TWC Session 2

There are two topics that we had covered in this week’s lesson. The topics are technology, society and global dominance and technology and human development. We started off the lesson by discussing on how to identify innovation leaders and dominant players. We used a concept that was created by our professor. This concept allows us to classify a country as a rising star, dominant player or falling star. The traits of a falling star are open perspective, optimistic, hungry to learn from others and keen to invest in new ideas. Conversely, the traits of a falling star are closed perspective, pessimistic, not interested in learning from others and not keen to invest in new ideas. As for the dominant player, it is one with is on top on the pyramid. Well, I think that in order to be a rising star, one must remain hungry and be willing to learn new things. Those that are staying on the same spot thinking that they are at the top on the hill or those that are doing something that are not progressive shows that they are on the way to becoming a falling star.

This is the first week where we have student lectures to teach us more about the topics that we will be covering. The first presenter presented on Google. I think that Google is not making us stupid but it is making us smarter. With Google, we get to access to a whole lot of information easily and quickly. And I also think that Google is not making us be like one another; I believe that is has got to do with how the information is used.

We had two presenters who presented on the second topic. One of the presenters mentioned about how new technology can allow humans to live for a limitless amount of time. I think that this has its own advantages and disadvantages. If we were to stay forever, we will not feel sad when someone close to us has passed away, but I bet that there will be insufficient land since people are producing and no one leaves the world. The next presentation was on technology and genetic engineering. We discussed on parents being able to choose their own child’s features. If this were to happen, I think it might lead to a situation where human further dwell in the endless chase for the perfect appearance. And no people will be taking up low paying jobs if babies were engineered into extremely intelligent, artistic, athletic geniuses.

Our professor also showed us a video entitled The Millennium Development Goals. This video is about eight international development goals that entire international community have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. Its goals are improving social and economic conditions in the world's poorest countries. I think that having these goals is definitely a good thing but I think that it is too idealistic and not quite feasible.  All the goals may not be achieved but there are definitely some progresses and I believe that the number of people who are suffering from poverty and hunger will be reduced.

Week 1 Lesson

This is the first TWC lesson and before attending this lesson I didn’t know much about technology. To me, technology is something that makes my life a lot easier. I treasure all the gadgets that I have and I doubt that I will be able to survive without my phone or computer.

The lesson was started with a video entitled “Shifts Happens”. This video shows us a lot of figures and facts which was quite frightening. I only realized that the world had changed so much after watching the video. One thing that I learnt was that technology has been causing the world to evolve at a very fast pace and that technology is slowly becoming a part of our lives.

We were also shown a website that shows the historical timeline. I think that this is a very interesting website as it shows when things were found or invented. I certainly learnt many new and amazing facts from this website. I never knew that the first fish was found 500000000 years ago and the first form of speech was from 200000 years ago.

Another video that we watched was “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. This video shows why there is such inequality between those who have advanced technology and those who still live primitively. In that video a Papua New Guinean raised question to Jared Diamond. That question was why you white men have so much cargo and we new Guineans have so little. This question was discussed in class and several reasons were mentioned. Well, as for me, I believe that it is mainly due to environmental and geographical factors. Papa New Guineans and westerners were born at very different places. It just happened that the westerners were born at a place with resources and opportunities that enabled them to have so much more cargo. It certainly has nothing to do with the different race but the two factors that were stated above.

There was a picture in our slides that shows that technology had increased the number of obese people. Well, I think that it not really the situation. I think that it actually depends on yourself and the choice you make. One should bear in mind that technology is developed with the purpose of making our lives easier. It has never been designed to incapacitate us.