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.