Brief Overview/Summary
I felt that the above quote from Prof really summed up the whole lesson. This week, Prof talked to us about the concepts of innovation and invention and the idea of singularity. He reminded us of the importance of understanding historical roots such as colonialism as well as continually having a rising star mentality to look for progress. He also then went on to mention about the Human Development index and the United Nations Millenium Development Goals and how technology can be used in a sustainable manner to alleviate the problems that exist and work towards development and enabling every person to live up to his fullest potential.
The next segment of the lesson were presentations were several interesting ideas were raised including that of Eugenics, the dark side of technology and the use of technology in education.
Interesting Observations and Ideas
1)Wen Bin's presentation was on the use of technology on education. The question he posed to us was whether the role of teachers be replaced by technology in later stages of education?
I feel that the role of teachers cannot be replaced by technology even in the later stages of education. Technology can only provide us with the information and at the most be slightly interactive but we will still need teachers who are not only repositories of information but people who can react to our ideas and our views and give us skills of analysis. They will be able to respond to us and critique our answers and facilitate discussions which open our minds and these are things that technology will never be able to replicate.
2) Another interesting idea I had was during Wei Yang's presentation. He suggested that there was an app that could translate any piece of information written in a foreign language to English when passed over that piece of information. This would help to bring cultures closer together and help us to understand one another better. I thought that this was a great idea and came up with a follow-up idea that the app could be equipped with a further function of being able to voice out what you wanted to say in the foreign language of your choice if say you wanted to ask a question so that you would not have the problem of being misunderstood due to the differences in pronunciation.
Prof also had a similar idea which was to invent a earpiece that could translate what you said into the language of the person speaking to you and it would likewise translate what he said in his native tongue into a language that you could understand.
I think that there is much future and market potential in devices of this kind and I would like to invent one in the future and go out there and learn more about other cultures.
3) Eugenics
Sylvester brought up the idea of Eugenics in his presentation and how it could be used to come up with a better grade of humans, one that is more intelligent and would allow the human race to evolve for the better. I think that this was a very interesting though rather contentious issue because there are severe moral repercussions.
Firstly, I disagree with the idea of Eugenics because I feel that being rational human beings and if it was found possible to extract the gene for intelligence, for good looks and perhaps that sense of humor you always wanted to pick up that cute girl at the party, then everyone would want their children to be programmed with those genes. And if we could really choose then we would all have that gene inserted and we'd all be the same. We'd be equally smart and pretty, not to mention look faintly alike and then the world would become so much boring for it. We would have a real risk in this situation of becoming almost robotic and I shudder to think about living in a world as such.
Another issue I have with Eugenics is how cruel it can be. Say we identify a really brilliant gene for intelligence, the person/ company that figured out how to extract that gene would surely want to protect its secret for the purposes of making a lot of profit for it. In that case there would be scarcity because only the rich would be able to afford such an expensive gene. The poor people would not be able to obtain the gene and would continue to be inferior. However, the rich people wanting to provide the best for their children and because the cost of obtaining that gene would be so expensive, they would have to have fewer children. The poorer people are likely to continue having more children as they currently do because they are usually not so concerned about family planning and then we're back to square one. The "retrograde" humans would continue to increase in population far more than the intelligent humans and not only will the human race not be significantly more intelligent, it would also have widened the rich-poor divide such that the poor people would be living in circumstances that would be almost impossible to bridge and there would be no social mobility.
Would we want to impose on our children a world in which their whole life depends on the parents to whom they were born?
I do agree with the use of Eugenics regarding diseases that if we were able to identify a gene that would cause a certain disease to be able to remove it. However, at the same time, if we were to allow Eugenics to be used in this manner, we will not be able to limit what the research is used for and sooner-or-later Eugenics will begin to be used to create a perfect human. This is a slippery slope we cannot and should not allow ourselves to start on.
I feel that we should not so much be concerned with trying to breed humans that are of a distinct higher quality than others but to give each and every human being on this earth a chance to live their life to the fullest and be the best that they can be. The resources used on research in Eugenics could be better channeled to focusing on reducing poverty and providing clean water, sanitation and housing for the poorest 1 percent of the population worldwide. In enabling them to be able to live their lives with dignity and have the hope of improving their current situation, we are actually become better humans ourselves in the sense that we are able to empathize and act to improve the lives of others, which in my opinion is far more important than intelligence or good looks.
Key Take Away Points
1)The difference between invention and innovation
Prof clarified that invention is the creation of an item and innovation is the translation of something that can be used in the marketplace in which innovation is a subset of invention. This was rather interesting for me because I always thought that they were the same. The reminder that all innovation still needs to be translated into the marketplace as an invention is relevant because even though we may thing that something we have thought of is brilliant it may not have applicability to a wide audience. The true test of the benefit of a innovation is how it helps those who use it so we do have to bear in mind that an good invention should always try to be a better innovation!
2)The need to reinvent yourself
Prof shared with us his model of identifying innovation leaders and dominant players. Through the model, he explained the importance of always looking for opportunities to improve yourself and not closing your door to others. A poignant example raised was that of Kodak who invented the digital camera but kept it aside because they did not want it to interfere with their film business. Thus, they fell behind as a result of competitors inventing the digital camera as they did not look for opportunities and study the market. Hence, it is always important have the rising star mentality and to continually improve ourselves and survey the market to identify the direction in which it is heading such that we will not fall behind.
3) The concept of singularity.
The concept of singularity is that the rate of development is speeding up so exponentially that there is new knowledge formed all the time. This reminded me of the importance of learning skills such as analysis such that we are able to analyse our problems and figure out how it should be solved rather than relying on records of how previous problems were solved in order to solve a new problem.
Issues for Further Discussion
1) I would have liked to discuss more about the future of Eugenics and the possible implications of the use of such technology as I would have liked to hear if there were any views on how to ameliorate the negative moral repercussions of Eugenics.
2) I would also have liked to discuss more about the dark side of technology because I recently read up about bitcoins, a form of online currency with no regulatory authority or central bank and if it continues to get stronger, could bring down the whole economic systems. I would have liked to have raised this issue to discuss about how we could control the problems created and to hear other forms of cybercrime or ways in which technology is being used for purposes other than which it was created and how to solve them.
Personal Ratings for the session.
I would give this lesson an 8/10. I was very impressed with the ideas that the presenters brought up as they were really very interesting with a lot of room for exploration and discussion. I also enjoyed looking at the way technology affects different levels of society and being to extrapolate the problems and problem-solving strategies from the individual to the firm and to the society.
Looking forward to next week's lesson as usual! :)
Cheers,
Amanda Tan
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