Science & Tech are divine tools – Ekuwem

Immediate past national president of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, has outlined the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in ensuring a technology-driven economy.

Addressing participants at a recent Internet for Job (I4J) seminar at the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO) organized by the school and Nigeria Internet Group (NIG) as guest speaker, Dr. Ekuwem who also is the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC), Teledom Group, said that Science and Technology are divine tools for man to conquer the world.

Also, he said that in Science man seeks to know and unravel the mysteries by “piercing the cloud of the unknown, defeat ignorance, conquer fear and superstition and at the end when applied to technology gives a better lives.

Every second, he said, something new is known, describing economy as “practical administration and/or adjustment and/or organisation and management of resources to deliberately to ensure sustainable growth and development of a society and better the lot of the citizenry.”

According to him, ICT progressively engenders a competitive edge for any society that accepts and adapts it to their advantage.

Production, he said, has become proactive actions that could be relevant terms for stages and progress of human civilization of people, society, thus, production as an economic activity aids growth.

Economic development at this century, he said, has become competitive globally, since ICT has made the world a global village, so there is no longer local economy, which must strive to satisfy the well-being, human needs, food, shelter and health.

He urged participants at the seminar to remember the Biblical divine order “go and multiply and subdue the earth,” stressing that civilization is a divine mandate and such, science and technology are divine tools as well as common heritage.

He also reminded the gathering made up largely of students that education means liberation from ignorance.

Knowledge of the present, Ekuwem said, provides the building blocks to build into the future to discover new knowledge.

“Ideas or knowledge are the building blocks of every creative society,” he declared, hence, a living society is necessarily dynamic in the sense that a social system of continuously available new knowledge is crucial for human development.

As said by him, the present body of knowledge is cross-sectoral, therefore, it is about all of human life, noting that knowledge in one component of life can be applied in others.

“There are therefore as many ‘small or tiny’ reservoirs of knowledge as there are human beings and human settlements scattered all over the world,” he said.

Hitherto, these “tiny” reservoirs of knowledge existed in isolation in manual and physical forms and could only be accessed by physical human movements to their locations

Ekuwem maintained that there would be as many physical routes to these knowledge locations as there are human beings and human settlements.

But for progress of civilization, academia offers the process of knowledge transmission and acquisition is institutionalized and made sustainable in very conducive environments.

“… From the teachers to the students who can in future become teachers,” he asserted.
The former NIG president equally said that in research and development of body corporate, this process is directed not at teaching but at targeted business interests, proving the impetus that “Knowledge is power, mainly because it empowers the possessor and these “tiny” reservoirs of knowledge, isolated and scattered all over the globe were accessible to very, very few.”

Pointing out that because of the isolation, their updates and refreshments were not made very often, with external access being difficult if not impossible, hence leading to many instances of “re-invention of the wheel.”

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