloomfield.

“I want you to remember that words have these meanings which we have given them and we give them meanings by explanations. A word has the meaning someone has given it”. - Wittgenstein.

“Language is a conventional system of habitual vocal behaviour. Before the establishment of a convention, any word could mean anything” – Yuen Ren Chao

“The fact that languages are arbitrary is sufficient evidence that they were invented. In any language, there are conventional ways of combining words to express the relations between ideas. There is no systematic correspondence between the forms of language and its meanings.” – Englefield.

The point to glean from these is that all languages are equal to one another insofar as they perform the function of aiding communication among humans within a given geographical formation. Hence one of the worst disgraces of colonisation, African scholars have said, is the destruction of native languages. The colonialists came in with the impression that everything about Africa is dark and therefore evil – from our skin colour, languages and up to our cultures generally. The impression was that we were inferior to the Whiteman. We must understand that every language is as good as the other. Every language spoken is essentially a tool for communication and once a language performs that function well, then it is as good as any other. Some people think that we are necessarily and eternally condemned through historical exigencies to the use of the English language. This to me is simply false. That we have, up till this time, failed to develop our indigenous languages to the level of creating with and in them is a fact but this has been due to negligence on our part or inability to see the worthwhileness of pursuing vehemently such a task, rather than being an inherent weakness in the languages themselves, neither is it too late to begin from now to do the needful.

 Our fathers and grandfathers had very little or no contact with the English man and his language but that did not affect their creative capabilities. They enjoyed their lives to the full, at least within the context of the social milieu in which they lived, and when the English language did eventually come to them, it was more of a distraction and interference than an asset. This much the late professor tried to describe in his widely read Things Fall Apart.  

A point to note about languages is that embedded in them are all sorts of indications of bygone cultures. This is why historians and especially anthropological linguists pay special attention to the study of different languages, in order to see through into a people’s past. Hence when we study and understand a language, we invariably learn about the history of the people who speak that language, and with it a profound acquaintance with their contemporary culture. It is also worthy to state the role language plays in knowledge acquisition. There is an intimate connection between knowledge and language because knowledge is a body of ideas, concepts and theories about what there is, expressed in one language or another. Man’s ability to pass knowledge from one generation to another is only possible because of the availability of language. Language has the capacity to represent objects and entities with abstract signs and symbols.

 As paradoxical as it may sound, it is also instructive to note that language has a limiting influence on knowledge. There is the view that language directly influences or limits thought and thus determines reality. This is what Ludwig Wittgenstein has systematized into the famous “Picture Theory of Language” with the catch phrases “The Limit of My Language is the Limit of My World” and “What we cannot say, we cannot think either”. Language, curiously has also been described as a mirror, a weapon, and a shield. In this perspective, the position of Sapir and Whorf on the relation of language to thought and behaviour is that language is a “symbolic guide to culture” such that “a change of language can transform our perception of the cosmos”.

We also need to mention the point that language is an evolutionary phenomenon – in other words it is still evolving or developing. Just like culture which is dynamic, language is also dynamic. The dynamism of language is decisively determined by the dynamics of the life experiences of the speakers of the language.

If the speakers of a language do not expect to see a particular word or situation, there will be no word for it. We need to also emphasize on the role language plays in knowledge acquisition. In fact, there is an intimate connection between knowledge and language, because when we talk of knowledge, we are talking about ideas, concepts and theories all expressed in one language or another.

Man’s ability to pass knowledge from one generation to another is only possible because of the availability of language. Language has the capacity to represent objects and entities with abstract signs and symbols. Again, knowledge is best acquired only in the context of one’s own language or mother tongue. It is more difficult to absorb and understand a concept in a secondary language than in one’s first language. This probably explains the challenge of education in Africa considering the fact that students are not taught in their mother tongue but in colonial languages. Even the national policy on education formulated by such eminent scholars as Prof. Babatunde Fafunwa, which among other things, stipulates that the medium of instruction in schools, at least during the formative years, should be in the child’s mother tongue, only exist on paper.

Language is a social product invented by human beings, used by them but again and as paradoxical as this may sound, it is true that the same human beings who invented language also has the capacity to limit and ultimately kill it. How? By simply seizing to speak it! A language cannot be above or live beyond the people that speak it.

By Emmanuel Ogheneochuko Arodovwe

publishers.........yekipedia

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