Made in Pakistan
The 4th edition
Salam
Assalam Alaikum and welcome to the 4th edition of my Made In Pakistan newsletter. I’m happy that we’ve made it to the 4th edition as when I started this newsletter I wasn’t sure if I could keep the momentum up and keep writing. And if you’ve been a subscriber from the 1st edition, you might have noticed there is no set schedule for the newsletter. I’ve done this on purpose, as based on my current projects, I’m unsure if I can meet the weekly or the fortnightly publishing target. So the goal is to keep releasing new editions, until this becomes a regular habit. Speaking of habits, there is one habit, which we all have and can’t control, “Procrastination”. Here is a very cool Ted Talk on procrastination which I’ve often used in my lectures (in my previous life, I was a professor).
Creative Pakistani Projects
One of the things that fascinates me a lot is the interjection of technology with different fields. For example, there is wearable electronics, where electronics is being embedded into fashion (read clothes), like the work of Anouk Wipprecht a Dutch American Techno Artist, whose Spider dress practically implements the definition of personal space.
Then there is using code to generate art, you can use processing language that has been the go-to language for Digital Artists as well as visualisations. The image below has been created in processing. By the way we teach it to young kids 8-14 at LearnOBots STEM Camps.
*Image from http://programminginprocessing.com/
Then there is digital activism, if you haven’t then you have to read the story of Aaron Swartz who was sued by US govt. for releasing research papers into the open from the MIT network, that were otherwise locked under subscriptions. Aaron eventually committed suicide, and documentary on his life is a must watch.
Then there is the Japanese Professor / Artist at MIT and University of Tokyo, Sputniko (who explores the boundaries of technology and culture. I attended one of her lectures in Tokyo and her projects are to say the least very creative and different.
However what I really want to talk about is the work of 3 Pakistani artists / musicians Jahanzeb Safdar, Changez Basir and Daniyal Ahmed who are working on the crossroads of arts and technology. Their performance at 2019’s momentum conference was pretty amazing and their channel Karachi Community Radio has interesting content. These guys code live music using Python programming language which makes it very creative. Have a look at their performance below.
Python is a very powerful language that is very easy to use and recommended for beginners. It can be used for developing applications in AI, Data Science, visualisations as well as hardware. In fact it is so easy that we teach this to young kids at LearnOBots, so if you have any younger siblings or cousins, feel free to recommend them our upcoming camps. Details are on our FB page.
Pakistan and Space
In my last edition I talked about how we can learn from Elon Musk’s (apologies for the typo in Elon’s name last time) SpaceX. In this post I want to further dwell on the fact that just after SpaceX successfully put Americans in Space after almost a decade, within the next few days they launched another 60 satellites which is part of their global high speed internet initiative. And right after that we had satellite launch from Rocketlab. After watching these back to back launches, I was reminded of the scene from the movie Gattaca, where we are shown rocket launches every few minutes. It seems like we are very much approaching that future where Space flight and rocket launches will become a norm like Air travel. I just wish and hope, I can hop on one of these flights soon In Sha Allah.
However the question that I would like to ask here to generate a discussion, is where do we (Pakistan) stand in all of these milestones that are being achieved by humanity. It is extremely important to start this discussion and start thinking about our role that we must play to become a space nation. I believe this is not even hard anymore and private companies around the world are proving that. Some of the ways that come to my mind include
Promoting Space and its allied subjects
Promoting private companies to get interested in this field by creating conducive policies
Explore if our coastal areas like Gwadar and Balochistan can be used as Space ports for private companies like SpaceX or RocketLab or maybe Chinese private space enterprises
Make this conversation part of our culture, by creating content and pushing it on different mediums
Inspire today’s generation to take up this challenge for Pakistan
Future of Pakistan
I’ve been working on this last point (Inspire today’s generation to take up this challenge) for the past 6 years at LearnOBots, which I co-founded in 2014. We have worked with thousands of Pakistani children inspiring them to become Makers, Scientists and inventors. My dream is to see Pakistanis create all kinds of tech and solve all our and then world problems using tech and eventually become world leaders in Science and Technology. I hope to see more high quality Pakistani products like cars, rockets and high speed trains all Made in Pakistan.
This reminds me of a wonderful product that was developed in Pakistan, and I wish it still existed so I could buy one for myself. I’m talking about Adam Motor Company’s Zabardast Jeep. At the time of its launch it was a very highly rated Jeep with great performance. Unfortunately the company went bust, which is a story for another day.
One of the ideas that has been stuck in my head for quite a long time is to create a Science & Technology channel for Pakistan. There is serious dearth of such content that is localized, and shows the science and tech happening in Pakistan. In fact, this newsletter and its content is probably step 0.01 of that dream. If anyone of you have an interest in this area, I’d love to talk to you and at least have a conversation on how we can do this. Let’s hope I’m able to get success in my current projects, so I can work towards this one as well! Feel free to reach out if you have any ideas on which we can work together towards this goal!
Cool Pakistani Products
I met Zaid and Nasir of EjaatTech in Karachi initially and then Nepal where we were part of an accelerator together. They are true makers/ hackers and their work shows that. One of the cool line of products that they have are learning tools for kids. I’ve seen their journey, from idea to execution, and the products look really cool. I would highly recommend exploration of their products play planks and tiny polka dot.
Recommended Book to Read
I love reading and the book that I’m reading these days is Michio Kaku’s “The future of Humanity”. The book is pretty cool and from 2018. If you’re interested in Tech and the future this one is a must read.
Cool Hack of the day
As part of our internal engineering hackathon at LearnOBots we make and break things. We had a few old 3D printers lying around that were of no use as we could not order new parts for them. So we hacked them and created two cool new projects out of them. A laser engraver and a CNC machine. The CNC one was also featured on Hackaday’s daily feed.
If you’ve read this far, you probably liked it. And if you liked it, please spread the word. Until next time!