Brief overview of Week 2 Class
Technology, Society and Global Dominance
The class started off again with another video with food for thought, depicting the rapid changes throughout the world’s history…
This video sparked off the discussion of the occurrences of civilization and societies, and the dimensions of global dominance such as social, cultural, economic, industrial and military. This led to the introduction of the theory of “Dominant Player, Rising Stars, & Falling Stars.
It was really interesting how we have compared the actions of various companies (as compared to soccer teams as I know nuts about them), and placed them in the 3 categories.
We then had an interesting presentation on “Globalization as a Generator of Global Hegemony”, followed by “New Technologies and Emerging Structures of Global Dominance” by our classmates.
We first discussed on the issue of America’s rapid advancement that helped push technological boundaries. This may have helped many economies grow, but have we then lost many cultures due to rampant Americanization? The 2nd speaker spoke about the emerging technologies, and how some countries could harness its advantages to push for economic growth.
Technology and Human Development
We then moved on to talk about human development, and had the analogy of the egg and the chicken paradox compared to the relation between development and world change.
Human Development Index (HDI) was then a hot topic for discussion, with much debate on the usefulness of the different indicators and their effectivess a guage of human development. We then delved deeper into the Millennium Development Goals...
Following that, we had another video that graphed human lifespan against income levels throughout history for different countries, by Hans Rosling.
The last 2 presenters then rounded us off with the topic on “Making Capitalism More Creative”, followed by “Outbreak.com: Using the Web to Track Deadly Diseases in Real-Time”.
The first presentation talked about the potential of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to give back to the society, which can be aided by the newer technologies that help improve information flow. The second presentation showed us this interesting concept of having outbreak of diseases to be put up on a website in real-time, to allow others to be more aware and take appropriate action more effectively.
Interesting Observations
I think the simple exercise of identifying actions of different companies and comparing them to rising/falling stars is very useful and interesting. We have learnt that failure is an option, but quitting is not. Having a positive attitude will ultimately help get you somewhere.
In “New Technologies and Emerging Structures of Global Dominance”, political will of a country was brought up pretty frequently in the class, and I do believe that this is the core to any country’s advancement. This is because many other factors (education, culture, economy etc.) all have a direct effect from the government’s actions. Without the correct political figures to do what is right for the nation, the country will never be able to move foward in the right direction.
In Hans Rosling’s presentation, many in the class were impressed with the graphical visualization. As much as I was impressed, I couldn’t help but wonder the reliability of all his statistics. Reading through the comments of the video, indeed I found certain discrepancies mentioned as comments of the videos....
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| Very keen observations! |
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| Interesting tidbits of fact |
Whether or not these comments were of any truth, it really showed how technology can be used to impress audience so much that they could well be blinded from truth/facts. It can be dangerous when technology is used as a red herring to distract us from a presentation with many mistakes. Well... it’s just a random thought, seeing how I’ve been through many presentations that were impressive in technical aspects but lacked the conviction of its content.
Key Takeaways
I guess the falling/rising star concept is etched really deep in my mind. It is important to be optimistic and open-minded, and being humble to have the thirst for knowledge will set you apart.
Failure is an option, quitting isn’t.
Also, this week’s lesson further reinforced my point in last week’s post about how technology has brought us so many wonderful changes and impacts around the world, yet it can harm us negatively if not used appropriately. It all boils down to how each individual makes use of it.
Issues for Further Discussion
Another random thought about the human rights in Finland to have access to 1Mbps (click for link to news article, OMG it’s really true!) is how scary the situation might become, although being impressive at first sight. I thought we could have further discussed the pros and cons of it. Personally, I shudder to think how ‘readily contactable’ we will be, and there is no excuse to say “I don’t have internet anymore!” Will such a rule have an effect on our personal lives in the long run?
Also, I think the Millennium Development Goals could have been discussed a little bit more. Issues such as the justifications behind certain goals, and the controversy of overfunding could have been discussed. As we’re already in 2011, that means there is 4 years left to achieve the goals. Is the UN able to achieve them? If not, how else could we have done better to improve the strategies?
Conclusion
This session has help broadened our knowledge on how technology is affecting many areas and dimensions of our daily lives. As we delve deeper into each relationship with technology advancement, we are more aware of the changes around us, and what we can do to adapt in such rapid changes.
I wish I could have had more time to read up on the articles provided, as 8 were just too many. Perhaps I’ll try harder to allocate time to fully read through a few articles, so as to be able to share my views.
Rating: 7/10
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