Technology, society and global dominance & human development
In the discussion regarding innovation and the organizational behavioral model which involve 3 different mindsets of organizations : rising star, the dominant player, and falling star. While it was unanimously agreed that the mindset of the rising star was the one to be adopted, i disagreed with the general point of view when the article "Innovation in the reset world" was mentioned. The view was that during a crisis or a recession, it is the ones that chooses to innovate and churn out new ideas who are able to surge ahead of its competition, thus companies should always include innovation as part of their business strategy. I disagree with this strongly. Coming up with an innovation brings about certain risks. You can never be sure if your innovation is going to be a success or a complete flop.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
What makes an innovation successful may not necessarily be what people need, but in fact what people want. Together with the rapidly changing world, an innovative project which a company embarked on could easily become obsolete when released to the public; the opposite is true. Simply said, innovation is a risk. In times of recession, innovation is an unnecessary risk for most companies to take. Only companies who are already successful and hence have enough spare capital to tide them through the recession no matter the outcome of its innovation, or companies where coming up with a new breakout idea is a do-or-die, does it make sense to divulge resources for innovation during recession.
"The colonial holocaust and its legacy" was another of our required readings. I thought it was amusing that westerners would try to give themselves credit for some of the supposed benefits brought by colonialism. Does not make sense for someone to claim credit for something which was not even their purpose of creating. Would it make sense for the Nazi's to claim credit for the technological developments in warfare, aeronautics and medical fields? I think not. Anyways, i felt that one of the points not mentioned during class discussion was that colonialism made English a common language among the colonial states. It is probably the reason why English is the common language of the world today. Could this have happened without colonialism? As mentioned in Wei Yang's presentation, the ability to have different communities being able to communicate with each other efficiently will revolutionize the world as it has already done for most of the developed countries. Also, when countries/states are unified it could bring about greater development and prosperity. An example is China which was many small states but unified during the Qing dynasty.
The video shown regarding the millennium development goals made me feel that the areas that technology have improved have been wrong. Think of how much more difference could have been made if such efforts have been directed towards technology that could alleviate poverty and inequality and improve health, such as more efficient food producing methods, drainage systems, resource transport systems etc. On another note, although it may seem inhumane as i say this, but even for countries who are more concerned with their personal gain it would make economic sense to lift countries like Africa out of poverty simply considering the vast proportions of cheap labor the people would be able to provide, definitely giving a much-needed boost to many companies as the well of cheap labor in China begins to run dry. Call it a form of "sustainable technology".
The presentation by Tian Bai titled "The Dark Side of Technology" interested me. It seemed a host of innovations and improvements had occurred during wartime which brought upon the question to me : are mankind the most creative when driven to desperate circumstances, or is not morally bound or held back by social conventions? It seemed to be then that it is in such situations when people can truly think out of the box. The presentation by Sylvester regarding eugenics titled "The 'Genius Babies' Grows Up" was a thought provoking one. I felt that that some of the points raised were interesting. Eugenics was mentioned as a new frontier for mankind. Previous encounters of eugenics were merely cases of discrimination and elitism with no real backing, however now with new developments in sciences we are now able to decipher the real "good genes" from the bad. Instead of in the past where the ill and diseased were segregated or sterilized, perhaps in the future the medical technology could allow unhealthy genes to be removed. The ability and choice to be able to provide one's offspring with a better deposition for better health should certainly be a technology to be desired.
Key takeaways from this lesson would be recognising that many revolutionary technologies become popular not through catering for a demand but creating a new demand by catering for it, for eg the internet which people did not think they need initially. Sustainable technology also seems to be the path for development in the future. Also, the technology which we have created may have been originally made for evil purposes or can have negative implications but we should continue research in it while having laws and legislations to nullify the problems that may pop up along the way.
Issues for future discussion for the class would be on the methods by which such negative effects of technology should be controlled, whether it should be done through legislation or by making the public more aware of such technologies and its problems thus increasing consumer awareness.
I found the class to be pretty interesting due to the wide array of topics presented by my classmates, hence i would rate the class 8/10.
