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.
No comments:
Post a Comment