Soapbox:

New thinking is no option

By Samir Sobhi

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New thinking is the hallmark of our age. The modern world is developing beyond our wildest dreams, with scientists thinking up new ways of meeting our needs and of creating needs that we don't know yet that we have. Science is challenging our views of the universe while relentlessly changing our lifestyle. Inventions have gone from the pre-industrial to the post-industrial and on to the futuristic.

I remember when technology invaded newsrooms in the 1960s, totally transforming the business of making newspapers. Since then, high-tech gadgets made instant reporting a fact of life. Television stepped into the foray, with blow-by-blow coverage since the early 1990s. Think back to the Gulf War. Think back to 9/11. It's no longer about what happened yesterday, but about what is happening right now, in any part of the world. This is globalisation, and it's what we live now.

The first global news agency was Agence Havas, now the AFP, created in 1835. Since then, satellites and digital technology have taken us into a world where everything seems possible. As technology developed, so did our relationship with information. Some people now want to criminalise the censorship or blocking of information. We have grown so addicted to information that infringement on our right for immediate access to news is deemed criminal.

Scientists are working on artificial genetic codes, artificial intelligence, and artificial body parts. They are surprising us all the time and will keep doing so. Decades ago, we thought that the good life was about food and housing. Now the essence of life is coming in a digital form. And new thinking is no longer an option.

This week's Soapbox speaker is deputy editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram .

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/860/op7.htm