Lesson 2

Today's lesson was about technology, society and human development, and in my opinion, was more intriguing than I expected! Prof started with a video titled 'History of the World' which showed the formation of our planet and the evolution of human beings. To quicken things up, 1 second in the video represented 50 years in the universe. It showed how tribesmen in the past began living as a population by creating their own language, using metal as tools, hunting animals for food and then to more civilized activities like domestication of animals, farming for food and creating written languages. I was always interested in how languages came about, I mean, who sat down one day to decide how the alphabet looks like when written, how it is pronounced, and the formation of the enormous number of words in our dictionary today? Though the video did not answer my question, it did show roughly when people started to have a language that they could communicate in and what did the first "version" of written language looked like.

We also saw how different regions of the world possessed varying portions of the world's economy since 1AD to 2050AD. I feel that it is interesting how with advancing technology and rapid development, some regions gain a bigger share of the economy over the years while others' economy just fall downhill.

Today's lesson also touched on global dominance, and to illustrate this, Prof showed a video about Britain wanting to dominate the world in the past. Britain, apparently, had connections everywhere at a point of time. She took over America, Asia, India, and several other regions but ended up broke. Expansion clearly failed and the colonel countries slowly rebelled and gain independence after World War 2. I enjoyed this video particularly when they showed how everything that's supposedly British actually originated elsewhere, like tea, sugar, and even the name 'Victoria'.

We also learned about the rising star and falling star mindsets which I thought was very applicable and evident in the society today. Countries like China, India, and regions like Asia adopted the rising star mindset - humble, open, optimistic and willing to take risks. As a result, they are enjoying rapid development today and are gaining economic prosperity. On the other hand, the giants like USA and UK adopted the falling star mindsets and were not keen for new ideas, unwilling to learn from the smaller nations and underestimated them.

During the open discussion, we talked about the article "Innovation in the Reset World" where it mentioned 3 things that showed why innovation is needed to succeed in today's world:

Box 1: Managing the present
Box 2: Selectively forgetting about the past
Box 3: Creating the future

In my opinion, there 3 boxes very aptly describe what are the basic things one needs to understand in order to succeed. To create an ideal future, it is best to selectively forget about the past's bad experiences, and managing the present well. It is rather self-explanatory but very applicable.

I would like to end this post with a question - What is the relationship between world change and development? Which is the cause and which is the effect, or are they a result of one another? To me, I believe they are mutually linked like how a circle has no beginning, they lead to each other and it's a never-ending cycle.

Lesson 1

Here are my insights about the first TWC lesson:

Before coming to class, I assumed TWC would be a course on the different ways that technology has infiltrated our lives, benefiting us in terms of efficiency and how it induced change in the world such that many tasks and jobs can now be completed more quickly with the ever-advancing technology. My opinion on technology has been rather biased in that I only saw its benefits - to me, all I felt before attending this lesson was that the iPhone and MacBook Pro is awesome and I can't live without them. I neglected technology's cons and how it is adversely affecting our world, which I was largely exposed to during this lesson.

During the first half of the lesson, Prof showed us an interesting video, 'Shift happens'. Some shocking facts were presented to us, like how China would become the number one English speaking population soon, the number of used on MySpace could form the 5th largest country in the world, and the number of text messages sent everyday exceeds the total population on Earth. Technology has influenced us so much that our everyday lives are completely reliant on it. It is slowly replacing human labor and the jobs that require human labor today will be replaced by machines. The rapidly advancing technology is threatening to swallow the humanity of mankind. People rarely write letters to each other, or visit each other at their homes, instead, they send text messages, emails and see each other via video chat. In my opinion, I feel that technology is moving way too fast and the world is changing too quickly. Men are lured by the advantages of technology, the gadgets, the efficiency that it brings, that we fail to realize that it is replacing our kind.

Prof also showed us another short video (yes, the videos make the most impression) from the book Guns, Germs and Steel, and there was this glaring question that no one could answer. "Why do White people have so much cargo, and New Guineans, so little?" The video clearly showed the disparity in technology advancement between developed and developing countries, but the question is, why is it so? How is it that in America, children are using iPhones and iPads as communication devices but in New Guinea, the children probably have not seen a television in their lives? I believe that people are aware of this disparity but no one is willing to do anything about it, and those enjoying the luxury is plainly taking it for granted.

I would like to add that Prof is very humorous and I look forward to his next lesson! (: