Excerpt from the Dean's keynote speech, which I prepared for the International Conference on Media and Social Sciences 2025, entitled " Re-envisioning Media, Technology and Society in the Age of AI ": "We are now living in an interesting yet challenging timeline in history. Barely four to five years ago the whole world was struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic and little did we know then that a few years later, AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, would not only transform the world but dominate our work and daily life in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. We are now at a critical juncture: what we do today, our decisions and policies, will shape our country and the next generation. Experts and policymakers are still grappling with the question of how should we deal with such technology and its impact. Do we embrace it fully? What guardrails do we need to protect against abuse or breaches of privacy? Are there ethical concerns with regards to its use an...

Well known journalist and author, Thomas Friedman may have popularised the phrase “flat world” in his award winning book “The World is Flat” to advocate the idea of globalisation but two decades earlier, Alvin Toffler had already conceptualised and prophesied the revolutionary changes in the 21st century – a global society that is being shaped and fuelled by communication technology. It should be obvious that Toffler is not the only futurist around. There are dozens of other scholars and authors who have produced similar kind of works. But none has captured the public’s imagination as powerful as Toffler’s. It has been 33 years since the publication of Alvin Toffler’s most celebrated futurist book, “The Third Wave” (first published in 1980), widely considered as the most important publication in Toffler’s trilogy, which included “Future Shock” (1970) and “Power Shift” (1990). It is timely that we re-look and re-evaluate some of its major themes, especially in the context of new media...