Gasps echo across the hall as Burmese school kids try virtual reality (VR) goggles, marveling at a device that allows some of Asia’s poorest people to walk on the moon or dive beneath the waves.
“In Myanmar we can’t afford much to bring students to the real world experience,” said Hla Hla Win, a teacher and tech entrepreneur taking virtual reality into the classroom.
“If they’re learning about animals we can’t take them to the zoo... Ninety-nine percent of parents don’t have time, don’t have money, don’t have the means,” she added.
Photo: AFP
Few countries in the world have experienced such rapid discovery of technology than Myanmar, which has leapfrogged from the analogue to the digital era in just a few years.
During the decades of outright junta rule, which ended in 2011, it was one of the world’s most isolated nations, a place where a mobile phone SIM card could cost up to US$3,000.
For half a century its paranoid generals cut off the country, restricting sales of computers, heavily censoring the Internet and blocking access to foreign media reports.
However, today mobile-phone towers are springing up around the country and almost 80 percent of the population have access to the Internet through smartphones, according to telecoms giant Telenor ASA.
Tech start-ups are emerging around the commercial capital Yangon, many seeking to improve the lives of rural people, most of whom still live without paved roads or electricity.
“The increase in activity from last year till now — new start-ups, more people determined to become entrepreneurs and working in the tech sector in general — is significant,” community hub Phandeeyar chief executive officer Jes Kaliebe Peterson said.
Virtual reality is the latest advance to cause a stir, with a handful of entrepreneurs embracing tech for projects including preserving ancient temple sites to shaping young minds of the future.
The Phandeeyar incubator works with more than 140 start-ups.
Among them is Hla Hla Win’s virtual reality social enterprise, 360ed, which is using affordable cardboard VR goggles attached to smartphones to break down barriers in Myanmar’s classrooms.
She founded the non-profit last year in a bid to bring learning to life after working 17 years in the woefully underfunded education system.
“I see it as an empathy machine where we can teleport ourselves to another place right away,” she said.
It is not just school children who benefit from stepping into places they could only ever dream of visiting.
360ed has used virtual reality to help Myanmar teachers attend training courses in Japan and Finland and is working on setting up deals with schools in India, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh.
“With VR there’s no divider, there’s no distance,” Hla Hla Win said.
While 360ed is thinking about the future, Nyi Lin Seck is obsessed with the past.
About 600km north of Yangon, the budding tech entrepreneur and founder of 3xvivr Virtual Reality Production launches a large drone into the skies above Bagan, one of Myanmar’s most famous tourist sites.
The drone, which carries a 360-degree camera, circles one of the many ninth-to-13th century temples that dot the landscape of what was once a sprawling ancient city.
The data it records allows those with VR headsets to explore the temples, their crumbling centuries-old walls so close it feels like you can touch them.
A former head of the local TV station, Nyi Lin Seck says he makes most of his money providing virtual reality footage for hotels and luxury apartments.
However, after an earthquake damaged the Bagan site last year, he vowed to use the tech to preserve a digital replica of Myanmar’s archaeological treasures.
“A lot of artworks on the pagodas collapsed and were lost. Using this technology, we can record up to 99 percent of the ancient art,” he said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”