The first part of the lesson started off with Prof Shahi giving us an overview and introduction explanation of Global dominance of technology. He talks about the different dimensions of global dominance, eg. Social dominance with the intro of facebook and social media...Following on, he showed us a statistic table of the world economy pattern. In the time to come, the countries that will be rich will no longer be USA, European countries. The world money will go to rising countries like India and China. There'll be a total shift and change in the world economic power. Next, he also showed us an interesting video of "the world in 7 minutes". It shows ur the evolution of technology and how it progresses at such a rapid pace. Then, the first presentation of the whole module begins with Jannah talking about "Google". The article is " is Google making us stupid" and can be found here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/ She started off with an interesting introduction about how students will use google to search for answers to prof questions and start answering them so well. I learnt something useful for class participation from this. haha. I shall try using this next time in lessons. After listening to Janah's presentation, I have a few key takeaway points in mind. I find that google is not making us stupid but rather it is helping us and filling us with more information through its ease of use and convenient search engines. No one is born so smart to know everything in the world. We definitely need to use such services like google to seek out more information to enhance our knowledge. Most importantly, we need to know how to analyse the information given by google and put it to good use on our part. So we should embrace this wonderful technology and put it to full use.
The second part of the class talks about human development. Development has different dimensions and aspects as well. For eg. economic development is about making more money and having higher standards of living in countries. As the saying goes the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. I begin to wonder what can we do about this widening income inequality between countries. Some rich countries have people living luxuriously and having all kinds of material goods they want. however some poor countries can't even afford basic neccessities in their lives. This problem of extreme poverty needs to be adressed and we definitely need to do something about it. Prof Shahi showed us a very touching video of the "Millennium Developmet Goals" which shows the 8 goals that many countries have come together to try and achieve it in 2015. Based on the rate it is going, it is near impossible to achieve the goals by 2015. Prof Shahi then post us a thought provoking question, what can we do as our part to help achieve these goals? What do we really think is being successful in life. Is it all the money, getting a high flying career and getting all the material goods. I believe almost everyone hopes to earn big bucks and live a good life of comfortable living. However, can we still continue living our good life and be indifferent to others living in extreme poverty? It is not easy to just say yes we will solve the problems of society. The problems are very complicated and requires true dedication and commitment to solving it. I hope in future, I will be able to make a difference in the society and do my humble part to help. Maybe I can invent new technologies that can help solve the various problems of today? Technology is definitely one good way to help mankind although it can be a double edged sword and do harm to mankind too.
Meng Xin went on to do the second presentation on Singularity and Immortality. One key message she conveys is, are we still human if part of us is robot like a cyborg? This is a very tricky question and it made me think really hard about it. I believe that as long as our brains and mind are still 'humanly', we are still considered humans although different parts of our body may be robotic. Think of people right now having metal plates implanted inside them. Those people can't be considered human? Definitely not. Davinia went on to the third presentation on genetic babies. Technology has progressed so fast till we can sort of alter the genes of our babies and make them turn out how we want them to be. I still believe in the natural process of giving birth to a baby that is unmodified genetically or in any way. I just can't imagine everyone's babies to be like the same, genetically perfect. We are distinctly unique ourselves and I hope we can retain that fact.
I would rate the session 9/10. (Interesting class presentations and topics discussed in lesson)
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Monday 15 August 2011
Week 1 Lesson 1: Introduction to Technology and World Change
The first lesson of technology and world change gave me an introduction of what to expect in the upcoming months of this module. Including the compulsory weekly writing of this blog which I believe is very good and effective in the sense that it sort of force us to concentrate and take in as much knowledge as we can in lesson if not we would not know what to write here. This module does not have a very rigid syllabus and definitely allows much greater room for creativity as mentioned by Prof Shahi where we are given freedom to choose our favourite topic of interest to focus on and do intensive research on. I believe this is excellent in the sense that we can score better and do well if we are doing something that interest us rather than a boring topic which we dread. This being said, I'll need to go look up on interesting topics right now to work on for my oral presentation, topical review paper and group project.
After going through the introduction phase, prof Shahi went on to show us a video of Shift happens where we are shown a video showing very interesting facts and statistics. A few interesting facts I picked up are "We are living in exponential times" and "Whatever we are learning now, half will be outdated in 2 years time" This means that technology is ever changing and it is changing at an amazing rate. We need to keep updating ourselves and keep up to it in order to gain full use of technology. We cannot let technology outpace us and make us redundant. There is another quote I would like to mention, "By 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race." This is extremely scary going by the rate how technology is progressing. Why would the world still need human talent and manpower when technology can easily replace humankind. This is a thought provoking idea that I thought of.
The second part of the lesson, Prof Shahi showed us another interesting video called "guns germs and steel". It posed us a question regarding the inequality of wealth and technology between different continents of people. Why do the white men have so much cargo than the New Guineans? The class contributed various interesting ideas. There can be many many reasons as to why is this the case, it could be due to the geographical nature of the countries. Some are better positioned with natural resources that gave them the headstart. However, I believe that what is more important is to find out what can we do to close up that gap of inequality. How can we help the New Guineans progress in wealth and technology? The problem of widening technology gap between countries is getting worse. This should not be happening although it is a blunt and obvious fact. What we can do is probably to find out what are the reasons behind this technology gap and tackle the root of the problem.
Next, Prof Shahi also showed us one more video on social media. This is extremely interesting as it is more relevant and up to date to what is happening to the world right now. If facebook were a country, it would be 3rd biggest! Right now the current trend is about social media. Facebook is worth billions of dollars and social media definitely change how businesses are operating. For eg. businesses are using such social media to reach out to their consumers and target audiences. You see so many advertisements on facebook where you are asked to 'like' it. Everyone in the class has a facebook account and uses it frequently (especially now when we have to use it to contribute to our class fb page). Few days back I came across something interesting: theres a hacker collective called Anonymous plan to take down and destroy Facebook and even stated a deadline of 5 Nov 2011. I do not know how true is this news and whether will it really happen. I really hope to see what happens on 5 Nov 2011. The question posed is how will we react if Facebook is gone forever? Things will definitely change but is it for the better or for the worst...
Personal Rating:
7/10 ( overall quite a good introduction of TWC however not much time for discussion)
After going through the introduction phase, prof Shahi went on to show us a video of Shift happens where we are shown a video showing very interesting facts and statistics. A few interesting facts I picked up are "We are living in exponential times" and "Whatever we are learning now, half will be outdated in 2 years time" This means that technology is ever changing and it is changing at an amazing rate. We need to keep updating ourselves and keep up to it in order to gain full use of technology. We cannot let technology outpace us and make us redundant. There is another quote I would like to mention, "By 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race." This is extremely scary going by the rate how technology is progressing. Why would the world still need human talent and manpower when technology can easily replace humankind. This is a thought provoking idea that I thought of.
The second part of the lesson, Prof Shahi showed us another interesting video called "guns germs and steel". It posed us a question regarding the inequality of wealth and technology between different continents of people. Why do the white men have so much cargo than the New Guineans? The class contributed various interesting ideas. There can be many many reasons as to why is this the case, it could be due to the geographical nature of the countries. Some are better positioned with natural resources that gave them the headstart. However, I believe that what is more important is to find out what can we do to close up that gap of inequality. How can we help the New Guineans progress in wealth and technology? The problem of widening technology gap between countries is getting worse. This should not be happening although it is a blunt and obvious fact. What we can do is probably to find out what are the reasons behind this technology gap and tackle the root of the problem.
Next, Prof Shahi also showed us one more video on social media. This is extremely interesting as it is more relevant and up to date to what is happening to the world right now. If facebook were a country, it would be 3rd biggest! Right now the current trend is about social media. Facebook is worth billions of dollars and social media definitely change how businesses are operating. For eg. businesses are using such social media to reach out to their consumers and target audiences. You see so many advertisements on facebook where you are asked to 'like' it. Everyone in the class has a facebook account and uses it frequently (especially now when we have to use it to contribute to our class fb page). Few days back I came across something interesting: theres a hacker collective called Anonymous plan to take down and destroy Facebook and even stated a deadline of 5 Nov 2011. I do not know how true is this news and whether will it really happen. I really hope to see what happens on 5 Nov 2011. The question posed is how will we react if Facebook is gone forever? Things will definitely change but is it for the better or for the worst...
Personal Rating:
7/10 ( overall quite a good introduction of TWC however not much time for discussion)
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