My first TWC lesson!
The first lesson was an introduction to Technology and World change as long as the course outline.
The lesson basically educated me that technology is all around us. What we see all around us is technology.
We know more about technology than we actually think we do. The first lesson along with all the videos really brought a new perspective of what TWC was about. To be honest my first impression was like "Oh no! TWC sounds boring.. it'll be 3hours rambling non-stop about technology and world change, isn't that boring? However, the way the lesson started is quite interesting, along with videos which i think would be a good way to get students' attention.
The first video - Shift Happens - was really interesting for me.
There are loads of interesting points in that video.
"China will soon become the number one English-speaking country in the world. If we took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China, there would still be a labor surplus."
This basically foresee that China would eventually be the cream of the crop in the future - which relates to World's change. In time to come, the world would probably be revolving around China. Everything little thing China do will have a drastic impact on the world, including the world's economy to the point of saying when China sneezes, the whole world will tremble. This imply that if we want to keep in current with technology and world changes, we must keep close attention to the progress China is making. At the same time, not forgetting India - the 2nd Asian Giant next to China. If India goes the right way, it could jolly well join China at the top in the future.
"There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month"
2.7 billion each month(not year). That equates to 90 million searches per day, more than 1000 searches every second. This clearly shows how important the internet is for us.
The timeline of time at worldworld.com shows that fully electronic computer were developed only at about 1950s. According to wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet], internet was only introduced in the 1950-1960s along with the development of the computers.
This shows just how fast technology is improving, with the internet being established not long after computers were just introduced. Within 50 years, computer and internet has become an essential part of our lives, in this techno-savvy world. Internet provides a medium for information and ideas to be shared around the whole world, allowing the world to progress exponentially. Websites such as Google and Facebook as such mediums.
"For students starting a four-year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study."
This is the most interesting point and key take away point for me.
This sentence is simple and straightforward but is the most impactful as well.
It simply means that the technology change is happening so fast, and at the tremendous pace the world is changing, if we don't keep up, we'll be left behind. So it is important that not only now, even after this TWC class, after this year or after we graduate, we must still stay current on how the world is changing, what new technologies are being introduced or what policies are implementing into our world. We can do so by reading the news and keeping updated on current happenings. Anyway with our smartphones, with internet everywhere we go, we can easily keep on track of what is happening in the world.
The issue that i wished that have been given more thoughts in class was the discussion of the question quoted from "Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond", "why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?"
Because the white people have access to this, have that, being ethnocentric. This is generally how people will look at this matter with a bias point of view, pushing the blame onto the richer and more powerful people.
However, I believe the New Guineans have partial fault in this matter as well.
Since the New Guineans are from a tribe - traditional - they are luddite by nature. They are adamant in doing what they believe in or rather what their ancestors believe in and only the primary way(which is without the use of technology) is better. I'll say pass them a gun to allow them to hunt for food more easily and i'm pretty sure they would still stick to using their hand-made weapons like spears.
I would say that refusing to accept changes would slow the pace of developing which ultimately lead to the "little cargo".
With that being said, it doesn't mean i'm Eurocentric. Rather i'm trying to be in the middle, viewing this from another point of view. Of course, there are many other factors that play a role as well such as access to resources(raw materials), information being shared around world-wide, geographical reasons and more.
Take Singapore for example, we have no natural resources. Yet, this small country is able to transform from a native fishing village to what it is today. Just because of geographical reasons? I think not.
Rather, it is our willingness to accept changes, adapting quickly to the different situations that allow us to progress exponentially to what we are today. So many factors do play a part, but it is vital to be well informed of how fast technology and the world is changing and more importantly, the willingness to accept changes.
Overall first lesson has gave me a sneak preview on TWC and the class is pretty interesting. I'm a 100% sure i'll learn a lot from this module and hope the rest of the classes would be as interesting as the first, if not more interesting. :)
Class Rating: 9/10
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