Week 5 --- ICT and World Change

The overall theme for this week’s lesson is ICT, which is Information and Communication Technology. ICT refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the audio-visual, building management and telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.  I think this week’s topic was one that most of us can easily relate to, with ICT weaved into our daily lives, creating our dependence on them even.

At the start of the lesson, we watched an interesting video on Project Natal. I felt that the video was very interesting in the sense that I have never expected it to be possible for a real human to be able to communicate with a virtual person so smoothly and effectively. I truly feel that that is one big step in technology that far exceeds what we have ever expected it to be, and I find it so amazing. One concern I have though, is how effectively can this be? Can we expect similar quality of communication? If yes, is it possible for us to expand the uses of such ‘virtual people’ to help us in our daily lives?

ICT as a Driver of Change
I truly believe that ICT can cause change, especially with regard to how it can play a role in alleviating poverty. This is also with reference to the reading “Making ICTs Work for the Poor: Pursuing the Millennium Development Goals Through ICTs”. We can often see these advanced technology appeared in movies. Although they are just movies, the content may not true, but the technology they imaged are reational and may come true one day. The following video is an interesting video about the future Nokia product.

What I hope we discussed more: Technology can make our life much easier than before, rich people like  to try new tings and have theh ability to afford it. But will it increase the gap between poor and rich?What can the future of these technology be? Because I feel that majority of people lack of ability to afford it.

Prof brought up the idea of how gaming has in fact influenced the way surgeries are done via the remote control method. I think this is something that I never thought about because more often than not to me, games and work they are 2 separate things. Thus, I feel that it is brilliant how people can incorporate lessons learnt from games into other aspects of technology, even to the extent of creating a system for surgeries based on the technology of games. This links me to the presentation by Toh Xin, where he talked about the Business Gaming model and how it is an interesting and engaging way of letting people learn Business through games.I brought up in class that it might be possible that sometimes people get so engrossed in playing that they forget the fact that they’re supposed to take something out of it. Considering how the youths these days tend to be pretty easily distracted, this might be a concern that we should take into consideration when games are created with the intention of letting people learn from them – because it might end up being counterproductive.

While all of us know what gmail, hotmail, dropbox, facebook etc are, I’m not sure if all of us knew that they are part of Cloud computing because I myself never did! It is only today that I realised that while I have always thought that Cloud Computing is something I have never come into contact with, it is actually one device that I make use of every day of my life. While I remain very fascinated by the idea of Cloud Computing, the extent of usage of this is so great that it makes me wonder where will the world be left at should this system fail. We have so much information stored in the Cloud and it serves as such an essential form of communication – what if?

Potential Risks & Problems
While ICT can be very useful in our everyday lives, I think the potential risks and problems it can bring about is something we have to take extra care about. Linking this back to Wesley’s presentation, there are firstly, cases of data mining. He mentioned that websites that don’t charge a single cent are the ones that data mine the most. Since most websites we visit do not charge us, does this perhaps mean that our data is stored and used by so many webpages? Does this mean that a lot of our personal private information is actually all over the Internet? Though, however, I would have to agree that quite often even we do not key completely accurate information into the net. This may hence reduce the possible harmful effects of data mining and hence the problem with ICT.

I really enjoyed today’s lesson because I feel that ICT is something that is very present in our lives and hence, very related to our everyday lives. I also feel that it has the ability to change the direction of our lives in the future – especially in the case of improving our lives and that of the poor and therefore is something very integral. And I will give 8/10 for today's session.