by Mark Nyambang May 5, 2010, Wednesday
AS I was reading a pull-out from a newspaper recently, I noticed that half of it was filled with advertisements and the other half, with reviews on IT products and services. I browsed through the latest prices for laptops, computer parts and all the snippets on the latest technologies offered by international and local service providers.How time flies, I thought to myself, with all these hard-to-keep-up-with technologies that keep on emerging every single day. This scenario is a far cry from what we used to experience in the mid-90s. At that time, the word ‘computer’ itself could imply the financial status of a family because of its price tag.
Well, fast forward to 2010, now the computer has become affordable and is a must-have for each household. Almost every single home has at least one personal computer or a laptop nowadays. The information technology sector has grown tremendously and has moulded our state into a very competitive ICT (Information and Communication Technology) player in the country.
International microchip producers and computer memory manufacturers have long supplied us with job opportunities, by setting up their factories here and directly boosting our economic growth. Internet services are also getting affordable and have erased endless boundaries for young entrepreneurs who use web services as their marketing tools.
We know about the iPad, Blackberry and all those high-tech gadgets because the media feeds us with the latest updates almost every single day. But still, the media’s reporting of our local ICT developments is still under par if compared with those in neighbouring countries. What we can see, hear and read today is only coverage on ICT events or extracts from speeches, gadget promotions and also reviews of ICT happenings from international papers.
The benefits and challenges of utilising ICT faced by the community, especially people in rural areas — these are the things that should be highlighted as well, on a regular basis. It would be most interesting to know how ICT influences or impacts the people’s lives today.
We would like to know whether our Tuai Rumah use spreadsheets to record any deaths or births in their longhouses? If not, how can we help to change that, so they will have a proper profile of their villagers? And what is the progress of participants of the RIGHT programme, which was started by Sains a few years back,? Did they succeed in helping their own circle of community? Or how would we know if our local kek lapis entrepreneur from Petra Jaya or handicraft craftsman from Bau are maximising the ability of the Internet to market their products? If they are, perhaps sharing their experiences would serve as eye-openers or inspirations to others. The mass media would play a most useful role here.
Success stories are not the only ones that should be shared. We also need to address the challenges faced by those who are still being left out in terms of enjoying the fruits of ICT development in the state. There should be a measuring tool or some kind of benchmark for people to know how much we have achieved in ICT and the local media could become the medium to provide the rakyat much needed information.
By now, ICT should not be regarded as an intimidating subject for media practitioners with all the jargon and difficult translations. It should be a daily subject, a norm, just like how we anticipate political and entertainment news in our media.
The reporting on ICT should be able to get readers excited about ICT updates, just like the excitement created when England’s soccer team qualified for the 2010 World Cup. ICT news should be the catalyst to move our society to be more knowledgeable and to steer them on the right track to a K-economy based society.
This year, Sains and Azam, together with Unimas are setting up a ‘virtual’ network to link media practitioners, focusing on those who are interested in covering ICT development and its impact on our communities in Sarawak. This network will provide them with the necessary up-to-date information and related activities for them to help enhance reporting on ICT development in our local media.
With this network, we hope that more news on ICT development around the state will be highlighted in our media. Maybe by doing this, not only will our society have a much better understanding of ICT, but hopefully it will elevate their skills and the further use of those skills to make a better living.
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