KUCHING: About 100 members of the media and officers and staffers of the State Information Department attended a gathering organised by the Media and Corporate Communication Division of the Department at The Banquet, 3rd Mile here, yesterday.
The gathering was aimed at fostering closer ties between the Information Department and the media fraternity.
Also present were Director of State Information Department, Abang Sardon Haji Abang Hashim, deputy director of Special Affair Department (JASA) Sarawak, Annuar Hanafi Ardiman Shah, deputy director of Information Department, Ali Suhaili, a representative of the director of Broadcasting Department Sarawak, Alice Wee, a representative of National Film Development Board (FINAS) Sarawak, Hidayat Sirat, a representative of Telekom Malaysia, Sarawak, Hasni Kassan and Acting chairman of Kuching Division Journalists’ Association (KDJA), Jacqueline Nur Atiqah Abdullah.
In his speech, Abang Sardon said the way journalists work had indeed transformed over the last 20 years or so.
The older ones, he said, would remember how journalists would collect news and press releases from the pigeon holes of the Information Department Office and how the black and white photographs were processed in the dark room of the Information Department.
“Now we don’t see the dark rooms any more. Today, with the advent of the Internet nobody needs pigeon holes anymore and also nobody needs photographs from the dark ages.
“In this period of the fourth industrial revolution journalists are not only concerned about writing reports, they are obsessed with the velocity system, smart phone, digital cameras, electronic gadgets and big data.
“Industrial 4.0 is all about transformation and who knows there will be a day when editor will just assign a robot journalist to cover a function.
“The speed of technological process break-through, there is no historical precedence in this fourth industrial revolution.
“The future is happening around us, so who can blame Abang Jo for his visionary aspiration in transforming the economy by way of digital transformation,” he said.
During the early 1990s (1994) when he met Abang Jo for an interview he (Abang Jo) was already talking at length about the challenges we are facing in using the Internet.
“The Digital Economy was coined in 1995 and today we are at the threshold of just realising it for the state of Sarawak,” he said, adding that today people are already talking about bitcoins.
