"Masters" of technology, the World as our slave?

Today's Lesson (Brief Overview/Summary)
Today more or less wrapped up the basic concept behind technology, and how it has come to become such an integral part of everyday lives.

From lesson 1,
Key points: Introduction to technology, the must-knows and should-know
We viewed the historical timeline of technology, tracing the human race as we bumbled our way through time. Fast-forwarding to present time, we looked across borders and compared the socio-economical imbalances between different countries.

Yali, with his now famous saying,
"Why you white men have so much cargo, while we New Guineans have so little?"

We realized that there were many factors that could have contributed to the situation today, with varying degrees of importance in certain countries based on their natural comparative advantages in resources. We all agreed on one thing though, the incorporation of technology was the key for this said exponential divide. The ability to capitalize on these advantages propelled them way ahead of the pack.

From lesson 2,
Key points: Dominance, tech-driven vs need-driven innovation
Having looked at the advantage some countries had over others, we now put those countries on the hot seat. How did they manage to retain their dominance even as there were others trying to catch up? Was it through influence (Pax Americana) or control (Pax Romana)? This freedom of choice was our focal point as we looked at different methods of governing: Capitalists vs Socialists.

Need-driven innovations were deemed as a "valley" product whilst tech-driven innovations were deemed as "summit" and "cloud" products respectively. This is because of the nature of need-driven innovations, who seek to improve on existing products which are already widely sold in the market, using existing technology and thus maintaining status quo in technological developments.


Coming to lesson 3,
Key points: Unsustainable Industrialization, Innovation management.
We looked at the impact of industrialization on the entire world, and how the extent of the benefits experienced was subjective to different countries not evenly distributed across the board. It was mainly due to the fact that countries started at different points of industrial development around the globe ("late comer benefits") as well the natural advantages which was inherent in each country, that led to different areas of specialization.


It's interesting how we immediately came to the common consensus about how industrialization was unsustainable, but yet agreed that nothing significant had been done to fix this problem. We could not draw the line where this "bad" had brought us enough "good"; We are not willing to give up our way of living even though it was killing the environment around us; We are the own cause of our downfall today. That is why we look to innovations, something new that fulfills the same needs as existing products, but yet contain improvements from the old one. We also looked at effective models to help manage these innovations, from inception to production to actually marketing the product. Prof's R-D-A concept provided an elaborate framework on to analyze the development of the product, every step of the way.


Today, looking at lesson 4,
Key points: Drivers of World Change, Change management and leadership
We looked at the many pressing issues globally today, at possible causes, what the present and future holds for us. We also looked at the starkly different processes of management and leadership on how to effect these changes.


Driver: "Someone or something in a position of control, to steer the direction in which its intent is headed towards."

In the case of citing environmental issues as a driver of world change, it means that we have relinquished all control to fate basically. Physical factors such as rising global temperatures are possibly causing people to migrate to countries with cooler climates.

In class, we agreed that scarcity was the main reason, but I would say that human greed, is the root cause of it all. Even with fossil fuels being utilized to its limit, it hasn't stop us from consuming what we desire. It has only meant that finite resources has led to us looking towards new renewable technology, to help fund our infinite wants and needs. Our short-sightedness and selfishness in achieving goals like economic growth, has led us to face the consequences of our actions, decades down the road.

Humans are no longer masters of the world, not when we might eventually have nothing left to control. 

This is the reason why we need change, we need to stop going down the same road we have for decades. We need a leader rather than a manager at this point of time.
But, until we actually have a revolutionary, a leader who stands up and is able to effect the change we need, I guess we have no choice but to accept the fact that humans are not going to be a Driver of world change anytime soon.


Key take-away points (Lesson 4):
1. Drivers of world change and its consequences are dire if we continue at the path we are on at this point of time.
2. We know what must be changed, but we must believe it can be changed! Mindsets from the traditional  way of living is our biggest detriment in moving forward today.

Today we actually covered many areas, and I think class discussions were quite engaging. Hence, I don't think we missed anything new, and managed to summarize everything.

Overall, I would rate this session an 8/10 because it ultimately helped to broaden our viewpoints to see the big picture.