Kerala - Others

Call to make software products fit for future

Staff Reporter

President's paper presented at seminar

TENHIPALAM: A paper by the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, presented at a seminar on Calicut University campus here on Friday, called upon the scientists to make the infrastructural software products compatible to the future technologies. The paper also stressed the need for attaining self-reliance in the infrastructural software sector with the knowledge products.

The inaugural session of the two-day national seminar on `knowmatics, knowledge technology and knowledge industry: Kerala's development potentialities' saw the presentation of the President's paper on `knowledge products for non-linear growth.' Geeta Pravin, an MPhil student of the Department of Library and Information Science, read out the paper.

India should aspire for producing knowledge products in addition to the linear growth in the IT services and BPO sector, the paper said.

The paper called upon the academic community to use innovation of knowledge products to generate high value-added IT products for becoming a global player. The per capita yield of an Indian knowledge worker is one-fourteenth of a similar worker in the developed nation, it said.

Therefore, the paper suggested, the Governments, industry and the academia to work together to develop and market intellectual property products. That alone can increase the per capita revenue non-linearly for the Indian software industries, it said.

Economic growth for India is fundamentally tied to societal transformation in the knowledge products and service sector, it said. Information, knowledge and communication technology have to be widely deployed in the country's transformation strategy along with newer technologies like biotechnology and nanotechnology, the paper added.

`Share knowledge'

Earlier, inaugurating the seminar, the Vice-Chancellor of Calicut University, Syed Iqbal Hasnain, said that India and Arab countries did not excel in the development of science and technology as they failed to share knowledge. Technology grew in the western countries as they shared knowledge, he said.

Presiding over the seminar, Raju M. Mathew, head of the Department of Library and Information Science, said that knowledge was the reason for the existence of universities, libraries and librarianship. A scientific, mathematical and engineering study of knowledge is the need of the hour, he said, calling upon the universities to come forward to conduct advanced level study and research in knowmatics, knowledge technology, and knowledge industry.

A CD on `20 years of Mathew's Theories of Knowledge and Information Technology' was also released on the occasion.

The seminar, organised by the Department of Library and Information Science in collaboration with Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation and State Bank of Travancore, will conclude on Saturday.

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