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.

Fifth lesson on TWC!

We moved from human development to industrialisation and to what drove world change. This week, we touched on something more specific which is how info communication technology changes the world.

Was pretty confused before the class about the readings. Coudln't really understand the scope of the ICT policy they kept mentioning and what's the definition of green ICT and green policy. Prof talked about how ICT changes the world communicates and how business models have to change and adapt with accordance to the social trends. A clearer and more specific example was brought in with the video on Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Basically, the video never mention about Web 1.0 but I guess it is when the mass media first developed. When we first had the newspaper and eventually radio and television, communication was very one sided. We had them which might includes corporations and governments telling us about stuff they want us to know, watching shows they want us to watch. We simply had no alternatives and choices. Hence, communication was one sided and often degrades to mere propaganda in several countries.

Next came the internet and the emergence of P2P network which is peer to peer, that allows information to be no longer one sided. Information was no longer disseminated from a few sources but was shared between users. As technology advances, the P2P network grew stronger and stronger, communities banded together for common interest and websites like Youtube and Friendsters started gathering momentum. Eventually, mega websites with lots of users like MySpace and Facebook surfaced and these websites became a haven for information sharing. However, ultimately, you still have to search for the information you wish for or chanced upon it by chance.

Then came the idea of a Web 3.0 where websites and providers records your search, your video viewed and all other kind of history and are able to recommend and introduce websites, videos, photos, musics and all other internet resources that suits your liking. So mass media and information communication had evolved from a one sided dissemination of information to a network of users who shared information to an interactive web that can predict your preference through past activities and recommend activities and many other resources.

For example, facebook had came up with a very strong facial recognition programme that able to match facial features of a photograph to the name tagged. This had allowed an American to find his stepbrother who shared a common father to find each other in a sea of of humans. This happened because both of them uploaded a photo of their father which the system recognises, matched them together and thus recommend each other as friends suggestion.

Prof also discussed about the future of cloud computing which unfortunately stole the limelight from one of the presenters.

Ultimately, I felt that cloud computing outsources the need of big companies to have their own individual database to an external, more cost efficient company. It would be especially beneficial to big corporations who have multiple HQ spread out over the continents to have a central database that could be accessed from anywhere in the globe. Companies no longer have to be stuck with having an internal intranet set up while the internet already existed. This will solve many inherent problems and costs that intranet was infested with. Small companies without the capacity to create the own data centers can also have a common database to do document editing and data sharing. Ultimately, security of information will be an issue but I trust the companies, being specialised, will be able to hire the best of personnel and talents to create a security strong enough against any odds. The benefits of cloud computing will definitely break down many problems mega scale institutions like the SAF faced.

One example of cloud computing will definitely be google doc where multiple users are able to edit information together. This breaks down the barriers of a need to email every related personnel whenever a small changes to the document was made and the mess created out of it. The excel version online provided by msn is an example of online software that does not requires any software downloading or installing. However, the adoption of cloud computing will depends on how well we improve our internet connectivity. If the entire nation is a wireless hub, no one would hesitate or protest against cloud computing. Key issues is 24/7 accessibility.

This week TWC's revolved around Drivers of World Change and Change Management & Change Leadership.

Personally, I feel that Drivers of World Change is the broadest subtopic we had in TWC and it involved almost everything. Any single change in environment, society, economy will changes the way the world operates, redefine the direction the world is heading towards. Ultimately, it determines the trend of technological creation and innovations.

We had look at the various reading and multiple factors that drove world change. I would like to summarise the few thousand years of human civilisation into first part; seeking prosperity, defying nature and dominating the globe and the second part; seeking meaning in life, embracing nature and fulfilling our moral and ethics. Some drivers of world change would be like environmental concerns, scientific discovery and technological innovation (most common), social, demographic or cultural change, commercial or business innovation and changing expectations. We also talked about revolutionary change and evolutionary change. To me, evolutionary change would be like development, where we develop better engines from the current model and revolutionary change will be something that redefine the way we travel altogether, like what prof mentioned about creation of cars, replacing horse carriages.

Had my first presentation in ages, can't help it but started to talk in my usual nonsense context which I did in army. Was glad that the class enjoyed the more relaxed than usual style of presentation though. Was so nervous that I almost forgot what I was saying.

To be honest, the first part of the lesson, about drivers of world change made little impacts on me since I was worrying about the presentation and trying hard to go through the points in my brain. Thus, I wasn't able to absorb much into my brain =(

Second part was about change management and change leadership and it was definitely a very interesting concept. We are now looking at more than the generation of idea, more than the first brave soul that came up with a revolutionary idea, we are looking at how to develop the ideas to full bloom. Change leadership will be the usual first brave soul guy who came up with something new that totally redefine a certain aspect of life. However, we have to recognise that without proper adoption of the idea, it will eventually be wasted, like how I mentioned in my presentation that the Roman came up with the idea of a steam engine but failed to design a feasible concept for it. James Watts worked on it and gain the recognition for it, as the one who came up with the steam engine. A funny video of a guy acting like a goon was shown during class. Eventually, the second person follows and the third... and finally everyone followed. This yet again emphasizes on how important it is to convince people to change the way of their thinking, even the greatest of idea will go to waste if it's not able to be properly laid out to others. There was a saying that goes "In the world of insanes, the sanes are the insanes". Another one that we need to keep in mind that the you are a minority in the world or country of the minority.

We were asked whether Change Leadership or Change Management is more important and my answer remained the same, both of them are as important. If the idea and concept of change is not properly adopted, no amount of great ideas would work out. Like how we have so many hybrid and electrical vehicles but without adoption by the markets, without companies with foresight and capital to adopt these technology, the inventions would be useless. If the idea is thrown out to the public in the first place, there would be no change to manage. Therefore, both of them must work together and must always come in a pair to work out.

I still like my annotation that you might know your destination but without proper navigation, you will not find your way there. There are many twist and turn that the current road system imposes before we reach our destination and we can't simply bulldoze a straight path there. Ultimately, it works the same way for changes. I believe that if we start afresh, from building up a new country or civilisation, we can direct our society towards our goal more easily. However, humans have put in place a very strong system that cannot be demolished in a single day while adopting a new system. We have to work by understanding the current system, what's the advantage, what's the weaknesses and adopt change that changes the system from what we already had. It's just like how the road imposes restriction on reaching our destination.

One of my issues of discussion was whether focusing on energy carrier technology saps important investment away from renewable technology industry. I guess I wanted to said I'm afraid focusing on energy carrier technology will divert our attention from focusing on the most important aspects of renewable energy replacing fossil fuel. I guess what prof said do hit the nail. My take is that to first move away from fossil fuels, we need to remove any possible dependence on fossil fuels and thus it is very important to allow transportation or our vehicles to run on other kind of energy other than fossil fuels. It is a step towards sustainable energy development, and it is an essential steps before we can carry on with improving efficiency of renewable energy.

Third week of TWC and everything started making sense after prof Shahi posted on Facebook that TWC is a mod that looks into more than technological discovery and gadgets as technology implies much more than that. And like what prof started the lesson with, an accounting method can also be considered a kind of technology. In fact this broaden the scope of TWC to an insanity level, almost incorporating almost everything in the human world. It's really a "GP on steroids".

That had really put a worry off my mind as I often myself digressing from the 'tech-savvy' aspects and wanders into a economical or social approach to look at the subject. Most importantly thanks goodness prof posted that because I was busily looking for a 'technology' that helps substantiate of the lack of 'technology' in my original article for my oral presentation.

Today topics revolved around Moving towards sustainable industrial development and Innovation management.

Sustainability is a concept that is gaining momentum at an exponential rate in both businesses and governments. We can no longer live in our 'lala land' where we enjoy materials comfort at the expenses of the future generation. The key is not about switching uses of non-renewable resources into renewable resources but how to maximize our use of these non-renewable resources, preferably to the potential of setting unlimited uses to the limited resources.

Points like there's a trade off between environmental and economical approaches had been brought up multiple times in class. IF we were to achieve sustainability, we have to sacrifice our economic growth. I beg to differ as the current rate of economic growth are spurred by much uses of non-renewable resources and the introduction of debt (consuming future goods) and are definitely not 'real'. An interesting concept is when we do not extract oil or other kind of renewable resources, there is a net investment gain. Current model of computing economical growth has certainly not taken into account the net investment loss of extracting non-renewable resources.

What we need to achieve is to demolish the linear nature of the industry and chain the processes into a cycle by replacing extracting with recycling. What we should hope to achieve is an ambitious 99% rate of returns of the raw materials recycled. Because of this, products have to aim to be easily taken apart into the its basic raw materials, much like how LEGOS works, I assembled a structure with 100 different legos and I should upon taking it apart, get back my 100 legos, all in their original states. Products should therefore, minimize changing the nature of its raw materials unless confidence of reusing it in its modified form is strong.

Another issues of sustainability is definitely energy as renewable energy are accounting for approximately only 7% of world energy consumption. I felt that the class did not understand that the rise of compressed air, fuel cells and electrical vehicles is not a solution to our environmental woes and energy sustainability woes. All these are energy carriers technology. Energy still have to be produced by burning fossil fuels elsewhere to produce these fuels or electricity. They are definitely good technologies that improves our energy efficiency of transportation but relying on them alone is insufficient. We have to direct our investment on improving technology or directly investing into increasing the scale of our renewable energy! I have failed to share this info in class because I have to save it for my oral presentation… Sorry! =p

Suresh had questioned whether the risks taken by a government to give incentives to innovation is justifiable. Firstly, I think it is definitely a risk that should be taken as not all innovation is profit maximizing in nature, thus not favored by corporations. If governments do not provide subsidy or incentive for these innovations, they will never be able to reach an applicable stage in the hands of private corporations. Moreover, government can do more than providing subsidy or incentive to innovations and risk draining their reserves. They can direct innovations by taxing on unfavorable area where innovations should not be wasted on or by using law, legislation and regulation to dictate a general guideline innovations have to achieve. Uses of regulations and directions have to be minimal to avoid converging of ideas though.

2nd lesson of Technology and World Change touches on 2 topics, Technology and Global Dominance and Technology and Human Development. Had our very first presenter, Jannah presented on the first topic and her article is about Google. There's 2 presenters for the second topic, one article was about genetic engineering and another about immortality.

Regarding the question posted whereby whether Google is making us stupid. I personally felt that it is making us smarter. As consumers, we are exposed to large array of information and products. With multiple source of information for the same products, we learnt to compare information given by different sources and hold our reservation towards any information. This process teaches how to judge and decide for ourselves the trustworthiness of any information. Google might have dominated the global market for information but its dominance has brought about a threat to corporations' dominance in other industries.

Prof characterize rising stars in the industry as one with open perspective and keen to invest in new ideas and vice versa for the falling star. He's definitely right but been just open to new ideas and keen to invest in new ideas is not the only key to success. Without proper management and ability to judge the potential of any ideas, this trait might just be the company's tombstone. As an economics student, I tend to look at things from another point of view. The successes to companies are often more than how top management are open to new ideas and technologies.

A company's dominance on the market might be also due to

-High barrier of entry

-First come first serve (Market too small to support 2 separate entities, example is TCS and Channel U)

-High level of capital of existing firms that can drive competitors out through a price war

The list goes on but what interesting is that with brilliant innovation and revolutionary technology, the little ants can also turn the game back on the giants and dethrone them, despite the many factors that impedes their growth. This emphasizes the importance of keeping a open mind toward new ideas and technologies.

Regarding Human Development, I felt that although much improved, the current HDI (Human Development Index) is a poor gauge of real development for humanity. Human development is defined as "It is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests, thus bringing the focus back onto people." Quoted from Wikipedia

Life expectancy is part of a calculation for HDI but they failed to recognise that life expectancy above a certain age might not be healthy in developing human's full potential. If life expectancy is increased forcefully through the use of expensive life-extending medicines, procedures and operations, it effectively means that every individuals' ability to produce the maximum output in his life decreased. It is especially so when through this life-extending processes, the patients are in agony or pain. It is an extreme irony that in many states, it is illegal for family members to end one's agony by rejecting to continuation of his life extension. This controversial issue of having a right to end one's own life become a monster that saps every single possible cents from the patients in his dying stage.

Increases in life expectancy also means that an individual has to spread his earnings and savings over a longer period of time provided that that his retirement age remains the same, thus reducing his standard of life.

The current HDI fails to recognise how stress level and happiness level is vital in one's quality of life and his ability to work and produce real human output. Years of schooling should be replaced with quality of education. The mere numbers of years of schooling a country's citizen had might not truly reflects their productiveness. Increased number of years in areas that yield no real benefits to society and industries might decrease the overall human output an individual is capable of.

All in all, until economic imperialisation or 'freakonomics' find a way to quantify the unquantifiable or intangible, there is no real means to correctly judge human development.

Start of our TWC journey

First Session of our Technology and World Change experience started proper with a brief introduction by prof and other fellow classmates. After which was a video dated back to 2008 when MySpace was still 'alive' which briefly illustrate how technology has made its indestructible foothold in our life. The class moved proper into discussion on Technology and the Rise of Civilisations: Historical Timeline and Technological "Revolutions" after a brief look at the timeline of the universe and humanity and other related readings.

I will touch a bit more on "Gun, Germs and Steel", a video adaptation shown to us by the prof.

Finishing the first episode of "Guns, Germs and Steel : Out of Eden", I find myself back at the drawing board when the question on why technology disparity widen and happens was thrown out into an open discussion in class. Many classmates came up with answers and one comment about the geographical location of civilisation and the resources available to them was a factor. He chose to focus on raw materials like ores but the video has brought in a wider perspective. It was illustrated that the difference in the productivity of local agricultural products and livestocks has huge part to play and the keyword here is surplus. Only when the basic needs are met, with a surplus of food then there will be availability of time and workforces to focus their need on other areas, to allow specialisation. This is further illustrated from examples in the modern world. Companies, corporations and even countries can afford to go into R & D only when they have surpluses and profits.

While geographical advantages seemed to disappear in the face of globalisation, where resources are no longer bound by geographical means, it might not necessarily be so. China, is well known for using its monopoly of rare earth as a political tool. When questioned about its attempt to devalue the RMB to secure an export advantages by the USA, huge amounts of rare earth setting for the USA were called back and held up at the port. Was it mere coincidence? Or was it yet another well planned threat?

I would also like to discuss the possibilities that the abundance of resources might not necessarily be favourable. When resources are abundant, people do not innovate to make the best use out of the resources as they saw no need to. Will humans tried ways and means to improve the effectiveness of engine if there's no red alert on oil supply? Next, we look at what is called the resource curse, most commonly referred as the oil curse for Middle Eastern countries. The oil curse happens for several reason, it might be the mismanagement of resources like the lack of innovation I mentioned. However, the strongest reason the oil curse occurs is that the lucrative petroleum industry drive up the real exchange rate, destroying the profitability of any other industry. Resources and funds are pumped into the petroleum industry for the high yield, other sectors have totally no hope of matching up in term of profitability. For countries that had been hit by other kind of resource curse, once the global industry moved away from that particular resources, the economy died off as there exists no other competitive industry.

The key message I got was "too much of anything is never good". Everything in the universe must have a balance. When we have too much money, we failed to see the real value of money and aspects of life which money cannot define. When we have too much resources, we do not innovate, we do explore other possibilities. When we have too much technologies, we failed to understand the marvel of human bodies, the beauty in the simplicity that life can offer.

Prof had mentioned in class how Singapore government had failed to incorporate the importance of green technology into our society. Why is it that we had such an abundance of sunshine that we failed to make full use of it. I had asked myself the same question a few years back during my stay at HQ transport in army. With such a huge plot of land, of parking space, there is endless sunlight shining on them. Why are they going to waste? Why is it that, Singapore, claiming to be a first world country is so reluctant to embrace these technology when the Europeans and Americans had long awakened, leading a green revolution that forces government and corporations to take a second look on their 'business as usual' mentality.

I strongly feel that the government, the public sector should be the one making a spearhead lead into these arenas. Tesla had managed to create a hybrid sedan that is capable of running on both electricity and gasoline that is suitable for daily usage. These electric vehicles are capable of going up to 200 miles per charge from charging stations that is sun-powered. The charging capability of a smallest charging station for household use can hold enough power for 26 miles per charge! It's time we start transforming our buses, SAF vehicles (non-outfield uses) and our taxis into electric vehicles, talk about the potential market behind this!

Further issues I hope to touch on some other time would be how the invention of lithium ion battery transform the renewable resources industry, how creating a better engine will not unhook our lust for oil, and how the Big 5 of the oil industry has won the battle against fuel cell in the early stages of cars, how their dominance impedes the technological advancement in renewable resources and ultimately how fuel cell is making a comeback.