Lesson 5

The focus of week five's lesson was information and communications technology and its correlation with world change. Some of the aspects that we talked about were mass media, telecommunications and the Internet.

One interesting take away from this lesson - the existence of web 1.0, 2.0 and the introduction of web 3.0. I am ashamed to say that I was completely unaware of these despite being a SIS student. So according to Prof, Web 1.0 refers to static Internet, web 2.0 refers to the interactive Internet which is actually created by the users ourselves by providing information and exchanging ideas across the web. Some very good examples of such will be Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Youtube. Last but not least, web 3.0 refers to the all-knowing, omnipresent Internet, which is not visible and physical but hidden in appliances that you use from day-to-day, like a smart form of Internet.

One of the topics that we touched on was the exposure to corrupting influences through the Internet. Some expressed that the Internet gives a negative influence to people because it can be abused to do immoral or illegal things. However, I feel that even without technology or the Internet, people can still manipulate and make use of the resources they have to inflict harm or danger to others. Hence, I do not feel that Internet is the cause of activities like privacy invasion, security breach or other related crimes as it is the people themselves who WANT to commit these crimes. The Internet is merely the medium used to do so. Instead of condemning the Internet, we should be making use of it to prevent such crimes from happening.

I particularly like the quote by Albert Einstein, which corresponds to my views above - "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity"

Tommy Tan Hong Sheng shared about E-learning and its pros and cons. He also cleared up the misunderstanding that E-learning means learning on the Internet. It actually stands for electronic learning - which mean you could be using any form of electronic device to seek knowledge. He alos talked about mobile-learning which involves the usage of devices like smartphones, pda, laptops, mp3 etc. The advantages of this would be the convenience that it brings, however, it would also mean a lot more distractions in the surroundings and the lack of social skills development. In my opinion, e-learning and mobile-learning can never replace schooling completely. It is impractical as there is no element of discipline and sense of urgency. People will grow to be lazy, unwilling to learn and lack the social and intellectual skills that are needed in the working world. If it is implemented in Singapore, I believe it will cause us to be backward and slow down our development when the current studying generation moves the the working industry.

I would rate this lesson a 9/10 as the topics discussed were very interesting to me and closely related to the topic for my individual review paper. Also, the discussion held were engaging and the different views shared by my classmates were an eye-opener for me.