Privileged

As we enter the era of human-like robots and human-machine collaborations made possible by advances in intelligent technologies and their shift from quiescent algorithms to heuristics, the true meaning of what makes us distinctly human can easily be blurred. In my recent research on human-machine collaborations, culture proved to be the most important factor that would allow us to remain distinctly human and constitutes our major contribution to these new ways of collaborating. However, culture is not neutral neither is it incontestable. It has been a major source of organising modern societies thus a war zone of ideologies, politics and religious zealotry given its embodiment of identities, histories, beliefs and past events of some significance to particular groupings. By its very nature, culture can feed narrowness or can lead to harmony and oneness of humans and nature when proper values are adopted. In this booklet, a culture that debunks hero-worshipping and emphasises equality of humans and living in harmony with nature, is advanced. It derives from ubuNtu. Ntu is that super-ancestor of Basotho and amaNguni whose name means oneness, equality and harmony.

About the Author

Teboho Pitso has studied creativity and innovation in his doctoral thesis read at the University of the Witwatersrand. He sits in various international committees that advance creativity and innovation in universities as well as publish widely in these areas. He has a keen interest in how people interact and collaborate to change and improve their material conditions which led his research to rhetorical theory. Rhetorical theory helps us understand how people communicate, what their intent is when communicating and how that affects human relations. In all of his research work, he argues against the use of persuasion in all forms of communication and advocates for dialogues based on equality and dignity for all. His basic thesis is that rare skills of a technical and technological nature inexorable in this century are insufficient to advance complex cosmopolitan societies in the absence of cultural equality, understanding and collective appreciation of all the cultures and their grand narratives.