Semarang atas

I was joining the discussion series held by the Indonesian Student Association of QUT on Saturday 19 th March 2016 and saw couple of Indonesian advertising (ads) presented by one of the speaker.   The topic for the discussion was Digital Culture. The presenters were two senior researchers from a university in Queensland, Australia. One of them was describing their studies about the participatory media, and another speaker presented her study about Indonesian digital cultures. The speaker highlighted how the commercial television ads have influenced every day’s life of Indonesian step in to digital culture. But, instead of seeing their influences, for me personally I feel so amazed to see how massive and variety of television ads in the country. I don’t say that I haven’t seen them but seeing them here brought by foreigners than I began to start that feeling. Most Indonesian who lives in the country might not put so much attention to it. Because it’s part of local’s day-to-day...

The Social Progress Index (SPI) determines what it means to be a good society. It's basically different with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP only accounts for a country’s economic performance, not the happiness or well-being of its citizens. With GDP, if your richest 100 people get richer, your GDP rises.  SPI measures according to three dimensions:  1. Basic Human Needs (food, water, shelter, safety) 2. Foundations of Wellbeing (basic education, information, health and a sustainable environment) 3. Opportunity (do people have rights, freedom of choice, freedom from discrimination, and access to higher education?) Based of those three dimensions the country that achieved highest score is Norway, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland, and New Zealand. Australian is ranked number 10. Where Japan, the only Asian country listed in the top 20, positioned number 15.  From the 68 countries listed in the website, Indonesia is not even there. But you'll see Mal...