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In 1979 I was in my second year in college
when my professor told us that in 1956
a meeting was held at the MIT in California..
The meeting was to establish a new Computer Science discipline called Artificial Intelligence.
The project was to build a machine that mimics human intelligence and surpasses human brain capabilities by the end of the 20th century.
He also told us at then that computers will defeat human beings in chess in a few years.
And this is what happened later in one of sciences great moments when Kasbarov lost against a computer.
Now that we are in the 21th century and thinking back I can say that it was an unreal aspiration since science did not completely figure out yet how the human brain functions, either then or now.
Especially since we know that the human brain was formed through millions of years of continuous biological evolution.
However, already in many fields computers have surpassed human brain and is there in all aspects of our lives. [Slide: Let’s learn how to rub Solomon’s ring of the modern era, through learning the computer applications to unleash infinite abilities]
Learning about computers is our only hope to come out of our miserable conditions.
It is like Solomon's ring known in mythology and legends. As the moment you rub it, an omnipotent genie with large wings comes out.
Think of the gem on the ring as the computer screen and rubbing it means interacting with this computer by learning its languages and applications, etc.
After all these experiments I can say that we have arrived at a new moment in history survival is no longer of the strongest or smartest - unfortunately-
but to those who can rub the ring and unleash this genie and benefit from it.
The most important point is that this is our only way from the reality we live in, being the language of the time, the better we learn it the more advanced we can become.
We relation as Arab nations with this science is very fragile, shallow and empty.
Many of us think that because they can send emails, browse online and chat on Facebook they have entered the digital world.
On the contrary, this is like defining human beings as a creature that breathes, drinks and eats only, while there are much more important abilities.
This genie has two wings, I'll consider one wing as the programs and applications in all fields of life
from the GPS that takes you to your destinations to online search engines which by entering a few words comes back to us with the world's knowledge on a plate.
Even this is considered primitive as the future trend is as I told you in the MIT project, is to make computers more intelligent than people.
For example if you search on google: what are the locations with romantic names, the results will be disappointing as it will provide results which includes the words locations and romantic.
Search engines are mainly linguistic, i.e. word related and so there is no reasoning yet and so the actual answer for our question will not be found this way.
Now work is being done to transform knowledge to an ontology understood and processed by computers on their own. And when this happens the computer will give results such as "Lovers beach in Aden, Love Valley in Turkey, etc"
The second wing which is very important is the multimedia digital text and its knowledge ontology. This text is everything, lectures, books, experts' reports, chat on Facebook, in short everything written on the Internet.
The difference between this text and what is available in print is like the difference between heaven and earth, like between pre-electricity time and now.
Digital text has amazing characteristics, first of all it is weightless so we can have a million books in one digital flash-drive without any change in its original weight. It is aerial text can be found like clouds anywhere, on IFONE on computers on watches, etc.
It is threaded, could link to texts in Japan, or anywhere. This is extraordinary before a few decades was unimaginable. And this is now the real treasure for humanity, the black gold.
It can bring you anything, and answers to all your quests only if you know how to rub this magical ring.
Examples of these important text collections is Wikipedia, which made paper encyclopedia as if from stone age.
A collaborative encyclopedia made by people from around the world has become the knowledge gate for all.
Because of this property, a huge digitizing process is taking place of all existing printed text.
We are not talking about scans, because this is not digitizing.
Because scans are incomprehensible by computers.
But digitization projects which exist in all cultures except the Arab civilization
Projects began decades ago
In 2007 google digitized a million books and every year large numbers of books are being digitized,
while we are lost outside the planet when it comes to such issues.
There are also what s known as big data projects where every day huge labs full of computers suck in millions of online pages from around the world in many languages to collect and categorize them using intelligent programs to create summaries about human beings, history, economic impacts, intelligence information ,etc.
The entire humanity and its knowledge is streamed into such gigantic hubs
This is why we should write regularly and orderly because everything we write automatically becomes part of this knowledge hub.
It is like we listen or make life's symphony and document it in the same time.
And this is why I invite everyone to continue writing.
Unfortunately the Arab civilization is at rock bottom today when it comes to science. And we repeatedly relive several tragedies. For example, the Arabic language has no knowledge infrastructure.
All civilizations have been working for decades opening knowledge gates to place its knowledge wealth in its own language as digital texts categorized by scientific and humanitarian fields, math, physics, etc.
In this issue, Arabic does not exist.
For example I talked about Wikipedia,
Arabic presence is so minimal and is considered a language without ammunition without terminology and falling behind the times
For example pages in Polish are ten folds what has been produced by the entire Arab civilization.
Arabic suffers from a translation anemia and we know how important translation is.
While the Arabic civilization in the middle ages flourished because of translation from other cultures,
now the basic reference books are not found in Arabic.
Because of the lack of translation we continue to ignore and not be aware of the other, or see ourselves not only in our own self-absorbed mirror but through the other’s eyes.
Arabic remains a language without a digital reader which is a tool used to transform a printed text to digital text,
this is available for most languages including Persian which is in Arabic script except Arabic language.
Unbelievable considering the financial wealth and size of this civilization.
Arabic is a poor language does not have blogging wealth, etymology thesaurus showing the history and origins of words and this is because of those dark-minded people who prevent this although pioneer Arab linguistics such as Al-Asmaie, Al-Khalil Al-Farahidi and others created Kitab Al-Ayn, the first Arabic dictionary and other similar references.
Arabic lacks correction technologies, as there are jungles of linguistic mistakes online and unfortunately they dominate statistically.
In other words the number of wrongly written words are much more and could dominate one day.
In general we have miles to go and I could use this metaphor describing us compared to the world: if before the digital project the west was a rabbit and we were a tortoise,
Now the rabbit has gotten wings because of this technology and the tortoise lost a leg, increasing the gap.
Despite the many conferences we keep holding and such events.
What I want to emphasize is because of globalization and education technology this genie's two amazing wings are available to anyone and each one has the same access like anyone whether in Toralbaha [town in Yemen] or in New York.
You all have the same chance,
for example, Java programs, a well-known programming language can be downloaded whether in Toralbaha to anyone else.
Yes it is true that our local seeker may have more difficulties and has to search and work harder but it remains available.
What I am trying to tell you is that the solution is here, Solomon's ring is yours, you just have to make more effort to utilize it and make it work.
I encourage you to try again and have self motivation and bring out that spiritual Sophism passion which is part of our heritage.
To regenerate ideas and maintain an updated mentality that would allow us through using this genie to catch up with the world and create something new.
There are some places which you can find inspiration that could give you hope.
One of my inspirations came from the Padre Padrone by the Taviani brothers in 1977. This film received a Can Festival award in 1979.
I think this film could be inspirational to everyone because tells you that nothing is impossible.
The story is about Gavino Ledda who from Sardinia island in south Italy who was illiterate until he was 21 years old.
The film starts by the brutal father pulling him out of school after just two months of starting basic school.
So that this boy attends to the family sheep in an isolated village living under his hard father's dictatorship, and hence does not get any education until he is 21 years old.
That's when he was called for military duty and learned how to read and write through night school and by the time he was 40 he became a university professor in Italy.
This is a real story and this man lives until today to tell his story.
There is hope. My belief is that solution is the digital genie and we must learn how to rub its ring to fulfill our dreams..
Thank you