#2

Just a reminder of what was covered in lessons and some interesting obvservations...

The lesson kicked off with a brief introduction of myself to the class since I was new.
Following which, prof touched on several dimensions of global dominance such as social, cultural, etc, encouraging the class to come up with several examples of organizations and countries which are rising stars, falling stars and dominant players e.g. Apple is a dominant player, UK and US are falling stars.
Prof then asked for some opinions on the readings he had sent us. I took note of some of the interesting viewpoints given by the other students. For example, reading 2 on 'Rising up to the global challenge: a corporate perspective on globalization and global dominance' was actually putting forward what we already know all along but what we don't do, therefore serving as a wake-up call to most of us. While for reading 3, it is interesting that people seem to associate the west with modernization, wealth, power and technology, so much that it extends to religion e.g. conversion to Christianity.

The second half of the lesson kicked off with some discussion about development being both driver or consequence of world change. It follows closely with the theory of 'chicken and egg'; which comes first?

Prof then let us watch a video: "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which broadcasted the various aims that they hope to achieve by 2015. In my opinion they are definitely extremely difficult goals, if not impossible, for example 'eradicate poverty'. However it does offer some hope that at least we are wiling to go somewhere in a certain direction. It may take longer to achieve it, way longer than 2015, but when we set a certain goal we are more motivated to achieve as much as possible by that time frame. There is a clear direction that we are heading to, and all I hope for is that they will not digress in the course of action.

To me the more interesting part of the class was the individual presentations given by Jannah, Meng Xin and Davinia.

The first presenter in the first half of the class was Janah, presenting us with the issue of Google's dominance as the top search engine in the world.
The second presenter, Meng Xin discussed on the issue of technology enabling human immortality. This sparks off interesting debates about machines being 'humane'.
The last presenter, Davinia, had the most interesting topic in my personal opinion. All of the presented well (they sure did set the standard well!) but the topic that caught my attention the most was Davinia's topic on designer babies. This is also something I wish could have been discussed more in class.

The idea of designer babies is appalling and it's not the first time I witness controversies over these ideas. Should they be legal? In a religious view, it seems like we humans are trying to play God. But prof said something that rings true. We humans have been acting like God since forever. If the argument is that we are going against God's will by designing babies, then what of sperm banks and artificial insemination? It follows the same logic. My point is that we should not be so quick to shoot down something because the argument is a bit cloudy.
Are we controlling too much of our lives and making it 'unnatural' in both religious and moral terms? We may be being hypocritical when we argue that people should not design their babies. We people put on makeup, go through surgery, go through lasik, dye our hairs, wear colored contact lenses… our lives are already inexplicably integrated with such technology. We've been 'designing' ourselves for as long as we remember. The only problem I see here is the idea of designing someone else besides yourself, but then again, babies don't have choices at all. It still is the parents' decision from the start, even the decision of whether they should be born was not theirs.
So my opinion on this issue is this: I probably would not want to design my babies, but I don't think it's wrong for people to do so. At first I also instantly thought it was morally and religiously wrong, but when I thought about it more... is it, really?

Key take away points:

1. We need to be careful of how much we depend on technology.
Over-reliance can be a big problem. If we are increasingly reliant, we will end up trying to get all of our answers from Google online instead of trying to think of some creative ideas ourselves. furthermore it is dangerous to assume that everything found online would be reliable; for example, Wikipedia is regarded as THE dictionary and solution online. I will not deny that often I take whatever that is put on Wikipedia as they are without giving much thought, especially if it is a trivial information. But the fact is that Wikipedia is updated by people from all walks of life, including people like us, and may sometimes be subjective in giving the facts.
With this example, it is important to know how to filter what we get and draw the line between technology being a benefit and adversity - the line is very thin indeed.

2. How far we will take technology?
Even though I said that I don't strongly protest against the ideas of designer babies, there definitely are people who do, those who think there is some serious moral wrong in designer babies and treating babies as something like consumer goods. Nowadays more and more technology that sparks off controversy is being developed. Designing babies, aiming for human immortality, and other things such as planting chips in the human body... sooner or later, things that we consider controversial now would be considered normal.
It really is intriguing to consider how far humans will develop technology in order to make their lives better. Are they necessary at all?


Overall, I would rate my first lesson in Week 2 a 7/10. In terms of the lesson itself, I feel there was too little depth and I didn't take away many learning factors. The more interesting parts of the lessons were the individual presentations because all three had good topics, which is rather pressurizing on me because I have to live up to that standard too haha! :X
Nevertheless, it was a rewarding class and I look forward to learning more in future lessons.