Dear Editor,
This July month’s experiences of extended blackouts (the absence of ‘power and light’) raise the speculation of how some of our village agencies would respond to the ‘real’ demands of a new ‘virtual’ technological environment.
Immediately there needs to be a consensual definition of what in fact could be ‘normal’ in as yet an unpredictable pandemic, and post-pandemic world.
Agencies that boast of sophisticated (but not necessarily logical) ‘paperlessness’ may still have to grapple with the assured supply of power to their customers and clients who are expected to conduct ‘intelligent’, even though ‘artificial’, relationships.
The UK government, recognising the projected communication gap, has already begun to provide the requisite technological support equipment, in anticipation specifically of children having to learn in a real ‘virtual’ environment – a substantive increase in a creatively designed budget. Hopefully, not only would our village leaders learn from such an example; but it would appear to be an exceptional opportunity for them to collaborate with private entrepreneurship, as a matter of urgency, on the overall benefits to be derived from implementing a joint strategy aimed at fast-forwarding the upliftment of the education and training so fundamental to the development of our human resources of the future.
It is in this immediate connection that reliable power supply becomes an indispensably dependent fundamental.
But apart from individual agencies reacting to the challenges inherent in the rampant advances of technology, there must be concerted determination to grasp the nettle of transforming ‘virtuality’ into the ‘reality’ of preparing families for growth within a ‘normalcy’ that would not remain just ‘new’.
And while all await the anticipated inputs of an oil and gas economy, there still needs to be insistence on competent leadership out of the current tunnel of darkness into light – day and night.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
