During the first lesson of Technlogy and World Change (TWC),
Professor Shahi posted the class a question: What is this subject here about?
What are you here for? I turned to look at my friend and my friend just stared
right back…we were both lost for words. While the rest of the class was taking
turns to answer the question, I kept looking for an answer within me. All I
could think of was: “Technology and World Change is about how the World is
changed by Technology”. Well I guess Captain Obvious would be really proud of
me if he knew what I was thinking.
Well I always believe that it is not what you bring into a
class that is important. It is what you take away from the class that is crucial. Thus I opened up my ears and listened hard.
As the lesson proceeded, Prof Shahi showed the class the first
video of the lesson, “Shift Happens”. Well I initially read it as “shit
happens”, not that it made no sense at all. While I was in National Service, my
superiors always say, “Shit happens! Deal with it!”. In this case, it is “Shift
happens! Deal with it!”. This cannot be put in a more precise manner. The speed
of globalization and world change is so fast, and it will only continue
increasing at an exponential rate. Therefore to survive, the only choice we have is to deal with it.
One part of the video that really caught my
attention is when the video says that what we undergraduates learn in year 1
may well be obsolete in year 3. This made me realize that as we go through
university education, the primary reason is not to learn the content but rather
the skills. The content we learn will not be entirely applied when we are in
the workforce, but rather the thinking skills, analyzing skills and other
important skills can be used for the entire lifetime. Content may become obsolete, but skills will always be useful.
I read this book “Who moved my cheese?” some time back. This book clearly further promotes the ideas presented in the video. Basically change happens all the time, we
just have to deal with it, cope with it and enjoy it. Embrace change and make
it change an advantage. As with rules of evolution, the fittest and the one
who can adapt to changes will survive. Since changes are impossible to predict, the
only way is to embrace it. In 1990s, the most commonly used storage device, the
3 ½ floppy disk can only store up to 720kb of data. Fast forward 20 years, the
typical external hard disks are more than 10,000 times that capacity. Putting this into context, just imagine these data storage as a representation of knowledge in an individual. If after 20 years his knowledge is still stuck at 720kb, it is extremely difficult to compete with someone with the knowledge of a 10gb hard drive.
The lesson then proceeded on to the video “Guns, Germs and
Steel”. The video revolves around one simple question: Why you white men have
so much cargo and we New Guineas have so little? After discussion, one
particular possible reason caught my attention, that is geographical separation. Similar to speciation in wild life, when a species is separated geographically, the gene pool will
not show signs of increasing variation, making the variations rather stagnant. This applied to the context of the
issue shows that because the New Guineans are geographically separated from the
rest of the world, they are not open to external innovations and ideas, which is like not getting new pools of genes.
Prof
Shahi explained that when you close your doors to the outside world, you are
starting your decline. The New Guineans in a way “closed their doors”, though
not by choice but rather by nature. So this is one possible reason for the
difference in technological development between the Westerners and New
Guineans, even though the New Guineans are just as intelligent people.
In relation to this issue, we discussed how the decline of China
when they closed their doors to the western innovations. They believed that
they were superior compared to the rest of the world and once they became
complacent, they began their decline. This teaches us an important lesson that
we can never be complacent. The pursuit of knowledge is endless. The more we
know, the more we don’t know. We need to change and pick up new things along the way.
The class was really enjoyable and eye opening encounter. I am
particularly interested the examples of technological innovations some of my
classmates brought up during the interview, and thus really look for to further
such discussions in class and also for the individual presentations.
I would give a rating of 8/10 for this session because I feel the class was very fluent
and coherent and really gave me insights the the course TWC. The lesson also really
made my brain think really hard, after it has been unused for 2 years of National
Service.
Signing off!
Stanley
Luo Xindi
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