Month: May 2020

Humanity and Technology

Spring Edition , May 4th, 2020 The Druk Journal talks to Gerd Leonhard, a well known Europeanfuturist, keynote speaker, author and filmmaker who specialises in the debate between humanity and technology. The Druk Journal: We Bhutanese are asking how far behind are we in technology? The digital literacy in our society is relatively low and...

A Pebble in the AI Race

Spring Edition , May 4th, 2020 Bhutan is sometimes described as “a pebble between two boulders”, a small country caught between the two most populous nations on earth — India and China. This pebble is, however, about to be caught up in a vortex — the transformation of our economic, political and social orders by...

Privacy and Security

Spring Edition , May 4th, 2020 When the internet was invented, privacy was not the main issue. Everyone was too nice, and behaved themselves. Those days, sadly, have gone. The internet that emerged in the 1960s and early 70s was primarily a place for academics, and those technical and curious enough to scale the barriers...

When Your Personal Data Becomes Everyone’s Property

Spring Edition , May 4th, 2020 How the EU adopted a legal framework to protect their citizens’ personal data from being misused or carelessly handled, and to what extent Bhutan can benefit from these (hard earned) experiences. In May, 2018, the European Union implemented a common set of data protection laws — General Data Protection...

The Technology Trap

Spring Edition , May 4th, 2020 An Unashamed Editorial Opinion It is possible that we are lost. From the outside looking in, an interested observer, lacking access to the privy conversation of the nation’s leadership, could be excused for thinking that the drive to bring technology to Bhutan resembles nothing so much as wandering in...

Good, Bad, Neither: Some Reflections on Technology and Culture

Spring Edition , May 4th, 2020 “From the Buddhist point of view, there are two types of mechanisation which must be clearly distinguished — one that enhances a man’s skill and power, and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the...

A Steep Learning Curve: Bhutanese on Social Media

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Teeming Millions As of March 2020, 3.8 billion people in the world (49 percent of 7.7 billion people) are on social media. Of the 7.7 billion, 2.4 billion people (33 percent) are on Facebook, the world’s most widely used social media platform. According to www.datareportal.com, an online digital data...

Science, Technology, and Innovation: Finding a Bhutanese Path

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 A Case in Point for Developing Economies Amid changes and challenges lie opportunities. In the last 300 years, when human civilisation has undergone three industrial revolutions, unprecedented innovation has taken place at fundamental and applied levels. As our civilisation adopts and adapts to the 4th Industrial Revolution, largely leveraging...

Stepping Up Technology to Improve Health Care

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 “…Technologies excite me, as they present immense opportunities for the future. Among the many countries in the world, those which prepare for this change and build the foundations to take advantage of such technological advancements will prosper and develop. Those which are not able to do so will invariably...

ICT Education in Bhutan’s Tertiary Institution

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Industry 4.0 The new Industrial Revolution has dawned. Industry 4.0 has brought about unprecedented changes across economies. Technological disruption in the market, through automation and artificial intelligence and the like, has machines replacing humans in unimaginable ways. Scholars predict that about “five million jobs will be lost within 2020”....

Integration of ICT in Bhutanese Schools – Common Obstacles and the Way Forward

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Introduction Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is crucial for realising the national vision of transforming Bhutan into an IT enabled knowledge based society. To realise this vision, the Royal Government of Bhutan launched the Chiphen Rigphel Project in 2010 with financial assistance of Nu 2.05 billion from the Government...

ICT in Bhutanese Education

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has brought significant changes in almost all aspects of our lives — more so in recent years — and its pace of development shows no sign of slowing down; it is indeed developing faster than ever before. During the 14th Convocation of the Royal...

Bhutan Plans a National Technology Drive – Are We Ready?

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Bhutan plans to move into a new era – a technology-driven phase of development and growth. Spurred by the rapid global momentum in technological innovation, the government is responding to His Majesty The King’s advice – on National Day, 2019 – to articulate a 21st century economic roadmap. So...

The Role of Thimphu TechPark in Bhutan’s Technological and Socio-economic Advancement

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Introduction Science and Technology Parks (STPs) have played an important role in the socio-economic progress and technological advancement of many countries. STPs originated from the US in the 1950s to meet the needs of entrepreneurially-minded academics, to exploit their research results commercially. During the 1990s, an increasing number of...

Digital Transformation for a Sustainable Bhutan

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Frontier Technologies and Digital Transformation for Sustainable Development: The case of Bhutan Introduction The emergence of frontier technologies — such as quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), Big Data, 3D printing and Blockchain — have ignited a series of far-reaching transformations globally. Examples abound — autonomous...

Digital Drukyul – an ICT Masterplan for Bhutan

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 The Beginning Bhutan began looking at Information Communication Technology as a means to improve public service delivery as early as 2004 when a policy document, the Bhutan InfoComm Policy and Strategy (BIPS), was developed by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) to guide ICT development in Bhutan. The...

Editorial

Spring Edition , May 1st, 2020 Bhutan in the Age of Technology “The question I have is how are we able to leverage technology… As a small country, unencumbered by the complexities faced by much larger countries, we can do things faster and better than others. Our institutions can be smart, flexible, responsive, dynamic and...