The topics discussed for the 2nd lesson of our TWC course is "Technology, Society and Global Dominance" and "Technology and Human Development". The lesson started off with the new students introducing themselves. Its nice to see we have a variety of people from different cultural and educational background. Thereafter, a short video was shown on China's economic status and a healthy dicussion followed as the lesson proceeded with the individual oral presentation and slides prepared by Prof Gurinder.
The short video showed how China could already be the biggest economy in the world as GDP is not an accurate representation of one's productive ability. It is said by the year 2020, China's GDP will overtake the US. Such a shift just highlights to us the different dominant players at different periods throughout human history. From China to Europe in the 18th and 19th century to the Americans and now perhaps the superpower status might go back to China soon. Prof Gurinder also brought up the his model of identifying innovation leaders and dominant players. It is interesting to note that as history has shown, any nation or civilisation becomes a falling star once it shuts itself out of the outside world.
The reading on the colonial holocaust and its legacy was definitely a facinating read as it provided different albeit negative depiction of colonialism. Research has shown how the founding of America and the the expansion of Europe's dominance are actually a bunch of savage massacre and cruelty. These major events have been unjustly glorified and people ought to be ashamed of such a record going down in the book of history.
On the topic of human development, we learnt that sustainable development could be explained by, 'using options available today that would not limit options in future'. The subject that immediately comes to mind would be the burning of fuel and the consequences that comes with it. Typically, one would address whether we are using our limited resource of fuel most efficiently.
One key takeaway for me would be that countries could never survive in isolation
Given the competitive nature of economies due to the many different dimensions of globalisation, nations have to be willing to allow the flow of information, knowledge and investments to faciliate growth of an economy and also the productive capability of its resources(knowledge of people, technology).
There are several issues I think deserves further discussion. One student brought up the question that if the US is already so far above everyone in terms of military power, why do they still continue to exhaust so much of their resources on military development? I feel that the US naturally would want to remain as the superpower of the world for self interest. However, it is not feasible economically due to population and resource restraints. Eventually, China would overtake them in that aspect. It seems to me that they are ensuring their status of AT LEAST a military superpower of the world to retain their political will in the international arena. Realistically speaking, the richest and the most powerful always have the most say in international issues. Even there comes a day when they are no longer have the biggest economy, their military capabilities would definitely be an intimidating factor and would "deter" any state from "offending" them.
Gabriel, a fellow student, brought up during his presentation a concept that the US military takes, that is to create before required. If such a concept has enabled the US military to be so advanced over the other states, should corporations employ such an idea for commercial purposes as well?
This lesson was an insightful one and personally I would rate it 8/10 for the lively and valuable discussion we had. There is much more to say and reflect about from this lesson but I will stop here for now.
-Zhishu of G22
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