I would just like to share something that I read in today's The New Paper, a particular article, "HEY EMBRYOS Will your walk reflect your talk" reflecting on the very recent presidential elections.

"the explosion of political awareness on social media and the Internet, tools young people are comfortable with"

The fact that the youths in Singapore demonstrate political apathy has been a hot issue for awhile and I have to admit that I too was once politically apathetic. However, it is heartening to finally acknowledge that this situation is changing- for the better- and we've got social media and the internet to thank for that. During the 2011 GE as well as PE, the many passionate thoughts of my peers circulated on Facebook and Twitter. I will read lengthy Facebook notes on their thoughts on the GE and the different parties. Tweets from Straitstimesonline and my friends on Twitter also add to the varying information about the GE and PE and made the whole process even more so exciting. CNA also referred to the live tweets from us Singaporeans during broadcasts of the recent GE and PE. All the information that I find online really helped me to understand what was going on during such major political events in Singapore. Even when there was something I did not understand like the background of a particular candidate, information was readily available within a few clicks. With the information gathered, my friends and I would have lengthy discussions during the GE about the various candidates and we all became really interested in the ongoings of the elections. I firmly believe that the use of the social networking platforms makes all these political information easily available to us youths, and it also makes it a more interesting avenue of learning for us. Even the politicians themselves use these tools to reach out to the general population and it has been interesting reading their posts and comments. We don't even have to go down to their rallies; recorded clips can be found easily online. These really bring politics to a whole new level and I think that it really is cool that even politicians have evolved their campaigning mediums to become more relevant to this current Information Age.

But as the writer of the article states "If we achieve political awakening, we should accept with it the sober responsibilities of volunteering and social work. It is one thing to criticise the Government online for allowing the income gap to widen. It is another to seek out those who have fallen through that gap and give them help day after day". A poignant reminder that I felt was very relevant to what we learnt in Session 2 (:

#2

23 August 2011.

The second twc lesson!

The two main topics that were addressed in class today were technology's impact on global dominance as well as human development.

In the first half of the session, global dominance was discussed and I realized that dominance can be in different aspects for example, military, cultural and economic. One interesting point that Prof brought up was how sometimes trying to be dominant in one area will only cause other areas to be strained. This point was evidenced by the example of North Korea trying to be dominant in the military aspect yet causes their population to be starving and malnourished. Another interesting point was Prof Shahi's organizational behavior model for identifying innovation leaders and dominant players. It is interesting to note that it is those who maintain an open mind and not remain stagnant, that manage to become dominant in the industry. This is not just for companies! It is for countries as well, as how we identified China as a rising star. However, after one of the presentations about China's rising dominance, one classmate raised the point that China's rise over the United States is not a guarantee. This is because of the wide disparity in income, the corruption level, amongst several other reasons. I thought that this was a really interesting thought which have seemed to slipped the minds of many. It is for sure that China is a rising star, but for it maintain and not become a falling star still needs time to tell and I think that would be something to look out for.

In the second half of the session, we also examined how development comes in different dimensions. We watched two videos, one was Hans Rosling's "The Joy of Statistics" and the other about the 8 Millennium Goals. The first video was a true joy to watch with the amazing way the information was presented! Technology can be used to make teaching and learning a more fun and engaging experience (y) One main point that I observed from the video was the wide income gap in some countries, for example China. I think that this rich-poor disparity is an unhealthy sight. China's HDI as of 2010 was 0.663 but its Gini coefficient has reached that of 0.47 in 2010 which is past the recognized warning level of 0.4.

In an article I read about China's wealth divide, Li Shi, a professor on income distribution and poverty studies with the Beijing Normal University, said "the income of the top 10 percent of the richest Chinese was 23 times that of the bottom 10 percent in the country in 2007, as compared with 1998, when the gap was only 7.3 times."

It really makes one wonder how someone seeing his own countrymen without anything to eat, can still continue living an excessive lifestyle. I have previously told my parents that the world would be a better place if everyone just shared their wealth and everyone earned the same income, but their retort was that that is no difference from a communist state. So, I guess it really is hard trying to find that balance with regards to wealth divide.

The key phrase from the latter video was "What If" and indeed, what if we can all put aside our own personal agenda and work together to achieve those 8 goals? Surely, the world will be a better place to live in! Prof mentioned that in times of economic downturn, the contributions that go towards helping the third world countries go down. And this really emphasizes the fact that personal interest is really more important than helping those in need. I just can't help but wonder, which is worse, a first world country refusing to help a third world country so as to protect its own self interest, or a country with wide income disparity, seeing its own citizens starving and yet the rich still grow richer due to corruption. Also, in the first session prof mentioned that a computer that far exceeds the human's mental capabilities may be completed by 2049. This fact popped up as I was watching the video. Why are we spending so much resources on such technological advances, while we ignore the true needs of the people? Surely, the money would be better used in helping those in true need?

Due to the lack of time, one issue we were not able to discuss further was that of cloning. I personally am really quite interested in that topic. Speaking from my religion's point of view, cloning is against nature and should not be done. However, Prof mentioned that such arguments have been used against IVF, a practice that is so common nowadays. Thus it led me to wonder, will cloning also becoming something that so common in the future? The topic about cloning reminds me of this one movie that I watched awhile back(the title escapes me), whereby the people hide behind the clones of themselves and they control their clones to live their everyday life. The actual humans themselves are dissatisfied with the physical disability and appearance so they rely on their clones. In the end, people grew distant from each other,locked up in their own rooms controlling their clones, they grew unhealthy from the lack of activity and they lack confidence in their own appearance. Is that a society that we will become if we allow cloning to advance to such a stage? True, it was just a sci-fic movie but who can say that it would not happen in the future? I guess the main question is whether cloning is indeed necessary and what is the true purpose of cloning. If it is just to make scientific advances and new discoveries, I really do not think that cloning should be pursued based on such reasons. After all, the mistakes made during cloning may result in abnormalities and so what are we to do with these clones? Killing them would bring about a whole new ethics problem. There would be so many issues that will crop up both from a moral and legal point of perspective. This is similar to the drones technology that I brought up in my presentation and it strikes me that, with the evolving technology it really does seem that the laws will never be able to catch up.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror

I'm asking him to change his ways

And no message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make a change

This quote from the song 'Man In The Mirror' by Michael Jackson is my key takeaway for Session 2; that for us to make the world a better place and to achieve the MDGs, we really have got to set aside our own personal interests and agendas.

I would rate this session a 8/10 due to the several interesting points that were brought up during class. Also loved the videos that we watched which were really thought-provoking and relevant to the context of the topic that day!

Dinner conversation

So after that long reflective post about my first twc lesson, guess what topic popped up at the dinner table today. No prizes for guessing correctly. Technology.

Actually, I had difficulty logging onto elearn, school email and oasis last night. It was as though the school websites hated me or something! I checked with my friends and they had no difficulty getting into the websites, it was only ME. Naturally, I got really pissed off and angsty would be an understatement. So today at dinner my dad brought up this situation and asked "are you really that dependent on the internet" with a skeptical look on his face. WOAHH dejavu much! I proceeded to explain why these websites were so essential during the course of my university life and we both spent some time lamenting over this dependency. Can you imagine, if its during the bidding period and oasis fails to load? Can you imagine, your prof uploads readings onto elearn and you have no way of accessing it in time to prepare for class? Imagine again, important emails being sent to your school email, all of which require immediate attention, yet you keep getting prompts of a sign in error. Oh the horror! Many a times I would be in the midst of an interesting (though not necessarily important) conversation on msn and all of a sudden the internet gets wonky and I get disconnected. The rage that ensues ain't no joking matter I tell you. The frustration, the furious clicking trying to get back onto msn. Trivial matter, but definitely one of the First World's problems. /"Problem"

Another thing we talked about was about mobile phones, how it has evolved to the market's two big giants, Apple and Blackberry. I found out that the first phone, you know the big phones used in the ancient chinese traid dramas, are actually under the Motorola brand! But imagine now, motorola is no longer considered when one is choosing a phone to buy. Motorola, Siemens and Samsung are just some of the few phone brands that I grew up with but have now slipped into oblivion. Even Nokia is facing the strong threat of the Blackberry and Apple giants.

"Motorola was not able to keep up with times, their technology was not up to date and this is why they were kicked out of the race" - dad

Wise words from the dad reminded me that there is a need for technology to be evolving. In my previous post, I questioned the need for the ever evolving technology and why people would want it despite the obvious setback of over-dependency. Now, I realize that one reason would be that companies want to remain relevant and not get kicked out by competitors.

Intellectual dinner conversations, win (y)

#1

This shall be my first official post for twc. To begin things right, I shall just briefly state the original perceptions I had about twc before I first walked into class on Tuesday, 16 August 2011. Well, when I first bidded for this mod, the feedback that I heard was that twc is pretty dry, boring and somewhat useless. It was with these perceptions that I entered class for the first time that day.

Class began with the usual round of introductions and Prof then proceeded to give us an idea of what was in store for us for the lessons to come. The main topics that were addressed in Session 1 were:

1. The evolution of technology

- I felt that the video Prof showed us "did you know shift happens" was a very impactful video to start off the class with. I was surprised by the different statistics and I've got to admit, watching that video made me realize that twc was actually pretty interesting. We saw how technology has evolved such that we humans have formed a dependent relationship with it. The social networking statistics alone was enough to prove this very point. I am aware that social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as technology such as text messaging was widely used, but it never struck me that the people using these technologies would far surpass that of a country's population! This interesting observation would also have to be one of my key takeaway for the day; technology is very much interlinked to our day-to-day lives. I have to admit, I have always thought technology to be something foreign and IT-ish, so it is cool to realize that the websites that I frequent can be counted as technology!

When we were introducing ourselves at the start of the class, one of my fellow classmate mentioned that the evolution of technology has caused us to become more connected yet at the same time we were more ''disconnected''. This was an interesting observation that captured my attention because well, I am one of the 'victims' of this tech-savvy era. But would labelling myself as a 'victim' be appropriate? If I recall correctly, Prof seemed to have mentioned that technology is a result of our decisions. It is what we made it to be. So, even in the usuage of technology, we are the captains of our own ships, the decision makers. This made me ponder on yet another interesting idea from the video, that by 2049 there would be a computer that far exceeds the mental capabilities of the human population. Why would we choose to develop such technology that will only leave us even more so dependent on technology? Sure, technology is evolving but is the human population keeping up and evolving as well?

The apeman - man - fat man chart that Prof showed us in class seems to suggest otherwise. Technology has made life increasingly easy and we are growing soft around the tummy, I'm not sure if I want to grow soft in the brains as well.

2. The unequal technology development of different countries.

-"Why do white people have more cargo?" A thought-provoking question asked in the video "Guns, Germs and Steel". Like Jared Diamond, author of the book, I too initially thought that hey that question sounds simple enough. But as the video progressed, I found that to be a misconception. During the discussion, geographical factor popped up as a reason why the Europeans were more predisposed to developing faster than the New Guineans. I thought this was quite interesting because no one has any control over their geographical conditions. So is it really anyone's fault that New Guinea is far less developed a society than the Western countries? I would actually like to see this topic being more vividly discussed during class. Is it due to the the superior geographical factors of the European countries that led to the sharing of technology thus giving rise to technological advances, and from there the Industrialization age? But like in the video, Jared Diamond observed that the New Guineans are ingenious people and by no means, less intelligent than the Whites. So why is it that they are not able to come up with the technology that is comparable to that in the Western countries?

Researching for my class presentation next week as well as reading up for the topical review paper, I have read several articles regarding technology and its impact of society, and more often than not, the pros and cons of technology are equally matched. It really depends on how we use the technology that is available to us. The Western countries have used technology to their advantage to progress to a modern era but now the overuse of technology has resulted in their burgeoning size. Thus, the main takeaway for me is that technology can be used to our advantage, though the misuse or overuse of technology may lead to negative consequences. I guess this is the link between technology and world change; a change for the better or worse? That is for us to decide.

I would rate the first lesson a 7.5/10. It was a thought provoking first lesson and I realized that twc is actually really interesting! Loved the videos that were shown during class, and its cool that Prof showed us the video of the Big Bang theory song which was relevant to what we were learning! (y) Looking forward to having more discussions in class though! Gotta gather up the courage to speak up in class, but I guess since my presentation is next week, I'm gonna get that needed practice already. Yikes!

Testing! New blog for twc 2011, the first assignment I have in twc and smu. So let's see how this goes!