BANTUL, Suara Muhammadiyah– Massive development on technology has insisted people to adapt on changes. Hence, building an innovation, has considered as a key to survive in this fast changing era. Innovation hasn’t only offered a new way of getting things done, but also taking other things into account such as social, environmental, and also financial aspects. This has been a primary attention for the 3rd International Conference on Sustainable Innovation (ICoSI) held by Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, at Sportorium, on July 30-31.
Attended by 925 participants from 15 countries, Rector of UMY Gunawan Budiyanto in his Opening Ceremony Speech emphasized the importance of sustainability in terms on innovation building. To him, the ideal innovation should be in a form discovery of new way on development which can increase the welfare of all mankind.
“Basically, all forms of development tend to have an effect on nature. Thus, the implementation of all kinds of innovation have to be able to improve efficiency and productivity with very less or even without negative impact to all life.”
Given an example in number of autonomous devices and robotics technology that have been widely used to replace jobs previously run by human. “In various cases, this is going to be an acute phenomena especially in highly populated countries like Indonesia,” he said.
In the case of Indonesia, there are many labor intensive works that still depend on manpower, from building reconstruction, agriculture to community development. Thus, these have become the major concern in various discussions on how innovation can’t emphasize solely on the benefit of its practicality and efficiency.
“We hope that the most current innovations can do more than just putting harm into human and humanity.”
UMY Vice Rectoron Academic Sukamta expected that 3rd ICoSI can be such a medium for disseminating various new research findings so that can contribute many perspectives on facing disruptions. The discussion will be focused on 3 major fields such as Technology, Social Humanities and Education, Health and Nursing which later to be broke down into 9 focal conference : ISHERSs (International Symposium on Social Sciences, Humanities, Education, and Religious Studies); ICIEFI (International Conference of Islamic Economic and Financial Inclusion); ICISDe (International Conference on Islamic Studies in the Digital Era) ICoSA (International Conference on Sustainable Agriculture); ISCEIE (International Symposium of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering); ICONURS (International Conference on Nursing); ICoELTICs (International Conference of English Language Teaching, Literature & Linguistics); ISETH (International Symposium of Engineering, Technology, and Health Sciences); ASIAN-Col (ASIAN Conference on Comparative Laws).
Alberto Gomes, the La Trobe University Professor based in Spain highlighted that the humanity has already at its stake. About 68 percent of world forest has been destroyed, 80 percent of world rivers can no longer sustain the life under, including the global warming threat that has also been worsened in past decades. All we can do is to revisit the old tradition by teaching the nobility to new generations.
“We can do it by regenerating the old tradition using the new way of thinking. Because we can’t discover new findings with the destructive way of thinking. May be it is possible to practice the old way on solving the current problems,” he said in his speech.
For Alberto, Asian culture and values potentially giving a great impact for the future of mankind. Since the destruction of nature mostly generated from human activities, it is imperative to invest by spreading the ecocentric values.
“Asian noble values and perspectives can be incorporated with the new thinking to solve the current problems. I use to think that the ecological problems had been caused by the ecosystemic disturbance. Now I know I was wrong. It was actually caused by our ego, greed and apathy. We can handle this by transforming the spiritual and cultural values.”
Director of Bank Indonesia Economic and Monetary Policy Institute Reza Alingkusumo addressed that the innovation on technology has a great impact on economic development. It is necessary to improve the quality of human resource in order to balance the development of technology.
“So that, the innovation that can improve economic productivity considered to be the most important needs. Meaning that development and application of new ideas on technology can complement and support the inputs to create bigger output level on goods and service. Innovation isn’t a neutral factor, most of the time it also needs a sufficient quality of technological support mostly to produce goods. It needs a qualified human resource to complete each other,” he added.
In terms of innovation, he also emphasized about the importance of sustainability, including the financial support.
“Another core of innovation is the ability to link the startups and small businesses with the bigger enterprises. There has to be commitment and integrity from all parties to guarantee that the innovation created will fulfill all needs.” (Riz/Th)