systems: once solutions, now problems? just my random thoughts on a wednesday midnight :) i picked up a new habit of listening to podcasts recently. when i am sitting down or walking the road and doing nothing, instead of doomscrolling on ig, i just plug in my headphones and listen to a podcast. i am not an exemplary kid for this. i am still fighting my addiction to youtube shorts (inserts 3 crying emojis). two days ago, i listened to a podcast that featured derek thompson, co-author of "the abundance." really articulate person to be honest. spoke with the clarity and eloquence one would expect of a former journalist for the atlantic. i am not here to praise derek's eloquence though. i want to point out something he said in the podcast: he spoke on how a lot of the systems we currently have are limiting progress. he gave an example. some years ago, the us government wanted to release money to states so they could build good bandwidth and have better networks. super great idea, and the budget allocated was a huge amount of money. but there was a problem. before a state could be given the money, they had to go through a 14 stage process. yup, 14 stages of filling documentations and applications. only 3 states completed the 14 stages (that's not unexpected to be honest, they would have lost me at stage 3). derek wasn't insinuating corruption or anything. he was simply saying that the bureaucratic nature of politics, implemented centuries ago, held back what would have been a wonderful project. he gave another example that most people might find more relatable: research grant funding from national research bodies. scientists of today spend about 40% of their time filling documentations to apply for research grants. that's a really huge chunk of their time if we are being honest with ourselves. the worst part is if your research has multiple stages, you have to separately apply for funding for each stage. 30 to 50 years ago, when there were few people applying for research grants, that made a ton of sense. now, the nsf receives around 40,000 to 50,000 applications yearly. reviewing applications thoroughly for each of those takes a really long time. so, from applying for funding to actually getting the money takes roughly 7-8 months. i am not gonna lie, i would have lost the research idea by then. those were some examples of situations whereby systems hinder what could be tremendous growth. the truth is that most of our current systems were designed to solve problems around 90 to 100 years ago. and in all fairness to them, they did solve the problem. if anything, they did a fantastic job. however, times have changed. while a few are still relevant, quite a number of them are becoming more problematic than helpful. take the educational system for example. 100 to 200 years ago, when people rarely left their homes and there was no means to communicate except meeting physically, asking students to show up in a classroom made absolute perfect sense. it helped them interact with others and learn without distractions (cows mooing in the backyard). however, in the 21st century, where someone in america can talk easily with someone in antarctica in seconds, does that kind of structure still fit? i would disagree. i am not calling for a total shift to online education, but i think it might be time we start rethinking the concept of education within a physical classroom. there can surely be innovation in this system to make it more suited to our time and the resources available. maybe reduce physical classes to twice a week and have students use the remaining days to gain real skills they will actually use in the real world? (just a random suggestion by the way.) i might have thrown my spears at the educational system, but every system has its own shortcomings. most of them can be likened to a mom trying to force feed her 19 year old son with medicine like she used to do when he was 6 months old. it was a solution back then, but it would be an embarrassment now. we need to take a deep, long look at most of the systems we have in place and try to reinvent them to better suit this current age and time. the problems we have now are very much different from the problems of back then. the resources available to us to solve problems are also much more than what they had. we can do better. we should do better. let's reinvent the systems, shall we? unconventional thinker

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