For this session, Professor Gurinder Shahi started the class by recapping with us about how technology has affected us and changed the world before he showed us a YouTube video titled “History of the World in Seven Minutes”. The video was remarkable as it showed the birth of the Universe, the formation of current continents and a quick review of the history of the world. I was impressed by the people living in the past as they were able to make their own weapons, decorate their caves and hunt without any tools, and they were able to make use of whatever resources they had to meet their needs.
After the video, the class discussed about the different dimensions of global dominance, their examples and the dominance of different countries. One example of dominance in terms of social aspect will be “Facebook”. “Facebook” is now a popular social networking site where everyone shares information and connects to their friends. The class also talked about the different football teams and whether they are the rising star, dominant player or falling star. Other than the discussions, Prof also shared with the class about the fall of the Roman Empire. I was amazed by how diseases and using science to cure the disease can lead to a fall and rise of an empire respectively. From this story, I learnt that science indeed plays an important role in our life and constant research should be done to prepare us for any emergencies and to improve our life. He also shared how China and India may dominate in the future.
During the second part of the session, the class discussed about the dimensions of Human Development and the Human Development Index. We talked about the different forms of measurements involved in determining whether a country is developed or not such as life expectancy, literacy rate and Gross Domestic Product(GDP). This brought back memories of Geography during Secondary School as I like the topic on Development. We also discussed about other factors that are not taken into account in determining whether a country is developed. One such example is happiness. Personally, I feel that happiness is rather important in determining if a country is developed. A country may be very developed but the people may be unhappy due to long working hours and other factors. Therefore, I think that other factors such as level of happiness, rights and safety should be taken into account in deciding if a country is developed.
For this session, four students presented. Generally, I think that all did quite well and they set the benchmark for the class. I was impressed by their presentations because all of them can speak clearly, loudly and fluently without pauses. Their slides are not too wordy and bring out the main points. I think that the application introduced by the last presenter was amazing as we can use it to check for diseases that occur around the world and it is reliable. This has taught me that technology has been so advanced that we are able to check for diseases that are affecting people currently easily. This will allow us to be careful and take precaution.
I think that this session was a fruitful one and there is nothing more that we have to further talk about as we have discussed the topics in depth. I will rate this session 9 out of 10 because I enjoyed the videos and the presentations given by my fellow peers. I find this session quite interesting as I enjoyed the stories that Prof shared with the class. It has also made me more interested in this module as I got to know more about science related histories which I have no knowledge prior to this and started to wonder how important science and technology is in our life. After the two sessions, I also like the way how Prof introduces the topic by showing us videos. Videos can give us a brief introduction about the topic and also make us interested in the topic with all the astonishing facts. We also managed to talk in dept for most of the readings and this has clarified some of the doubts that I have regarding the readings.
