This week’s class started off with a summary of the past two sessions. The question raised by Prof was: How are we going to see children in the coming future? Are we going to despise them because they would be a burden on us? Or are we going to envision them as the future Einstein and work towards making them that successful?
We moved on to the topic of sustainability. We were asked to think about what we thought sustainability was. On the top of my head, without checking the proper definition, sustainability to me is something that is possible to happen/occur/do for a long time without difficulty. The two dictionary definitions I got were:
1. Pertaining to a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse
2. Able to be maintained or kept going, as an action or process.
Two words that stand out from these definitions, for me, are ‘maintain’ and ‘reuse’. This is how sustainable development should be like. One of the biggest concerns now is the fact that due to increasing global demand, resources are running out. I was shocked to find out that by now we have used up 1/3 of the world’s natural resource bases. Many of these resources aren’t renewable. Thus it is very important that we keep these two words in our mind because our only solution to protect our environment and our future is through sustainable technologies or resources that can be MAINTAINED and REUSED!
The first presentation we had has stayed on in my mind. It was on the use of palm oil as a bio fuel. We had a discussion on how viable are its economic benefits as compared to how it affects the environment. Without thinking too deep into it I felt that it was a very good substitute for fossil fuels. I decided to read up more on it and realized that there is a totally different side to it. Two articles that caught my attention were
From these articles I understand what the prof meant when he said: Economic growth has surpassed environment endowment. When we talk about coming up with substitute resources such as palm oil for energy, we have to be very careful that the benefits surpass the risks and problems by many folds. What is the point of having developments that turn out to be a bane more than a boon?
In the second section of the class Prof went through with us “The Shahi Landscape Model for Technology Assessment: Conceptual Framework” and “The Shahi Technology Innovation Value Creation Pipeline”. The first model reminded me of his “The Shahi Organizational Behaviour Model for Identifying Innovation Leaders and Dominant Players”. Through the discussion in the second half we spoke about the different types of technology. They are innovation driven and market driven technologies. Monetary success is the top in the to-do list of many companies thus the majority of the products we currently have is definitely market driven.
During the second set of presentations what interested me the most was the presentation on Steve Jobs. It was a shock and that got me reading up more on him. An interesting article that I read was ‘Apple cries about Samsung and Motorola’s Patent “Monopoly”’ (http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Cries+About+Samsung+and+Motorolas+Patent+Monopoly/article22586.htm).
With all the new ideas from the lesson I rate it a 9/10.
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