Need for world 2.1

NC1253HZ6. Anyone following Indonesian media regarding world cup prediction should be familiar with this code. Deddy Corbuzier, the name of the mentalist previsioned that the code is the key to open the answer question about world cup winner. It turned out that NC1253HZ6 is his user id in youtube – so that you would be directed to video showing that his announcement that Spain would win world cup three weeks before the match. As I am a person who dont believe in any divination, I thought and browsed on tricks behind it, and voila, found the logical reason behind (you can easily google it to get satisfying answer). What I want to say is what happened after people figured out the trick. Some said that he is just cheater (found many facebook user posted this), then here goes the war (in twitter, especially) between the pros and cons.

Similar situation happened in the last few weeks when three Indonesian national public figures were busted due to their sex tape (no need to mention the name, all of you knew already who persons I referred to here are). Twitter, facebook, blog, media (online or tv based) were totally full of news regardhing this. For some days I never spent a day without reading their names. Same with the former, war happened amongst pros and cons – whether or not they should be sentenced to jail.

However, the moment that I cared the most, and I felt so pity about, was when my university punished one of its students not to study there in 3 semesters for racism (cursing another etnic) in his facebook. Was he making mistake as ITB student? I dont know. It is just too weird for me that ITB punished him because of that. Is UU ITE (law concerning electronic information and transaction) not enough? Why did not the provincial government punish him? Why did not the district government? Why did not head of Kecamatan, Kelurahan, RW, or RT? Guess I am getting sarcastic here. My point here is that, I am not sure that, he deserved punishment that bad for doing something that – undeniably – simple. And it is just, “accidentally” he holds ITB student ID card.

Anyway, those three happened. They are all few examples on the effect of what our world currently evolves into – world 2.0. The term “blabla 2.0″ (blabla here can refer to marketing, learning, education, government, etc) started to popular few years ago, marked with the rise of interactively designed website. When first introduced, website – technology that connects almost two third of world population nowadays – was built purely to give information. We visited web address, got some information, navigated through its link, exposed to more information. These days, web users do more than just retrieve it. They can interactively control data (create, edit, delete) over the websites. Blogs, Wikipedia, social networkings, and many others are few of its application – where knowledge are built by interaction from their users.

Then there went so many new terms based on this principle. Business 2.0 is basically how you develop business ideas by asking opinion from its followers. Learning 2.0 is talking about interaction between students and lecturers. Library 2.0 is about providing books whose content is possibly from the readers. And finally, World 2.0 is about people using technology to find better solution for every aspect of life. How to find the location? Use twitter/4sq. How to find old friends? facebook. How to get job? linkedin or younoodle are good. Playing game? So many online ones out there. And many others example.

Simply enough, people are trying to accomodate more and more aspects in this “new world”. Something we never consider before to be able to do through online, becomes common nowadays. Indeed it has never been a bad idea. However, I put three cases in front to remind about one thing, that probably the improvement of this World 2.0 is fast, way too fast that the habit of the people may not be able to follow. All the examples above, and also perhaps Prita case, show that we are still unsure on what we should (or should not) do regarding one event.

Privacy and confidentiality are also important. Also personal security. And phishing. And so forth – can benefit some of us but will cause great damage or loss to many other people. These danger might not be solved by newer technology or world. In fact, smaller investment can provide better result in overcoming the problem – investment called capacity building. Movement – togetherness – to adapt people to current world so that we can become wiser in using the technology. By doing this we dont have to worry about living in this new world.

I called this World 2.1. Not to change radically on the current system or world. Instead, just improving or upgrading our current world to overcome a little bit bug came with this version. Will write more on the capacity building later, but for now, want to ask you guys a bit on one of the example above – does the ITB student deserve that punishment? why or why not? Would be happy to know your ideas. Cheers!

Compromised idealism

I joined quite interesting event yesterday, Indonesian Youth Conference. Basically it is combination of various seminars/talk shows (discussing economy, politics, film, education, etc). I wont discuss much about the event here – you can always check its website at the http://event.indonesianyouthconference.org or follow its twitter tag at #iyc. Here I just want to share (and remind myself especially) about the word mentioned a lot in that event: idealism.

In one of the sessions – film music and photography to be exact, Pandji Pragiwaksono (famous radio broadcaster and presenter) was one of the speakers. He told a story about trash movies, which are a lot this last few years. You may notice which movies I am referring to – for example, most of the movies whose title contains “pocong”. I was always wondering why the hell did the producers make such movies – are they blind? It is true that those movies give you profit in the easiest way (as the cost of making one such movie is quite low, but since some people like it, you will get much money). However, its tradeoffs are just too big to pay – lot of negative mindsets such as irrationality, doing shortcut in life, etc will be arised in society.

However, Pandji told us one reasonable explanation I did not think of before. He said that, amongst all of those low quality movies, there are possibly creators/directors/other staffs who are in the process of realising their idealism in making very good movie, but in order to make that true, they had to be involved in the making of those crap ones. They did so since probably they do not have enough money yet to produce good movies. Or they are collecting experience or knowledge on how to make good movie (in a technical way). Or they need to build relationship or network in movie industry. Only after they gather their ammunitions, will they be able to create inspiring movies.

I am not sure whether there is term for describing that attitude. For me, it is simply a compromised idealism, that if you have very good ideal condition of life that you want to bring into reality (idealism), but it is (almost) impossible except if you adjust it with reality (compromise it).

It’s been a while since last time I heard this idealism word – probably back when I was in college. I was (supposed to be ) active during my undergrad, joining some organizations and committees. Along with other so-called-activists, I was spending quite a lot of time discussing how to solve national problem, stop (or, in a more possible way, reduce) our dependency to western products, etc. Then, it is common that, those idealisms fade or go away when we are graduated and enter real life. Now that I myself experience this phenomenon (joining global company instead of setting up new business or company so that I can create other jobs), I would want to say that those idealisms of mine did not fade. In fact, like example given by Pandji, I am in the middle of trying to realize them.

How? Simply stated, I learn a lot (and by a lot here, I mean A LOT) of new knowledge here in company I am currently working for. A lot of industries (health care, financial services, FMCG, industrial goods, etc). A lot of topics in each industry. A lof ot smart people (with wide variety of background). A lot of problem solving tools and knowledge. And more. I hope that all of them will be beneficial for idealisms of mine to be fulfilled in the future. How? That is what I am still elaborating in the last few months.

I am sure that some of you (especially ones having similar age as me) experience similar stuffs. That you once dreamt really big about our nation, but now end up in a place (country or company) which you probably see no relation with your idealism. Just two cents from me, that wherever you are and how far you are from what you ever thought, you can still always draw straight line directly to your goal. Question only resides within ourselves, are we willing to realize our idealism? or just bury it deep inside our hearts?

Wish us luck – oh, and if you have suggestions, I am more than open!