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