Week 2——Global Dominance and Human Development

History of the World in 7 Minutes

After recap what we have learned last week, we started off our second class by a video entitled "History of the World in 7 Minutes". The video gave us an overview of how does world changes over last 13 billion years. The concept of "technology can make the world change" clearly showed in this video. About 8000 years ago, it may seem like life did not change much since 15000 years ago. It is because humans did not have technology. What they did were hunting and gathering. However, after they started farming, they had the basic knowledge about the technology and after that world started changing.

Global Dominance

First part of the session, we talk about "Technnology, Society and Global Dominance". First we talk about the dominant leaders in their specific areas. For instance, China, Japan, America and South Korea are the dominant leader in economic area. America is the dominant leader in culture and military area. And this brought up the discussion of the 'rising star' and the 'falling star',. 'Rising star' refer to players who are optimistic with a hunger to learn from others, keen to interest in new ideas and are willing to keep an open mind. And 'falling star' refer to players who with little or no willingness to learn and improve, and they often do not have open mind. China is a good example who was a 'falling star' in 40 century. China had no interest in other countries' culture. So this is the begining of the end. After 1970 China wake up and start growing up. China keep open mind and improving. This bring us to the key point of today: "Attitude is Everything. Winner are open, losers are closed."

I also take away some points in Reading2--Innovation in the Reset World. It talks about how global change and technology innovation are changing the dominant players for both economies and companies in the global marketplace. Interesting part in this article is the description of three boxes. Box 1 is for "managing the present," that is to say, projects that will improve the performance of today's businesses. Box2 is for "selectively forgetting the past"--dealing with legacy and existing infrastructure. Box3 is for "creating the future"--forward looking projects that will improve the bottom line a decade down the road."  It is an intereting point, most companies spend a majority of their time in Box 1. Unfortunately, this is short sighted. Box 1 is about efficiency. But Box 2 and 3 are about innovation. So that we must finish current problems first, foloowed by selectively abandoning things from the past and create future.

Human Development

Second part of the session, we focus on "Technology and Human Development". The topic is more about  the individual developmet. And how do people stimulate their potentials and contribute to the society. In addition, development is not always positive, what we are doing is to minimise  negative impacts and maximise positive impacts.

I take aways some points from video1: Progress in Human Development. Firstly, everything is changing , counties which are rich in 1810, are not countries which rich in 2009. Secondly, I learned how to be sustainable? Ranking of different countries, The healthier you are, the better facilities/infrastructure they have. The more educated they get. Help to increase the GDP, help the country be better in the globle. Hence, education is the main issue for a country to develop sustainable.

From "The Millennium Development Goals", I learned eight challenges the world face; which are hunger, poor educaion, gender inequality, poor health care, disease(HIV/ADS), and environmental issue. Every country has some of these problems, and in order to develop, they must solve these problems. So that development goals can be achieved.

Individual Oral Presentation

I find some interesting parts in the oral presentation. Firstly, a classmate brought up a question of whether technology make our education cheaper than before? Most people think technology make our life cheaper. It is because we can download text book from website instead of buying it. We also can access many materials without spending one cents. And students also can learn from websites. However, in my opinion, I think technology make our educattion more expensive. In today's world, students need to buy computer for school work. Some schools even use ipad as a tool to teach and learn. So that students spend a lot of money on education. So I wonder how does these influence education?

And I learned education targets the very root cause of a country falling behind in technological advancement.  With education, not only do people possess the required knowledge, it is also possible that they would develop the drive to further improve their lives. This could then translate into the ability and desire to improve technological wise, hence putting a stop to the vicious cycle.

Conclusion

Overall, I have prepared for this session, and I learned a lot from and tthere were many great and interesting ideas brought up during the lesson, but  I feel that some articles need to be more clarified. Hence, I would give the lesson a rating of 7/10.