Presentation week! Was pretty nervous and tried memorising the script the night before, was pretty glad our group get to go first so that I can sit back and enjoy other presentations. Our group did a presentation on online shopping or eBusiness, looking at the way business works before advancement of technology like internet. Starting with a simple milestones of traditional business practice to how internet infiltrated the business works, we went on to talk about how eBusiness are carried out today, aspects of it, advantages and disadvantages of it and the impacts it has.

Regarding other group's presentation, the group about GM food leave a deeper impression because of the video done but I couldn't really register much information from their presentation, perhaps because GM food is an extremely common topic and the points raised, like its impacts on economy, social and environment, controversies of GM food had been told to us umpteen times and the project does not differentiate itself much from the abundant information out there. Perhaps they should add in a little more on their own perspectives and predict how this technology will progress in the future, the kind of law and legislation that will be put in place to ensure ethical testing, or labeling.

The presentation about online dating was rather interesting because the topic chosen was very fresh. The idea of online dating does not appeal to me much because I prefer forming human interactions as it is. It would be rather interesting if dating sites, could arrange for random meetings after pairings without prior knowledge by the individuals of when and where they will meet and who they meet. It is like playing with fate and trying to bring individuals which might be suitable for each other together by letting them have a chance to meet, and letting fate decide whether they will progress from there.

For the presentation about kinectic motion, I felt that I couldn't grasp the directions of the project and what they are narrowscoping on, are we looking at kinetic energy as source of energy? or exploration of technology that makes use of kinetic motion. I felt that it is off focus

The last proper lesson of TWC, and it's about forecasting of technological advancement and trends.

Forecasting is extremely difficult because the future holds infinite probabilities and a small action by any individual will change the future by a whole lot ten years down the road, also known as the butterfly or ripple effect. Like any statisticians would say, it's impossible to compile actual data from the entire population, it is impossible to investigate every individuals and note their taste and preferences to predict the future, therefore, we could only make reasonable forecast based on trends and patterns of behaviors. It is also said when we based future trends by observing the past, we should look further to recognise similar patterns of behaviours.

Another alternate method worth looking at is the moment method which recognises event that will steer us away or towards our prediction with their probability and strength if it happens. Sort of remind me of moment generating function from stats theory point of view.

Personally, I felt that instead of looking at present or past for future trends. One possible way is to create an alternate reality with real life stats keyed in, sort of like the Sims and we allow the alternate reality to travel at a faster pace than real life to give us an idea of how decision can affect the society in the future.

It had been a busy week but nevertheless, it's time for some TWC sharing

Last week topic was on Emerging technologies and it is perhaps the lesson with the most video shown. Lot of innovative, brave and interesting concepts and ideas in the video which leave people pondering the endless possibilities the future holds. Take 3D printer as an example, it totally smash the need for assembly to zero where it could be printed into a workable mode within minutes. Prof mentioned about sharing the fruit of innovation, the output it produced amongst people n I can't agree more. Like I explain in my research essay, capitalism has the tendency to drain capital towards the side with more capital, what happened in the current global scene is we have allowed a few decades of uncontrolled capital upflow with proper balance to ensure the system runs in equilibrium, the coming of the industrial age come too quickly that we failed to grasp the necessary measures needed to let humans progress equally. We have allowed capital to have the say and capital, purchasing machineries and equipments are replacing humans labour and are valued much more. What we need to do is to ensure that the output of our economy and industries, the never halting wheels of machineries do not only belongs to a few 'mighty' individuals but whenever they replace labour, are co-owned by the humans they replaced. Unemployment are always viewed as a bad thing but not necessarily so, if the machineries could produce enough output by themselves, human can idle and spend more leisure time, isn't that the ultimate goal for humanity as a whole to have more time to pursue personal interest? But right now, we are becoming like the machine that replace us, working longer, faster and better...

I shall stop before I ranted a whole blog worth of grievance. No matter how gloomy our economy may seems, i believe in a bright future where technology propel us beyond our current imagination.

Session 8 is on Energy and World Change and is perhaps one of the most important aspects when we are discussing technology of world change. Especially when so many technologies are only applicable when there are supplies of electrical energy and energy simply denotes every aspects of life, from the way we walk to the food we eat, all of them have a part to do with energy. Even human, as a living entity with mass is just a huge blot of energy that can think and act, according to E=mc square. Take this online joke for an example.

Google : I have everything!

Facebook : I know everybody!

Internet : Keep talking, you two are nothing without me.

Electricity : Ya right, keep talking....

The scenario simply depicted how important energy is to us. I always feel that whoever that commands over energy commands over the world. Simply look at how rich the oil guzzlers are. However, our craving for energy had lashed back at us pretty badly and we really need to race against our imminent doom to abandon all oil dependent technologies and switch to responsible energy production. Ultimately, if everyone uses energy at a more expensive rate, no one will lose out. Businesses will not be making losses, the market will naturally adjust itself cost-wise to take the increase cost into account. Businesses will only be making losses if they are responsible enough to take the real cost of energy production into account while the rest of the world are not and continue guzzling oil.

There was a presentation on energy storage, I gave it the lowest i ever, I might joke that it for that specific person being quite cynical against other classmates and always and almost always gave the lowest but I do feel that he fails to present the real issues of energy storage. Firstly, demand side management do not always mean monitoring and affecting our demand by example switching off our fridge when not in need. What I have read elsewhere about demand side management is to monitor the demand and try to match the supply or production of energy. It works like Toyota just-in-time production system which aims to eliminate oversupply. I believe it isn't difficult at all, in fact, our houses all come with meter which estimate our gas and electrical usage already. I think he failed to inform us that the real concerns with better and more efficient energy storage medium is its ability to eliminate the inconsistency issues of solar, wind and many other renewable sources that nay-sayers of renewable energy always mentioned. In the book ZOOM, it mentioned how US wind farms are only utilised less than half of the time because there might not be household within its vicinity tapping into its eletricity. It's simply not efficient to depend on a scenario of double coincidence of supply and demand because it always dont happen. Energy storage enable us to store excesses and use them for further uses.

I feel that major considerations to bring renewable energy a step forward is to look at one of the major consumption of energy, which is air-conditioner. As a young boy, I always do not understand why we need to supply energy to make our fridge cold and our room cold, isn't heat energy? why removing energy requires energy? I still firmly believe that a future where cooling is done without the need of energy and instead provide net energy is possible. The first small step we can take is to acknowledge that our buildings are like a mega greenhouse where windows trap infrared radiation which results in heat. We need to create way to cool our building down naturally or can even apply solar windows or solar panels (proven that solar panels absorb the radiation and make our building cooler) We have a long way to go but I believe a sustainable future is in sight =)

7th Session carried on with BioBusiness (what to expect? Our prof a doc!) and we began to discuss another aspects of BioBusiness, Agribiology, Industrial and Environmental Science. BioBusiness was definitely a huge hype several years ago, especially when Singapore first built the Biopolis, I have saw many seniors and friends, tossing themselves into the industry, only to graduate and find out the hype is half over. However, I still feel the Bio Industry will be what spearheading many development in the coming decades or centuries. Notion of BioBusiness, yet again (I'm not naggy, am I?) lies in the idea that nature provide us with solutions together with its problems. I believe the hot buzz is over but it is still a very strong industry that can possibly produce many substantial development to propel humanity problem.

Session 7 began with a slide that said

“When we are able to grow the resources we need,

we will finally be on the road to sustainability”

-Gurinder Shahi-

It probably took me a while to digest that prof is quoting himself but i guess it is good quote indeed. Initially,I believe that to be sustainable, we have to present everything in a closed loop such that materials can recycled in an endless loop. I guess as long as we are able to grow or create what we need and there's proper management of waste, we can create a sustainable system whereby, injection into the system equals the removal of waste from the system. As long as this injection is purely derived from products that do not consume non-renewable resources, this system is sustainable.

I posted a question in class, after reading Reading 1 about how much arable land do we require. Eventually, I found out through http://ask.metafilter.com/77287/How-much-land-does-a-person-need that the minimum is a mere 0.7 hectare if we consume the most efficient crops and 5.0 hectare if we live an average American lifestyle. Also, from reading 1, it is known that arable land had been reduced to 2.2 hectare per person worldwide now. It is now clear that we do not have enough land for everyone to live an American lifestyle. On one side, we should encourage American to adapt their lifestyle and on another hand, invest in agribiology to maximise our output for our arable land and perhaps, learn to grow food in a lab, which could greatly increase human's food production. It would be simply unfair and a white man supremacy in the act if we ask the developing nations to not consume the way we do. Anyway, short post it shall be, for the research paper is due soon -.-

BioBusiness

BioBusiness definitely covers a wide aspects of life as most aspects of life began as bio-organism. One reason that might have strongly drove biobusiness in the past few decades might be our increasingly skepticism about chemical synthesis that drove much of our industrial growth. Many food product, health product or washing product nowadays consist of many chemical component that do not exist naturally. These chemical components are main suspects of health defects and cancers, are hard to dispose of and in the production, causes a lot of pollution. Thus, we look increasingly at understanding our biodiversity and turning to what mother nature provided us for solutions.

We are also looking increasingly towards understanding nature to fully maximise the potential of it, especially for agriculture. One example would be organic farming which depends on natural pesticides, introducing natural insect pradators and many other methods which involves addition of something that mother nature already provided us with.

Theory seems to go side by side with the emphasis on herbal medicine, 'when a disease or problem is created by mother nature, she would provide the solution too'. Some examples would be how in the vicinity of poisonous animals or plants, we can find another animal or plants which could neutralise the poison.

However, when humans tried to play god and created many synthetical problem, can natural methods resolve it? Only solution is to abandon our traditional way of trying to play god and rely on natural products.

Coincidentally, BGS on tuesday went through an article on the 'Big Pharma' or the pharmaceutical industry which is closely related to this week's topic.

One interesting viewpoint was how pharmaceutical industry tends to produce drugs that are not important or drugs against diseases that are neither life threatening nor common. They, instead, rely on lots of marketing to convince people that a common illness that does not affects us much is 'disgusting', or need immediate remedy. So much for all the R&D huh?

My Proposed outline of my individual review paper

Proposed outline

Executive Summary

Exploring how humans began by using trade and barter and eventually created money and how the application of money had evolved (been abused) over time. Money is a ‘technology’ or technique humans created to ease the trading of goods, and to reward other humans for their output or labour.

Money is perhaps the root of all problems from the financial crisis to our environmental woes. However, is money by itself bad? Or is it the way we choose to utilize money and apply it that need an urgent makeover?

Background

Illustrate how money had no inherent value by itself and yet was given values by the commodities, which its value is pegged to.

History

Describe how humanity used trade and bartering when we became more than hunters and gatherer. Discuss how money came about and the evolution of money along the way.

Explore the adopting the use of money and the difficulties.

Discuss the paradoxical nature of different currency. Bring in the idea of usury as the very basis of our financial industry in the current world.

Current

Research on how money had played a part in the rise of corporations, giving power to them.

Discuss how money had become a commodity in itself through trading, stock markets and forex trading.

Discuss on we had tried to put a price tag on even social behaviors and political decision.

Interesting examples of use of money beyond its supposed purpose

Future

Discuss how I think regulations had to be put into place to restrict the abuse of money, the power of money and corporation.

Ultimately, how we have to let money return to its true purpose of valuing goods and commodities.

Might be a bit broad but will try to not digress.