Session 10-24/10/2011

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called present

~Kungfu Panda~

Two years has passed since I last watched this childishly interesting animation but that adage concluded by Oogway – The grandmaster still echoes in my mind. That’s right, the preciousness of life lies in every moment that we breathe, talk and so on. Don’t agonize or indulge oneself immersing in the past filled with memories since they are all over, and can’t be changed; or nervously try to foresee the future since “the only predictable thing about life is it unpredictability” (Ratatouille). Treasure every second you live in and happiness eventually comes to find you. Sounds like a perfect lifestyle, doesn’t it?

Oh no!Wake up! I am not in a la-la-land anymore. Ten years have blown since the turn of the second millennium banged our door with the Y2K problem, and the world now is becoming more and more predictable than ever. It’s not a puff, seriously, for Alan Kay opined that “The only way to predict the future is to invent it”. I am capable shape our own future, and in order not to mould it into an alien figure, I’d better abstain from fussing around and spend more time keep myself updated with my surrounding world. Changes are happening everywhere in every field, and most of them are fuelled by technologies. As technology are surging forward at rocket speed and thus revolutionarily changing the world, it’s crucial to throw more attention to the current development of technology and foretell the upcoming technologies so as to better shape the world according to our will. R&D of technology must be further invested in so as to give better goals and direction to the development of technology.

One of the videos Prof showed today decoded the word “future” in a new and intriguing light. Future is an acronym:

Fast. Undeniably, the landscape and essence of our world is changing so fast. Everyday new things come out, be it a new invention or a new company or even a trend. In every second, something in some places becomes different.

Urban. The urbanization is sweeping through various areas around the world. To illustrate, many countryside areas in Vietnam have been converted into elementary cities, with the existence of high-rise and numerous services.

Tribal. It’s now about tribes whose people live in bungalows and on hunting. Tribes here are actually groups of people that have something in common, be it liking a certain kind of sport or idolizing a singer.

Universal. As the world is becoming more and more flattened, changes and trends can easily spread throughout the world. In this information era, virtually every beings and areas are interconnected.

Radical. The world is being turned upside-down. Something holds true today may not in tomorrow

Ethical. Society is being distorted profoundly by the upsurge of technology development. As I mentioned in my previous post, currently, the growth of human philosophy and social norms is being lagged behind from the rocket-paced advance of technology. The gap between the rich and the poor within a country, as well as between developed and undeveloped country will be dramatically extended and may incite certain unpredictable incidents such as riots or even wars. Also, as life can only get better as time flow, humans will eventually be freed from certain burdens and tasks which consequently give them more time to spare and enjoy life. But having more time in one’s pocket isn’t always a good thing

During this session, there was a question raised about the sustainability of current jobs and some predictions on future jobs. Numerous existing jobs, most of which are labour-intensive and manual ones, will eventually disappear since the world economy is transforming to a knowledge-based one, which calls for the attendees of such economy to have a strong “brain”, not arm. For example, the term “janitor” will only be found in the future encyclopaedia since there are currently numerous machines that can be manned to clean and wipe the floor and those machines, with time, will definitely be upgraded into better versions which can completely execute such task automatically.

Wen Cong’s presentation somehow stood out from the crowd since he pinpointed the difference between prediction and forecasting. Though the definitions of these two words are initially quite different from one another, they are still used interchangeably in some cases, which is not correct. Predicting is just merely guessing what may happen without any ground, whereas forecasting can only be done based on current statistics and information. At present, what must be done is not predicting, an easy job that anyone can do and has been done for years, but foretelling the future based the current situation. The world at large will be severely de-orbited if we fail to speculate what its future will be like and make proper adjustments and take meaningful actions to steer it towards the forecasted future. At the end of his presentation, Wen Cong made a conclusion that is still now lingering in my mind:

“The goal of forecasting is not to predict the future but to tell you what you need to know to take meaning action in the present.”

My TWC course is going to meet its end soon. It’s quite hard to believe that more ten weeks has passed since I attended my first class in SMU. Memories with this course may be something too far-fetched, but what I gain in terms of knowledge is abundant. Thanks to this course, I have chances to keep myself updated with various hard-hitting political, economic and technology news, mostly via Facebook; to voice out my opinions on such news and on top of that, the dynamic world I live in with its aspects that is kept being reformed by the hands of technology. Still, as I believe, the world is always under human control and its shape depends on our will. Envisaging how the world will be like in the future and daring to actualize such visions not only aid one in moulding the world according to his desire but also earn him social recognition and wealth in the end, with one of the most promising field to execute such thing is technology. And that’s the hidden “moral’’ of this session I assert.

Personal rating: 7/10. Though this session did provide some insights into the future of our world as well as the development of technology, I found it not as engaging and captivating as the previous sessions.

Session 9-17/10/2011

New technologies are emerging at an unbelievable pace, which is the result of several factors. The first and most important one is the persisting insatiable desire of humans for new things. Humans are all greedy and selfish, though the level of greed and selfishness may vary from person to person, so even when they are leading a far more comfortable and convenient lives compared to those in the past, they still long for more. But these devilish characteristic still bring about some positive points since they push people forward, to come up themselves with new ideas and realize them, which is what Kahli Gibran tried to convey through his saying. Another factor is that the intrinsic creativity of humans. Being creative gives rise to new ideas and thoughts of goods or services, some of which may be eventually actualized and help to satisfy the esurience of humans.

During this session, I was shown several existing yet still very intriguing technologies. The first one is artificial intelligence, which was illustrated in a video named “Perfect Women”.

Even though the outer appearance of this “lady” is not really humanlike, it still really excites me.Just imagine one day you have a gorgeous woman in your house which is not only subservient to you and never argue with you but also be able to interact with you as a real person. She speaks perfect English and converse with you intelligently like a human. Also, her movement is also very lithe and humanlike, which lessens our impression of her as a robot. This video must have been made a long time ago so at present, the AI technology has already advanced tremendously. One more field in which AI is applied is the game industry. Nowadays, people can find great pleasure in diving into computer games because they have become so real in terms of not only graphic but also the intelligence of the characters of the games. For example, the football game series Pro Evolution Soccer, a product of Konami, becomes graphically nicer and harder to win version-after-version.

One of the presentations in this session touched on cybernetic limbs. Undeniably, cybernetic arms and legs provide handicapped or disabled people opportunities to function their arms or their legs again, which is usually very hard to actualize prior to the invention and innovation of those limbs. Moreover, with their sheer strength, these robotic arms and legs certainly give their owners an edge in some daily activities such as lifting heavy objects or catching a bus. Still,  one question was raised which was that whether it would be fair or not if sportspeople replace their natural limbs with cybernetic ones. Cybernetic limbs indeed maximize human ability in athletic field such as running or jumping, but transplanting such lims to human bodies kills off the basic raison d'etre of sport at large: People put their best effort into the gmes and enjoy them.The deserved will win the trophy eventually.

Augmented reality is rising as one of the technologies that can radically reshape the world. Primarily, this technology revolves around creating a layer between humans and buildings, objects as well as even other humans and  devices such as mobile phones or other electronic devices so that whenever people point their devices to such objects, building or even people (quite futuristic), the latter detailed information will show up.

Quite cool isn’t it? But there are also cons for this technology. Excessive access to too many sources of information may not only lead to an overload of information to people but also intrude the privacy of people who are pointed with devices incorporated with this technology.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.  ~Jules Renard

One current issue with technology is that humans have yet to develop an economic system or concepts that can substantiate the development of technology. Advanced technologies enable people to do certain things that previously they weren’t able to and lessen the current normal workload people have to bear. As a result, people will have much more spare time, which will definitely surge as technology becomes more and more advance, and here lies the crux of the problem. How come having more time to spare is problematic? Naturally, working everyday really exhaust people, but only by experiencing hardships and tiredness can people really value any joys, no matter how small it might be, they experience in life at large. Putting effort into a certain cause or work incentivises people and makes their life much more worthy to live. And that is what I believe to be the real message behind Jules Renard’s saying.

“Innovation distinguishes the leader from the follower.”

- Steve Jobs -

To wrap up, as has been mentioned ad nauseum in my blog, those who dare to challenge the status quo and social norms and take initiative to change the world, though may face numerous and seemingly unsolvable problems at first, will definitely be able to shape the world according to their desires and resultantly gain worldwide recognition. Gideon Ong, one of the students that presented in this session, is somehow a good example since his slideshow was totally different from the previous ones of other students since there wasn’t any word on the slides at all, just merely videos. That approach, though quite potentially dangerous, eventually won him credit and good grade (currently the one that receives the greatest number of  grade “10”)

This session is indeed very eye-opening since it enables me to free my imagination and also show me some existing yet still very mind-boggling innovations and technologies. Thus, it deserves a score of 9/10.

Session 8-10/10/2011

The America-Iraq war, which used to be on the headings of top-tier newspapers and has been until now a heating topic in numerous discussions, has been long condemned for its meaninglessness and terrible detriments humankind had to suffer in the aftermath. Surprisingly, however, it is propagated that the US started off the war with Iraq for a very heroic cause – seeking revenge the sin terrorists, most of which came from Middle East countries, did to America – the 9/11 event. But, considering the fact that Iraq produces roughly 3 million barrels of oil per day and holds a world oil share of nearly 3%, it is the promisingly large amount of discovered and hidden oil wells throughout Iraq that drove Uncle Sam to ignite the war with them. What lesson can be drawn from this? The thirst for energy, once again, just like money which has been crucified as nauseum for its ability to corrupt people, is the cause of such horrendous act of the US. Indeed, the role energy is playing on world stage is becoming more and more essential since at present, those countries that have access to more energy are very likely to prosper economically. 

Worriedly, the current discovered amount of oil can’t sustain human life if it is still used at such an inflating rate.

“IF EVERYONE CONSUMED AS

MUCH ENERGY AS THE AVERAGE SINGAPOREAN AND U.S. RESIDENT, THE WORLD’S OIL RESERVES WOULD BE DEPLETED IN 9 YEARS”

The need for sources of energy which are more sustainable is becoming more urgent than ever! Luckily and admirably, Brazil has taken the initiative by growing sugarcane on large scale and fermenting them to make ethanol, a very eco-friendly yet effective liquid fuel. Sugarcane used to be the top-list commodity exported to Europe. However, not until Brazilian government put concerted effort into imposing laws which gradually mould Brazilian citizens to switching from using pure oil to using ethanol did Brazil fully witnessed itself being transformed into a more eco-friendly country. It all started in 1976 when Brazilian government compelled its citizens to use blended fuel, which was a combination between ethanol and gasoline, with the percentage of ethanol in the compound fluctuated from 10% to 22%. This move led to the disappearance of pure gasoline in the whole country. At the turn of the 1990s, a federal law was passed that fixed the ratio of ethanol to gasoline in the concoction at 1:3. Currently, that ratio is a shockingly admirable figure since not so many countries have reached that. But Brazilian government doesn’t want to stop there since it is planning to bring up the percentage of ethanol higher in the future. Once environmentally friendly and renewable sources of energy are used at mass, countries gaining most of their income from fossil fuel – based transaction with other countries will be very likely to undergo a very burdensome period of massive radical changes.

 

What can we pull out from this table? The sun provides more energy to the Earth in one hour than humankind currently uses in an entire year! (Dr. Gurinder Shahi). Opportunities are everywhere, but some are hidden and seemingly not implementable. But as has proven over the course of human history, the more effort humans put into doing anything, the more likely they will succeed in what they have been trying to do. The current technologies do not provide people enough capacity to extract all of the energy in sunlight but I believe that in the future, given the concerted effort put in by the whole human race, sunlight will become the main source of energy on Earth.

With respect to the current situation, there are still some ways to cut down the usage of environmentally hazardous fossil fuels, each of which has its own pros and cons. The approach is to launch educational campaigns to raise the people’s awareness of the negative effects using fossil fuels may impose on environment as well as the promising future and tons of benefits renewable of renewable energy sources like solar power, wind power or hydraulic power. Although this method is inexpensive and very easy to apply, it is usually not persuasive enough to change the mindset of people and more importantly, it is not mandatory so people don’t have any incentives or motives to mould themselves into certain habits. Drafting and formalizing laws seemed to be a very promisingly effective method since people are forced to refrain themselves from using non-renewable energy sources, but then economy may suffer. Seems like there is no utopia right now.

Basically, this session is somehow enlightening, even though all the issues touched on are rather old. However, I believe this session could have been further improved if some issues such as how to increase the amount of energy humans can extract from wind or sunlight, as well as how come some countries use more energy than others even though some of the former are not as rich as the latter or have halted to develop economically.

Overall rating: 7.5/10