First TWC——Technology and the Rise of Civilizations: Historical Timeline and Technology “Revolutions”

 

Finally started the second semester, the first lesson in 2013 is Technology and the World Change which is closely related to my major -- Information Systems. When I read the slides before class, I asked myself about the knowledge I have about the Technology and  World Change. Really not much, but I know that I use it everyday, and it develops and changes the world gradually. First lesson covers the introduction of the course and the relaionship between tecbnology and the rise of civilization.

For what I mainly takeaway from this lesson are roughly three points. Firstly, "Technology is easy, people are hard". Technology can make our life easier, people use technology as their assistant to help them on their work. But accepted by people to utilize technology is hard and challengeable. At the same time, people who invent these technology are very hard. World is changing, followed by the changes of people's mindset and attitude. Hence, people become more free thinking and creative. After that, world changed even faster.

Secondly, in this technological age it has great changes in society. In this 'new world', native groups had a more environmental and technological constraints than those in the 'old world'. People can enjoy more advanced products, and rise the civilization. And this civilization includes many areas, such as agriculture, health care and human development.

The video Guns Germs and Steel gives an idea of civilization. Different societies develop at different rate. Many people have the impression that either China or Egypt was the first center of "civilization." Both of these areas have the image of being very, very ancient and of having "discovered things first." In truth, however, neither China and Egypt were the first to discover most aspects of civilization. Developments is essential for the evolution of human societies, which includes the development of agriculture and pastoralism, specialization of labor, urbanization and writing.

Some idea and informations are quite interesting and meaningful. First one is "For students starting a four year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in the first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study." from the video Did You Know - Shift Happens. It may sounds exaggeration, but I think it really can reflect the changes of current world. Technology changes almost everyday, what we are all familiar with are digital products, such as apple products. If you search what changed the world on google, you can received a lot of articles talking about Apple. As the apple product become more popular in the world, more of their advanced are arise. What we are learning know may not be used in the future because the old technology may outdated.

The second one is also from the video Did You Know - Shift Happens. " It only will take a $1000 computer to exceed the capabilities of the human brain." Classmates contribute some ideas about this statement. In my view, computer can do something which normal people cannot achieve. But, computer was invented by human-beings. So that computer can exceed the capabilities of most human brain, and still cannot reach some people's capability. 

Although, technology can solve some limitations and the necessarily slower pace of development caused by the difficulties in communication and transport. As we all know, technology can change our world, in both good and bad ways. Hence, technology may influence our civilization in an opposite way. How does influence? Technology influenced different nations in different way, how does it happens? I think these two questions can be further discussed, it is quite interesting.

Overall, I learned something from this session, but due to I cannot closely follow some parts of the session and did not contribute some ideas in class. Hence, I would give the lesson a rating of 7/10.