As usual, week 5 lesson overshot the time and ended late again, making me rush like mad for my next lesson. But this is not something bad! I'm not complaining. This is in fact something good! The class always has very engaging discussion and interesting presentation such that 3hr 15mins is definitely not enough time for it. I'm begining to enjoy more and more of this Technology world change lesson. Every lesson I learnt something new and useful, about technology, about the world, about government policies and many more things.
This lesson talks about ICT and how it has changed the world or will change to world in future. One very common example of ICT is of course the Internet. The internet is a big driver of change in the world. It has brought about many possibilities and how the way we do things. From the web 1.0 where we just receive static information from the internet to web 2.0 where we can interact more with the internet through facebook,blogging etc, now we're moving on to web 3.0 where the internet can predict and knows what we want and react to it. Prof Shahi also introduced this concept of cloud computing. At first it sounds like some high tech 'dont know what is it' term, but after showing us a simple video of what it is, I have a much better understanding of it. Alot of things in the internet now we use are using cloud computing concept, it's just that we are unaware of it. For example the Google Doc where users can edit information together, just like how our TA sent us the google doc form for us to fill in our blog name. Makes it much easier for him rather than all of us sending him email n flooding his inbox.
One key takeaway message is how can these ICT help to deal poverty issues, and different issues in the world. In the slides, there's this quote "Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless,free and fettered, privileged and humiliated." One interesting thing that prof mentioned is that we can relate more to the university students of other countries than the uncles and aunties in our own countries. This is true to a certain extent, because university students all uses the internet, computers, facebook, and whatever that is in the net. This way we have common topic and interest and we are sort of on the same wavelength. However, the uncles and aunties in the coffeshops do not use such technology so we do not relate much to them, creating a sort of digital divide. This is something sad but true. That's why u see parents creating facebook accounts to communicate with their children. More and more older generation people are more willing to learn how to use computers so that they can relate to the younger generation and not feel left out. More must be done in third world countries to introduce these technologies to them so that they will not feel powerless and left out. The creation of cheap less than $100 laptops is a good start to get them involved.
This week's lesson has 4 presentations. Firstly, Melissa presented on Future of television. Her presentation is very well done in my opinion with very nice powerpoint slides using mac keynote. How I wish I can just add the Aston Martin to cart.haha. Her question is regarding tablet pc compared to the traditional television. I believe that traditional television will still be neccessary because the size of tablet is too small and the viewing experience will be whole lot different than the big wide size of television. Tablet viewing is also very individualistic and selfish where u can share with ur whole family. There goes your quality family bonding session of watching tv shows tog. Next, Shaak talks about free economy and the very creative idea of 'freemium' which many companies are using now. For example, apple iphone applications where many aps are free but u can pay a premium to get better features. This idea is working out very well and I believe is the way business should go. But one problem with this is hackers can hack into the system and make freemium totally free. For example jailbreaking your iphone and u can download all the supposedly paid apps for free. One thing about technology is that there is alwys the problem of hackers. Hackers can steal people's credit card details, passwords, important information like wikileaks and etc... It is very hard to stop them despite many strict security measures. So the question is, how safe are we in today's world if everything is going online like cloud computing...
Personal rating is 10/10. Great class but I do hope we can try n end on time so I do not need to rush for my next lesson... I should prob warn my juniors next time never to put another lesson just right aft TWC. haha.
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