Senior Research Manager Gayani Hurulle, in an interview with Echelon for their May issue, discussed Sri Lanka’s readiness for a digital economy. Six experts were interviewed regarding Sri Lanka’s innovation landscape, providing insights into essential components for economic transformation, challenges in digital readiness, parallels with regional models, the intersection of law and technology, climate financing opportunities, and hurdles within the startup ecosystem. Gayani focused on Sri Lanka’s preparedness to embrace a digital economy, emphasising the urgent need to address challenges such as low digital literacy, inadequate infrastructure, and limited female workforce participation. She also highlighted the findings of LIRNEasia’s 2021 nationally representative survey, conducted against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. “According to LIRNEasia’s 2021 nationally representative survey, Sri Lanka grapples with a stark reality: only a fraction of the population possesses the ability to independently perform basic online tasks. 
Senior Research Manager Gayani Hurulle, in an interview with Echelon for their May issue, discussed Sri Lanka’s readiness for a digital economy. Six experts were interviewed regarding Sri Lanka’s innovation landscape, providing insights into essential components for economic transformation, challenges in digital readiness, parallels with regional models, the intersection of law and technology, climate financing opportunities, and hurdles within the startup ecosystem. Gayani focused on Sri Lanka’s preparedness to embrace a digital economy, emphasising the urgent need to address challenges such as low digital literacy, inadequate infrastructure, and limited female workforce participation. She also highlighted the findings of LIRNEasia’s 2021 nationally representative survey, conducted against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. “According to LIRNEasia’s 2021 nationally representative survey, Sri Lanka grapples with a stark reality: only a fraction of the population possesses the ability to independently perform basic online tasks. 
Before we dive into natural language understanding, the theory, and its applications–it is important from a pedagogical perspective that we understand the historical trajectory of the ideas that led us there. While it would be interesting to go as far as back to Aristotle, we will skip ahead to what is considered the most important flashpoint in modern philosophy & science–referred to as the ‘linguistic turn’. It begins with our Wittgenstein, inspired by Gottlob Frege: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. […]” While this line is almost used to the point it has become a cliche in modern NLP research papers, Indeed Wittgenstein himself would go on later to re-write and almost rethink all of the ideas he posited in the original Tractatus–which is why the irony is sweet when you see his famous quote plastered on the beginning of most modern research papers; but it is undeniable that Wittgenstein’s first posit changed the face of philosophical debate, effectively ending the practice of continental philosophy, and the birth of the more ‘logical’ analytic philosophy. In our rush to understand reality, we had lost sight of the tool we were bound by during our examination and […]
Forbes India has just published a list of 24 influentials, in no particular order, according the author. We were pleased to see two colleagues with whom we interact a lot, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Sunil Abraham featured in the “top ten.” Our congratulations to this well-deserved honor and our wishes for more strength in the New Year in improving the quality of policy discourse in India, perhaps the most important and challenging of the countries we work in. Our congratulations also to Ajay Shah and Nachiket Mor with whom we have had limited interactions. We look forward to getting to know the others on the list.
In a major win for think tanks seeking to bring evidence to the policy process in developing countries, the Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa, by its decision The Competition Commission of South Africa v TELKOM (Case No: 623/2008), has unequivocally overruled the claims of bias leveled against the LINK Centre, then headed by our colleague Alison Gillwald (now heading Research ICTs Africa). In addition to getting its odd argument rejected, Telkom will have to pay a 3.7 Billion Rand fine plus costs. Ouch! Alison is the featured dinner speaker at CPRsouth4 in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on December 7th.