Making Singapore Green?

From the day we are born, till today, our parents keep working to make our future better. When we were kids, they started saving up for school, when we grew older they started saving up for college and it continued. Ever thought, what if the world wouldn't be there? What if they were saving uselessly? What if, there is no tomorrow? This isn't any practical joke. It's the bitter truth! There is a need for sustainability if there is to be a tomorrow. The rate at which the world is going right now, there will be no resources left for our future generations, our kids. Why look so much into the future? Maybe there will be no future left for us!!

The world has finally opened it's eyes to this problem. There have been many laws made, and strict actions have been taken against people/companies causing harm to the environment or our resources. Moreover, there have been many steps taken in the positive direction as well. Sustainable cities and structures are being developed to promote the cause. As people are becoming more and more aware, they are moving towards sustainability. As such, even the popularity of it is growing. 

Our project is based on the various initiatives that have been taken to move towards sustainability, and how Singapore can learn from them. A few of the examples we have taken are: 

Rotating Tower

World's first building in motion, takes the concept of green buildings to the next level, generating electricity for itself, making it the first skyscraper designed to be entirely powered by wind and sun.

Teatro Del Agua

The Teatro Del Agua works by coupling “a series of evaporators and condensers such that the airborne moisture from the evaporators is then collected from the condensers, which are cooled by deep seawater.” The sweeping structure will incorporate solar panels to provide heat for the evaporators and will operate almost entirely on renewable energy.

Dice House

The Dice House looks like part of a Monopoly set, but the design has real-world ambitions. The 30-by-30-by-30-foot concept home, designed by the British architecture firm Sybarite, improves on standard building tech to erase its carbon footprint.

These are just a few examples. In our presentation and the wix page, we will show you how the world is moving towards becoming sustainable. Moreover, we will also show you how Singapore can learn from these examples and develop in a greener way.

Session 6: Going Green

Just a few months back I had gone for dinner with my parents and their friends. At dinner, the ladies kept talking about organic food and the health factors it includes. About one week later, one of the ladies from the same group told me about how I should turn vegan. About two weeks after that another one of the ladies from the group told me about how it's not safe to buy fruits because they're heavily fertilized and that it's better to buy packaged fruits. All of this came across as a trend to me. BioBusiness has become a trend, a status quo. As people are becoming more and more informed, as ICT is taking over the world, biobusiness opportunities are increasing exponentially. The more people learn about the harmful effects of antibiotics, the more they tend to shift towards herbal and traditional medicines. The more people learn of how the industries are harming the environment, the more these industries will take precaution and take steps for safe disposal of their wastes. The more people learn about how fertilized crops are harmful, the more they will tend towards organic food. In short, the more people learn, the more biobusiness will grow. As peoples' awareness increases, so will the popularity of biobusiness.

As such, there is constant need for innovation in this field. As people are moving from rural to urban areas, their mindset is changing and they're becoming more and more open minded. They want to learn and move towards a healthier planet. As prof mentioned in class, innovation doesn't only mean doing research in a lab. Even if you sit under a tree and think, that's also considered innovation. With growing healthcare concerns and diseases, biobusiness innovation is becoming a need more than a desire. We have seen how in movies they use new technologies to solve criminal cases or to solve murder cases. As a kid I used to think it's all fiction. However, today, fiction is becoming fact! Cancer which was considered incurable can now be cured.  Technology is advancing. AIDS which was considered a taboo is now widely being accepted as a disease. Peoples' mindset is also advancing. 

BioBusiness has it's advantages. However, today it is being taken to another level altogether. Doctors are practicing genetic engineering to tamper with the genes of couples to produce kids with desired traits. As a result, there have been cases of unhealthy and even mentally ill kids being produced. What is happening is that the child is becoming an experimental tool. On the flip side, the practices by doctors have made prosthetic a reality today. Stem cells are being used as medicines, bringing about miracles which couldn't have been perceived a few years back. Like everything else, biobusiness has its good and bad. Let's hope that the world capitalizes on the good and not the bad. 

On a whole, this topic didn't interest me much as I haven't really seen or personally experienced the effects of biobusiness. 

Overall, my rating of the class: 6.5/10 :)

Session 5: How The World Has Changed

I still hear stories from my grandparents about the black and white TV they had, or the letters they sent, or even how they never had telephones. It's always fascinated me. I can't imagine my life without the luxuries and technologies I have today. Life is so convenient today. You don't know anything, just google it, you are bored, just put on the TV and watch something, you miss someone somewhere far away, pick up the phone and call. In fact, technology has advanced to such a level that your TV, google and phone are all on one device, namely your hand phone. Everything has grown and changed the world at the speed of lightning! 

Today, before the news is even out, the media is already talking about it. Social networking sites have taken over every aspect of life, from dating to breaking up, from finding new friends to keeping in touch with old friends and family. Technology has taken over education as well. There are schools with smart boards, eLearning videos, online quizzes and sometimes even online lectures. Human touch is lost.

On the flip side, ICT has it's advantages also. A major part of the world is living below the poverty line. As such poverty alleviation is an important concern. Poverty alleviation does not mean providing services to the poor. It means enhancement of the agency of the poor. The world's technology is unevenly distributed. As such, ICT plays the role in dealing with the digital divide. ICT also provides humans with the knowledge that they would otherwise never know. For example, today people do not run to the doctor for a slight flu or cold. They just find an appropriate medicine online. Even when patients visit a doctor, they do proper research on what the doctor says after they go home. This makes them feel more comfortable and at ease. These days, ICT is providing solutions to most of our problems! However, we have to keep in mind that ICT only improves that which is already good and worsens that which is already bad. It does not bring about a complete transformation!

The thing about ICT is that it not only has advantages and disadvantages, but has concerns as well. The top few concerns include security, espionage, invasion of privacy, identity theft and even corrupting influences! ICT brings along with it, a lot of risk when it comes to businesses and their private information. Moreover, ICT can be used for the wrong purposes as well. For example, terrorists use this technology for getting inside information about a country or its government. ICT has the potential to improve a country's situation, but it also has the potential to completely bring it down! There have been so many cases of identity theft. There have also been cases where people have taken up a false identities and fooled people. Several incidents have been reported where young boys/girls have committed suicide over a crush on someone they met online. In many of these cases, the person they had a crush on turned out to be a fake identity. Therefore, ICT has a potential risk on lives as well. Fiona's presentation in class was exactly about this. It was something that struck a chord and really interested me. 

I had my individual presentation as well this week. My presentation was on the influence of social media on the world. It was based on an article from Cliche magazine. During and even after my presentation, I surveyed the class and most of my peers were of the opinion that social media is moving towards taking over the world. In an extreme sense, we are all becoming slaves to social media. There was a heated discussion after my presentation as well, on this very topic. One of my "food for thought" questions was that is the youth of today becoming a slave to social media? Again, there were varied opinions on the same. However, in conclusion, all I said, and would like to say is that we have to remember that nothing should be taken to extremes. Complete withdrawal from the use of social media is also bad. There has to be a proper balance where the human emotions aren't lost. Let's hope that we never see a day where the human is so used to chatting and texting, that he loses his ability to talk and make conversation.

Overall, my rating of the class: 8.5/10 :)

Individual Review Paper - iTunes U

iTunes U - Change The Way The World Learns

Introduction and Background

This revolutionary application by Apple, gives you access to the world's largest online catalog of free education content from leading institutions. Learn a new language, study Shakespeare or discover a new cosmos. It has more than 500,000 courses from colleges all over the world, including Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Stanford .. and need I name more? It can be customized as well such that your professor uploads his lecture slides on iTunes U and sends it out to only people from your class. Thus changing the way the world learns.

Recap

The learning and teaching style of the world has changed unbelievably. Earlier there used to be days when the professor used to give lectures and write on the whiteboard for explanations. The students used to take notes and if they missed something, it's gone. Then came the time when slides used to be handed out in class. So at least if a student missed something, he/she would have a rough idea of what it was. Then came the smart boards. Whatever the teacher wrote on the board would come on the screen on the child's desk. And finally, today, we're at the stage when learning has been made an application. You just download the application and sit at home, whenever you want, and study the lectures the professors give. This is the extent to which the way the world learns has changed.

Future

What is the future of learning? Will we all becomes slaves to technology? Do you  think education without a human touch is of any use? Isn't the classroom environment better than slouching on the bed at home and going through your phone or iPad for lecture slides? Isn't it possible that the intelligence level of the future generation suffers a serious blow because of this "tech savvy world" we are moving towards.

All of this will be answered in my topical review paper. Watch out for it :)

Session 4: Adapting To The Change

Change is the only constant.

The minute prof wrote this on the white board, I could immediately relate to it. Be it on a large scale like the world, or on a small scale like my life ... Everything is changing, almost every second. In class, we spoke about the world changing. There are many factors leading to world change: environmental, scientific and technological, social, demographic, cultural, ideological change, just to name a few. You may wonder, how these factors bring about change in the world? Well, evolution, development of man from a hunter-gatherer to a farmer and eventually leading the world toward industrialization - that changed the world. The result of industrialization, the pollution and global warming - that changed the world. The various inventions, like the light bulb - that changed the world. 

We humans have gone through evolution and the world has gone through revolution. You may wonder, what's the difference? The world, since it's inception, has been going through constant change, some good, some bad. Humans have evolved as a result of these changes. They have adapted themselves to the world of today. What would have happened if they had not changed and stayed as hunter-gatherers? They wouldn't have been able to survive long enough. The ability of a living being to adapt to changes determines their longevity. Leave humans, even the various animals and birds in the world have learnt to adapt. Those who cannot adapt well to changes, shift places (migrate/hibernate). This is, in a sense, the law of nature.

Another important thing about change, people only change when they want to. How is that? Let's take the example of the iPhone 5. When it is launched, the tech crazy and Apple fanatics are the firsts to buy it. Next would be those who have used Apple products and want to upgrade maybe. Third would be the ones worried about status quo (the whole world has an iPhone 5, how can I still have the 4S!!) and finally would be the ones who after hearing from everyone, would like to change their phones for more convenience. So you see, a person only buys the iPhone 5 when he/she wants to. Sometimes, there is no option and change is inevitable. Like for example, when there used to be a fire in the forest, the hunter-gatherers had to move away from that place. Similarly, when the world undergoes revolution, the people have to change. So change is also a two sided coin. It depends on which side faces you once the coin falls. 

In the second half of the class we spoke of managing change and leading a change. Again could be related to the analogy above, humans wanting to change v/s humans being forced to change. When you lead a change is when you want the change. However, when the world changes, you are forced  to change. Even in the behavior model we had studied in the earlier session, it all depends on your willingness to change. The rising star is one who is willing to adapt to the change, and perhaps even think ahead and anticipate the change. The dominant player too is the one who has accepted the change. However, the dominant player becomes the falling star as soon as it denies changing. In other words, you either change, or you die. There is no third option. There are two ways to change: you either change and settle in the change and then once the next change comes you change again (confusing right?!) or you keep changing continuously with the times. Again, if you have the iOS 5 on your phone, and you just don't change until your phone stops working and asks you to update your iOS, well that's being forced to change. On the other hand, you keep updating your iOS as and when updates come along, that's monitoring the change and adapting continuously.

The presentations in class were also very well done, and I especially like the presentation on Hugh Hefner. It was an interesting perspective, seeing a casanova as a leader of change. It takes a great mind to come up with the idea of Playboy. He changed the way the world thinks. Who knows, maybe he had a major impact in the making the people of the world open-minded. Maybe he is the one who changed the perception of "sex" being a taboo word. Whatever it is, he brought about a change in the world.

Overall, my rating of the class: 8/10 :)