TWC session 2

Beginning of the session, Dr Shahi gave a quick summary of session 1. He talked about the big transition and 3rd rate productivity. The objective of session 2 was to understand how technology affects a country/organisation dominance and human development.

Global Dominance
Dr Shahi showed us his model of dominance and explained that a dominant player has a possibility to be a "falling star" and the non-dominant player can rise up. The "falling star" are those that are pessimistic and unwilling to learn while the "rising stars" are those that are optimistic and willing to learn. Can this model apply to every organisation and countries? In Bing Jie's presentation, this model is applicable. His presentation was about how China used to be a fearsome power but was gradually taken over by the U.S. China was unwilling to open up it's door to other countries and was isolated to their own regime while the U.S continues to innovate and learn from other countries. In my presentation, I showed how the model actually does not apply in the recording industry. Initially, the recording industry grows in parallel with technology improvement but with the introduction of digital technology, the recording industry faced a recession. Even by continuous improvement in recording techniques,sales of records continues to plummet. Major record labels no longer are dominant and are of equal standing with independent records. Apparently the model only works for non-western countries where countries such as Korea and Taiwan are dominating the recording industry.

I felt a bit unfair for Bing Jie to be awarded a 6/10 by the class just because his presentation was poor. I can see that he put in effort for his presentation and content. For myself, just keep calm and carry on. Only those whom I met up every night before the presentation knows how much I effort I put in.

Human Development
What is human development? When there is an increase in possibility for someone to achieve his full potential and contribute to the society, there is development. We discuss about the human development index and its flaws. The human development index measures development by taking into account of income, life expectancy and education of the country. However, the issue here is whether these 3 are enough to gauge development. In Wen Fong's presentation, he talked about other factors that could be taken into account such as happiness and show us that there is a linear relationship between income and happiness. The problem is how do we judge intangible things such as happiness? A violence-prone country such as Colombia is actually rank higher than Singapore in the happiness ranking. The human development index does not take into account of the income disparity of a country as well. A state in a country could just be dirt poor. In Mavis presentation, she talked about the digital divide and computer literacy. In our current age, digital technology is ubiquitous and it is vital for us to understand about digital technology. Poorer countries which do not have access to proper education, are unable to learn about digital technology thus unable to apply the knowledge. This results in a digital divide where there is a disparity between countries about digital knowledge. However, is it important to resolve the the digital disparity now when we have not even achieve the millennium goals that countries set in year 2000. The millennium goals deals with basic human rights and needs. If some countries have no access to fundamental rights such as clean water, should  they be learning about digital technology first? Personally  I do not think so.

Overall Mavis and Wen Fong put up a good presentation and did not even stumble at all. I felt that they deserve their grading.

Session was great with interesting videos shown. The open discussion part was a bit awkward as I personally felt that people just spoke to break the silence though some of the points were interesting. Rating of session 7/10

On Monday 18 August 2014, I had my first TWC session with Dr Shahi. The first session is on introductory to technology and world change. The "Did You Know" video shown during lesson gave a brief overview about technology and world change; shift happens with the advancement of technology.

During the session, all of us shared what we know about technology and world change. Many interesting ideas were shared and Dr Shahi supplemented those ideas with extra information and insights. I was intrigued by certain ideas by the class and Dr Shahi

Singularity
This term was brought up by Dr Shahi during lesson. It means that with the current rate of advancement of technology, one day artificial intelligence will exceed human intelligence resulting in a situation which the gradient for rate of technology is actually 1! Technology is rapidly advancing even if we cannot feel it! The big question to ask is are we able to adapt by the time comes? Will we be leading a life of slavery to the technology we created?

Technology vs manpower
It was discussed that with the advancement of technology such as robotics, many jobs were made obsolete. Many people will be left jobless especially in the third world countries which Dr Shahi then left a comment,"Who will pay them in the future?" Technology has produce copious amount of societal issues. Personally, I feel that the government can resolve this by providing training to these people. However, that is always not the case due to many reasons such as corruption.

Issues worth discussing
Towards the end of the lesson, we watched a short video documentary called Guns, Germs and Steels by Jared Diamond. It talked about the shift in dominance and the inequality in our world. Instead of thinking why is there so much difference between the New Guineans and the Westerners, I was thinking why no one was reaching out to them and help them. Could it be that countries fear losing it's dominance. Where should we be heading then? Should countries risk losing their dominance in the world by slowing down their research,aid the poor and letting the uneducated to catch up or should they continue to venture into the unknown until they reach the point of singularity? Whatever situations or problems that we ended out with, I believed we can never blame technology. After all, we make the decisions.

Overall, session was great with many discussions but the icebreaker had taken up too much time hence we never delve into many ideas and perspective. Session was fun with the use of videos and sometimes humor.Mind-blown by Dr Shahi idea of not following the norm by using textbook to teach since we are learning about "change". Rating for session: 7/10