Speech by Academician Yefim Malitikov
Chairman of the Interstate Committee of the CIS
Chairman of the CIS Interstate Committee for Knowledge Dissemination and Adult Education,
President of the International Association «Znanie»
Use of the IACSS integrated telecommunication and information resources for the solution of humanitarian problems
Ladies and Gentlemen, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues,
Academicians of the International Academy of Astronautics!
Since the dawn of life, it has been characteristic of humans to want to learn from nature and, at the same time, to study nature with great interest and enthusiasm. Curiosity and thirst for knowledge have steadily expanded the boundaries of research, drawing beyond the horizons of the unknown, not only on earth, but also beyond its limits.
Man’s conquest of space is unequivocally one of the most important turns in the history of human society’s development. This turn of development has expanded the sphere of reason, the sphere of interaction between nature and society.
Man’s entry into space changed the worldview views on the relationship between nature and society, made the hypothesis about the possibility of practical human activity in space a reality, opened up a new direction in the development of civilization, and in this is its enduring scientific significance.
Cosmonautics became a common, everyday attribute of human life activity and directly affects the affairs of the Earth and thereby helps people in their work.
Nevertheless, man and humanity as a whole are and still are helpless in the face of challenges and dangers of the Nature of the Earth and the Universe. In turn, the planet, having accumulated a critical mass of unreasonable activities of Man, powerfully and adequately pays us with man-made and natural cataclysms, exchanging its vulnerability for human casualties and losses.
But human civilization, reacting sharply to every fact of violent loss of life, is forced to put up with the outbursts of Nature. Like the birds, humans bury their heads under their wings in the face of the universe’s little predictable threats. Because it cannot be opposed, it cannot be judged or punished. She is the Almighty’s judge!
Nature and human activity on Earth are in a state of inconsistency, for which mankind pays with natural and man-made disasters, which threaten not only the fragmented world economy and the local internecine mentality of states and governments, but also the sustainable development of life on Earth.
Statistics of natural disasters confirm the need for a reverse restructuring of human debt to Nature. It is a tragic list of increasing cataclysms that reminds us of unreasonable human activity on Earth and looks depressing.
According to scientists, 2.7 billion people on the entire planet were affected by natural disasters in one way or another in the «two-thousand» years. As it is not difficult to calculate, this is more than one in three inhabitants of the Earth.
21.09.2013. at the Summer Palace
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In this regard, an integral part of the MAKSM are educational and outreach activities and the World Knowledge Exchange on the basis of space telecommunications, capable of effectively counteracting the destructive processes that no single economy in the world can cope with.
Traditional education, due to its inertia, does not keep up with the changing world. And the world is changing radically before our eyes, shaping a new scientific paradigm for the 21st century. Of course, the new generation, is no longer enough of the old information and intellectual resource.
For centuries knowledge has been represented as a limited volume that can be mastered only within school or university walls. In the information society, however, this volume is no longer enough for the rest of our lives; there are no lifelong pipelines of knowledge.
Modern universities and centers of learning must build and possess their own space teleporters, becoming, in essence, telecommunications companies for the exchange of mutually accepted best content. All of them should be involved in the export-import of knowledge through a single distribution teleport, which becomes the Planetary Knowledge Exchange, delivering it on demand to any end of the world, to any consumer — from the «individual» to the university.
In turn, the Exchange should collect, process, translate, providing subtitles and simultaneous translation, this knowledge into any language, freeing the younger generation and adults from the crippling costs and costly pilgrimage for knowledge to other cities and countries, Tretyakovqs and Louvres based on the cost of expensive travel and the cost of stay.
Assuming a noble educational mission and becoming a technical base for the exchange dissemination of knowledge, the MAKSM project will have every reason to accelerate the payback of its costs and the gratitude of posterity.
The digital divide should become a digital opportunity, not an abyss.
We have no one to blame or understudy for the disruption of sustainable development and the preservation of the Earth’s biodiversity. The instinct to preserve the species, a tertiary tool, lags behind the destructive processes going on on Earth, just as the classroom-lesson system of education with knowledge changing every 30 years of the last century does not satisfy the laws of global governance productivity.
Lifelong education is the tool, the rod that will loosen the grip of poverty and violence, create jobs, and minimize chaotic migration. Life without education is a worthless existence. Power without education is stupid and murderous. A country without adult education laws is a field overgrown with noxious weeds.
This can be facilitated by the desire of any state to make the MAKSM project a priority of its policy and implement the New Philosophy and formula «Education — through life!» as part of the laws and constitutions, and then the mental attitude of human civilization.
It is necessary to implement this formula in all the efforts of states to confront the global problems of all mankind.
Interaction with one’s own government is always less effective than diversified diversified relations and contacts with a coalition of states looking back at each other.
This is why almost 50 states are involved in space programs today, having overcome bureaucratic hurdles and already created their own space agencies without space launch sites or their own space industry.
At the same time at the disposal of mankind there is accumulated experience, measuring and forecasting equipment which allows with the joint political will of the states and their leaders to minimize human casualties and destruction of material assets.
Not all of the projects under discussion are destined to come to fruition, but science does not develop otherwise. It is only through contradictions and mistakes that progress is made. But even achievements can be quickly devalued if new methods of work are not mastered that quickly meet the challenges of our time.
Thank you for your attention!