TWC lesson 2

Lesson 2

The lesson started out with a discussion of what is innovation. And whether innovation is a subset of creation or is it the other way round. Prof then showed us a video about the progression of human history in 7 minutes. It was interesting to note that during the last few seconds of the video, there were much more events occurring. Coincidentally, technology has also been rapidly developing over the last couple of years as evident from the list of revolutionary development list from last lesson. Could the two trends be related in some ways? This is one of the questions I would like to further discuss in class as I believe that these two trends did not occur together by chance.

Part 2A

The lesson moved on to the different types of global dominance in the world. I found it interesting that a country enjoying industrial dominance over a product, for example China’s dominance over manufacturing, does not necessary mean that they are enjoying great monetary benefits from the dominance. Although most of the manufacturing of, say sports apparels are in china, most of these companies are owned by foreigners from all over the world. Thus the full profits from the sales of these products actually flow towards the shareholders and owners of the company rather than the residents of china.

Prof then showed us the model he made on to the rising star, falling star and dominant player model and the characteristics of each different player. Rising stars are usually open to new ideas and have the hunger to improve themselves whole falling stars are content with what they possess and shut themselves out, believing that they have learnt all there is to know. Dominant players are simply the body that has the greatest power within that particular industry and they can either have a rising star or falling star mind set. The key point differentiating rising and falling stars seems to be the amount of hunger for success they have.  It seems like organizations that do not have this hunger ultimately fail and lose out to their counterparts over time. This is one of the key takeaways for me to always be hungry for greater knowledge and bigger successes as history has proven time and time again that the absence of this “hunger” will probably lead to the presence of failure. 

The lesson then moved on to the graph of the percentage of world economy by region. I found that the trend of the graph is leading to a really good direction as the world economy seems much more balanced and equally distributed in 2050AD as compared to 1AD or 1500AD.

The article “The colonial holocaust and its legacy” was a really shocking read. Singapore was once colonized and possibly due to our strategic location for the British at that time, we benefited well from being colonized. Hence Singaporeans tend to have this mind-set that the British’s colonial conquest was probably beneficial to all the countries under her rule. It was hard for me to believe the damages colonization has one to most of the countries being colonized. It really broadened my layman perspectives and gave me a clearer and broader look at our world’s history.

Class 2B

The second part of the lesson moved on to technology and human development. Development is change in a positive direction, and it is one of the main factors that drives change. There are different types of development, and the main concern for most countries nowadays is sustainable development; developing the economy without compromising our environment. We were then introduced to the Human Development Index(HDI), which in my opinion does not fully represent the development of a country. In my opinion happiness is a really important factor in the development of a country. What is the point of fancy malls and high paying jobs if the person is not happy? Japan may be 10^th of the list according to the 2013 HDI report, however their depression and suicide levels remain in the top 10 of the list as well. The Gross Happiness Index was then introduced to us by prof, and to me it seemed like a much better measurement of the development of a country.

The individual presentations

I find that these presentations provides me with additional reading materials and provides differing insights to our course. Vanessa's understanding the rise of china provided an alternative answer to Yale's question as to why some have more while some have less. China could be rising faster than the rest due to their culture of being hard workers, hence giving the country an edge in terms of productivity. Another thought provoking presentation could be Sylvester's. For example, is the quality of a gene pool only determined by your IQ or physical appearance? What about qualities like temperance, humility or kindness? Einstein once said that we should not judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, hence I strongly believe that we shouldn't judge the quality of our current gene pool just by the levels of our intelligence. 

Overall I would give this lesson a 8/10. Although we sometimes digress from our main topic of discussion, I am learning new ideas from different perspectives most of the time. Its a shame that we couldn't discuss some issues further due to time constraint.

TWC Lesson 1

                                                                                                    

The lesson started out with icebreaker games as everyone introduced themselves and offered some of their opinions and knowledge about technology. It was really interesting as we had students from countries like India and China, and it greatly broadened our discussions to an international level. During the icebreakers, Prof Shahi asked the class,”how do you define technology?”.And after some discussion, I realized how shallow my perception of technology was. I found out that technology does not only apply to electronics and IT gadgets, but simple things like washing ones hands to get rid of germs can be considered a technology. Technology is vaguely described as the knowledge to do things, and using water as a tool to sanitise our hands is most definitely technology in my opinion.

Prof Shahi then showed us the video "shift happens". The video showed shocking statistics and facts that shows how rapidly our world is changing around us. China will so become the largest English speaking country, Nintendo(A gaming console company) has spent more than $140M on innovations for their games in 2002 while the US government spent less than half of that on research on education in the same year. 

The class then moved on the discuss about Guns Germs And Steel (Jared Diamond,2005).  The discussion namely talked about the possible reasons why some countries developed much slower than others, with the main example on New Guinea as compared to Europe. Yali asked "Why do White men have so much cargo and we New Guineans have so little". I believe what prof Shahi said was right. Societies that do not open up to new ideas and do not have the "hunger" to constantly improve themselves are most likely to fall behind to others in terms of technological advances. I wish we had more time to discuss the geographical effects of a country on her level of technology though. I thought it would've been an engaging topic to discuss, like the effects of being situated above an oil reserve and the impact it will have on the countries technology level. And topics like why Singapore is doing better than an oil producing country like Nigeria despite us having much less natural resources. I believe that will give us a bigger picture of how different factors interlink and stimulate the level of technology in a country.

The second last part of the lesson talked about the revolutionary development in human history.

•       First Use of Fire – about 100,000 years ago

•       From Hunter-Gatherers to Agriculture – about 11,000 years ago

•       The Rise of Urban Settlements – about 8,000 years ago

•       Writing – about 4,000 years ago

•       Gunpowder – about 1,000 years ago

•       Industrial Revolution – about 150 years ago

•       Agricultural Revolution – about 50 years ago

•       ICT Revolution – started about 30 years ago, still on-going

•       BioBusiness Revolution – about 10 years ago, still relatively nascent

•       GreenTech Revolution – about 3-5 years ago, rapid innovation

From the list, we can see that after the industrial revolution, revolutionary development started happening at a much shorter interval as compared to previous years. I believe it is due to the fact that as automated machinery's were created, people could travel,cook,clean,communicate and work much faster as compared to their predecessors. Hence, people had much more time to think of better ways to improve their lives. This could be one of the possible reasons to the trend displayed above.

Lastly, Prof Shahi talked about how ape has evolved to man, and man is degrading into the fat man. The question is whether the future of the human race will continue in this direction. Research by the Health, United states have shown that 35.9% of adults in America is obese from 2009-2010. Such an occurrence has huge implications on the economy of the country, as health care expenditure will greatly increase due to the negative health effects of being fat. However, I believe that this is only a phase in human history. Modern man and women still idolises the concept of a muscular and lean body, and gyms have sprung up all the world to cater to the demands of the obese. The obese wants to slim down, as evident from the increase in gym and weight loss clinics appearing. If there is no demand for weight loss clinics and gyms, supply of such facilities will not increase. Hence, I believe that man will get through this phase and we will not ultimately become a fat race.

Finally, I would give this class a 8/10 as it really has really broadened my concept of the word technology. The class discussions were really fruitful and the readings suggested to us really increases our knowledge pertaining to the subject.