Over the past years, many cultural and economic concepts and their instances have been changed. Specifically, translation of different languages has led to new interpretations of old concepts. In Farsi, art was interpreted as “good man”, which was gradually replaced with virtue. Whenever we encounter the word “art” in a poem or text, we need to interpret it as virtue and technique and goodness. However, learning about western culture and civilization, our translators have shown the English word, which is art, interpreting it as seven arts.

In fact, translation has led to the change of meaning and instances of art in the minds of Iranians, replacing it with the English version of word. One of our most serious concerns in the area of dialogue making about science and technology, as well as building the culture of knowledge-based, innovative and entrepreneurial economy, is that despite the use of ancient definitions, we gather concepts that are old and outdated in irony, causing misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

In this regard, the simplest example could be the interpretation of “development”. This word is in the family of vastness, and its primary definition is width and expansion. The word “development” does not mean breath. The closest interpretation is appearance, and something that is used in the world of photography and not emergence in philosophical discussions.

In fact, the primary meaning of development is appearing of facilities and abilities, which are concealed. In other words, it means activating the potentials. However, technicians and graduates of economics and politics know what development is and they know what they talk about when they discuss about development. Nevertheless, those who want to deeply comprehend a word by its meaning are mistaken, thinking that they can achieve development by expanding their work. That is why they prioritize quantitative development over qualitative development. Another concern in the process of economic development is work and entrepreneurship.

In the mind of the public, work and being a worker are the same, and we expect that people leave their house to go to work, using their power or mind to build or transfer something, provide a service or sell a product. Even in our hidden layers of subconscious, we do not consider employment as real job. According to ancient beliefs, a real man is someone whose shoulders are covered with dust due to hard work. In religious cultures, work is regarded as farming or having a shop. If Imam Ali states that the biggest joy of a man is work, he means the work that is associated with physical activities and provides benefits for others. That is why when we study the biology of Mohammad, we see that despite his wealth and social status, he would dig holes, plant date trees and water plants. In our minds, work is equal to sweating and making efforts. Work without effort has no remuneration.

In fact, work is the opposite of laziness, and solvent wages will not be obtained by lazy individuals. Even in conventional culture, things like signing or participating in a meeting or thinking are not considered as working. This heavy load of negative attitudes toward meetings and signing is indicative of more familiarities of our society members with old concepts of work, where the new type of work is not considered real. Similarly, an entrepreneur is regarded as a person who establishes a factory, produces, recruits workers and pay them. If we refer to the work regulation of the Islamic republic of Iran, we see that cyberspace activities and digital content provision, such as establishing Facebook, Google and Telegram, are not work and their managers are not entrepreneurs.

What exactly does Zuckerberg produce? How do his workers sweat and make efforts? What is his raw material and where is it found? What is his product and how does he sell them? Religiously, we need our jurists to learn about new interpretations of work and entrepreneurship to issue new rulings. In the area of business, businessmen buy a product from Jablqa and suffer a lot during their travel to reach Jabelsa. In that city, they are not allowed to sell their products at any desired price. They are permitted to add a little to the price of products according to the law and custom.

For instance, they buy steel from India for n IRR and sell in Iran with 10% increase of its price. A restaurant is not allowed to determine the costs of its foods. In a restaurant, raw materials, cook, servants and additional costs create a formula to the owner to sell its food. However, this is not the case for Instagram page owners, who do not even product something to sell. In fact, they earn money and create “jobs” from something that is not theirs. Here we are faced with the old and important subject of ownership. What exactly does the CEO of Facebook own and what is he selling? They say that new entrepreneurs earn money through rents.

They rent information or a “space” to earn money. Are they really the owners of these information and spaces and are allowed to sell or rent them? Some companies earn money from “nothing”. At the end of 90^th decade, some companies sold real estate, land and houses and international villas. They invested in Dubai, Mashhad, Spain and Turkey to create small towns. However, they shown nothing but “pixels” to their customers at the time of concluding the contracts. In fact, they give something free of charge, which is worth nothing, and take the money of clients. Buyers see extraordinary images of gardens and rivers and many facilities, which did not exist, at least at the time of contract. However, they promised that the abstract images would become real at the determined time. Therefore, people would be fooled by the imaged and conclude contracts.

Nowadays, most of the high-paying jobs are nothing but eye-catching pixels. Nevertheless, customers are willing to pay for the same pixels. However, the question raised here is that do laws related to ownership apply for these pixels as well? I will provide you with another example, so that you could see that everything has changed compared to the past (not ancient times, only 10-20 years ago), and we still have not been able to adjust to these changes. Until the past few years, there were stores called “junk shop” in our city. The owner of this store would go to the house of people and buy their old stuff. Then, he would clean and repair these objects and sell them to others. This was his job and he could earn money by it. However today, the digital junk shops have no store and no selling-buying occurs.

Digital junk shop means an abstract “space”, where a person sells and another individual buys. Meanwhile, a considerable benefit goes to the owner of this space. However, where is this space and who is its owner? The same can be asked about Yahoo and Gmail. Where are our emails and how has the space of Yahoo filled with emails? I do not mean to say that new companies must be formed in financial authority, while it can be discussed. I mean to say that despite the use of old phrases, we need to understand that phrases have new meanings. Today, a 15-year-old boy can singlehandedly “work” and earn “money” in cyberspace, such as telegram. He can work from home in his pajamas and make money from officially nothing. In fact, some of these websites and telegram channels that run merely based on innovation, creativity and new ideas, are among the most profitable cyber works.

Entrepreneurship of the modern world completely depends on creativity, ideas and, of course, determination. E-commerce has significantly affected the world and life of people. Astonishing sums are transferred in this type of commerce, and we still see that owners of these huge profits are those who show only pixels and own nothing. Amazon is devouring the world. In this regard, financial technology or “Fintech” has expanded the environment for pixel and idea owners and paved the way for their progress. Stock exchange of idea and patent or intellectual property market has been established and is growing every day. This is a market that contains no classic or traditional products; there is only ideas and an imagination that must be observed by others and be turned into reality. However, many investors are willing to invest their assets in these “ideas”.

In the modern world, money has changed and turned into something virtual. Bitcoin is an internet innovation and a form of money without the reliance on government, value of which is increasing day by day. Even now, the world is running on invisible wheels of convergent technologies (NBICS), including nano, bio, information technology, cognitive sciences and social sciences. In the general definition, these technologies do not have a physical form, such as exchange of money or products. However, the ability to perform these technologies is significantly important. For instance, if you take creativity, ideas and innovation from Microsoft and Walt Disney companies, they will not be able to make money fast like before.

In fact, something that has received little attention these years in our culture is innovation, creativity and idea-making about technology. Right now, there are some creative and innovative or knowledge-based companies in Iran able to make great incomes by implementing their innovative ideas. These successful cases are indicative of the fact the foundation has been laid for shifting of paradigm of occupation and entrepreneurship in a traditional sense into innovative entrepreneurship. However, we need to modify the rules and literature of this area and provide the opportunity to expand “jobs”.

The fact is that we cannot solve the problem of unemployment and increase occupations and wealth creation only by new methods based on ICT and information technology. Investment in creative and innovative human resources, paying attention to new ideas and creating the necessary infrastructures and environment for turning ideas into reality and, if possible, preparing and strengthening the society and guiding the youth against economic risks can help in this paradigm shift. However, it is worth noting that nothing will be changed unless our mind and conscience is changed. We need to change our opinion about primary notions, such as money, occupation, entrepreneurship, wealth, property, social commitment and such. Definitely, we cannot have the mentality of 100 years ago. Living and working in the next five years requires a mentality in proportion to the modern times.

Parviz Karami

Advisor to the vice president for science and technology affairs