2009 - The Year of Understanding

After the passage of one more remarkable year 2009, when I analyzed retrospectively, I found that it was a year of reading, learning, and understanding of philosophy, theory, and methodology of information systems in general and ICT4D in particular. Therefore, I declared the year 2009 as the year of understanding. During the course of understanding, philosophy was and still is the most fascinating subject to me. Although knowledge gained through philosophy is abstract, the knowledge and its implications can be concrete. In my opinion, we as a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) must have philosophical understanding of our research work. It helps us to reflect on our own work and testify its validity as a science. Better understanding of philosophy paves the way to understand the role of theory and its contribution to choose the right methodology as well. This is how we get the intellectual and effective outcome combining theory with empirical research, which, consequently, leads to better coherence in theory and practice. It is not respectable to say that philosophy of some philosophers I read were good or bad. Each and every bit of piece I learned from them is and will be the most precious wealth of my life. Finally, with the passing of an outstanding year 2009 and arrival of another wonderful New Year 2010, I have also worked out my agenda. In this coming year 2010, I will more concentrate on writing articles, blogs, conference, and journal papers. Therefore, the coming year will be the year of reflections.