Week 1

The first Technology and World Change lesson was indeed insightful, considering that I came into the Seminar Room not knowing what to expect. When we had to give a brief introduction of ourselves and include what we knew about Technology and World Change, I was stumped. I had no idea what this whole course was about.

Yet, as the lesson progressed, my interest in the subject grew. I have to say that videos catch my attention more than anything else, and hence, I was most enthralled by the various videos Professor showed, including “Did You Know” and “Guns, Germs and Steel”.

These two videos were most thought-invoking for me, and I was amazed by the progression of information technology as shown by the video “Did You Know”. Throughout the years, we have indeed progressed tremendously. But yet at the same time, with such rapid progression, we have started to become overly dependent on technology. This brings me to a point which was brought up briefly during lesson time. Are we becoming too connected such that we are no longer connected? I do think so. Perhaps 5 years ago, our parents would have complained about us being glued to our mobile phones 24/, and not leaving any time for proper communication with them. Today, even our parents are becoming our friends on Facebook, and posting status updates every hour. It is not merely the younger generation who is becoming more dependent on the new forms of information technology. Even the older generation is starting to catch up with these advances.

Well, if this is the case now, what about 5 or 10 years later? What would the world be like when technology continues to advance even more? Would our emotional relationships fail? How different would we be from robots then, if we continue to distant ourselves from emotional relationships, choosing to merely depend on the social media or technology to build our relationships and expect them to last?

To add on, “Guns, Germs and Steel” addressed an issue which I feel should be a point of greater concern in today’s world.

"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" –Yali, 1974

While we continue developing at such a fast pace, what about the other parts of the world? The less developed areas? Who is helping them to keep up with times? Few people actually take an interest in the development of these less developed areas, and hence, as we continue to progress so rapidly, the people living in the rural areas are left behind in the wake of our progress. Wouldn’t this result in greater global inequality? Instead of spending all our resources on finding new and faster ways to develop our information technology, why not put aside some resources to aid the people in the less developed areas to advance, such that they might be able to live more comfortably, instead of having to work twice as hard as us. Considering the amount of work they have to do compared to us (we have machines to help us, they depend on manual labour), who are we to complain that we are burned/stressed out?

All in all, I learnt a great deal during this first lesson. It was intriguing and I am already looking forward to the next lesson. I would rate this lesson 7/10.