Week 3

During the course of the 3rd lesson, Dr. Shahi mentioned the US Love Canal. It sounded pretty interesting, so I did a bit of research on it.

The Love Canal was actually a kilometer-long pit meant to be part of the canal. However, after it was purchased by the City of Niagara Falls, it was decided that this pit was an ideal location for a chemical-dumping site. For protection, the canal was lined with clay and covered with dirt. However, the effects of the chemical substances were soon felt and in 1978, the areas around the Love Canal were declared hazardous.

This example perfectly illustrates how industrial development is not necessarily beneficial. Thus we have to be mindful of the consequences of our actions. As Dr. Shahi mentioned, for sustainable industrial development, we have to maximise value creation without reducing options for future generations.

In the case of the Love Canal, due to the misuse of the pit for dumping of chemicals, much of the place today has been sectioned off, preventing the land from being put to good use.

During Indra's presentation, his question for discussion caught my attention: Sustainable development, is it a 'pernicious fad' or a real prospect?

In my opinion, it is currently, in today's time, a fad. This can be seen from the actions of corporations, which aim to promote sustainable development, and claim to eco-friendly, in their bid to appeal to consumers.

Sustainable development is a much talked about topic nowadays, but how many are genuinely concerned about meeting our needs now without diminishing the capacity of future generations to meet theirs? I doubt many are genuinely interested about ensuring that future generations are looked out for.

In the second half of the lesson, we talked about Technology and Innovation Management.

Dr. Shahi brought up an interesting point: In general, the people who have access to technology do not require them. On the other hand, the people who require these technologies have no access to them.

So the problem comes. How do you get the technology to reach those who really need it?

This issue stuck in my mind, and made me ponder over it. This issue is linked to the issue we first talked about in Week 1, when Yali asked "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Of course, I thought about the issue closer at hand, such as the rural areas in China, where many people are still living in poverty, despite the more developed cities such as Shanghai acheiving great economic growth. Is no one going to help these rural areas develop as well?

While we are moving from PCs to laptops to iPads, the people in these rural areas are still suffering from illiteracy. While we worry about whether our vegetables are organic, the people in the rural areas worry about whether they have enough food to go round.

While we continue developing new technology, who is going to help the less developed areas catch up? The gap between the developed and less developed areas is just going to get wider as a result. What we should do is to introduce technology to the less developed areas, so that they get an opportunity to catch up with us.

Although I gained new knowledge from this lesson and was made to ponder over several issues, I felt that this topic was a tad bit dry, and hence I would rate it 6/10. However, I'm looking forward to the next lesson tomorrow! :)