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)
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