Primordial Soup

I wouldn't consider myself much of a thinker, but I have always been fascinated by Science and Technology. I have always wondered how man ever converted sand to skyscrapers, ore to objects and taking flight without wings. We are, after all just one of the species the animal kingdom. 

I do admit that I have heard about TWC but much of those preconceptions have vanished after this first session. I truly enjoyed the first lesson, accompanied by our professor, Dr. Gurinder Shahi who is both knowledgeable and humorous. I hope the workload is not too heavy considering Prof is a physician with training in molecular biochemistry (if I am not wrong); he is going scrutinize my work. And that’s no rocket science.

There was a video on Shift Happens, and it’s basically statistics on issues around the world, skewing towards technology and human trends. We are indeed living in exponential times, and I have realized that a while ago. Here is an interesting story: I was on vacation in Hong Kong travelling to China to visit the Great Wall, where I was hospitalized for suspect of H1N1 as I had a fever. During my stay, I requested for an English book to read, and the only book they had was an old geography text, published in 1938. One piece of information that really caught my attention is that it says “the world’s population is 3 billion”. Then I wondered to myself, for the past 2 millennia the world’s population grew to 3 billion, and within the next 60 years, it doubled. It is more prevalent in technology, as new ones are built upon the old, doubling every few months. With the current equipment, information sharing is made easier worldwide; giving men the ability gain access to information they would otherwise need time to develop on their own.

There was another video on Gun, Germs and Steel. Immediately I thought of the Spanish Conquistador that swept the natives of America. I played games like Civilization and Age of Empire, and I have always emphasis heavily on research, because I always believe in the saying “knowledge is power” and power is, dominance. Why do white men have so much cargo? I believe that is only applicable to the New Guineans, where they are isolated from new ideas and information. In many ways, trade and war has pushed research to all time high by countries that are connected by their geographic location. New ideas and technologies are shared during trade (reverse engineering for China), and developed in times of war to have the edge over the enemy. In a way the New Guineans didn’t develop much from the past with their closed doors and comfortable lifestyle, getting little of what their land can offer. Without either competition or trade, there are low demands for a change or innovation to produce the “cargo” that white men possessed.

“Technology is easy, people is hard”. I agree that people is hard, however technology is never easy. We have come a long way till today’s technology and it seem easy only because comparatively from the past, technology seem to develop at a faster pace. I believe the phrase is referring to technology is easier to implement as to having people to adopt it. Technology is like fire, which can help or hurt you. People will adopt or abandon it depending on the benefits they get. Even if an organization were to adopt a new technology, change is always difficult with people. To have the employees stepping out of their comfort zone and learn a new skill, doing things out of the normal routine, training, people tend to only see their immediate benefits rather than for the whole organization, the big picture.