Energy and World Change

This week, we talked about a topic that is very relevant to us, energy. Energy comes in many forms, from coal, oil and gas, which come from underground sources to wind, solar and biomass, which come from sources above the ground. These energy sources are classified as renewable and non-renewable, and as with other non-renewable resources discussed in previous lessons, we are fast running out of these resources. Therefore, we have to look towards switching to renewable energy sources in the near future in order to achieve sustainability.

One renewable energy source discussed in the lesson was solar energy. Basically, solar energy comes from the sun, and solar energy produces way more energy than other sources such as oil or wind. Solar provides 3,850,000 EJ of energy every year and the sun provides more energy to the Earth in one hour than the entire global population consumes in an entire year. However, we are still unable to fully capture this energy and utilize it. Germany currently has policies in place to encourage its people to install solar panels on the roofs of their houses and utilize solar energy. In order to encourage the people to do so, they have offered to buy this energy produced from the solar panels of the people for 50 cents per kw, and selling it back to them at a lower price of around 20 cents per kw. Although the initial costs of these solar panels may be high, in the long run, these people would be able to make a profit. Thus the Germans have all begun installing solar panels wherever possible. This includes large open spaces such as open fields, which could have been used for other purposes, such as farmland for crops. Instead, more Germans are now beginning to invest in ‘energy farming’. Prof asked if this would be feasible in Singapore, where the government puts in place similar policies to encourage people to start installing solar panels on their roofs. Personally I feel that the lack of land in Singapore may be a factor, and the amount of energy that can be harvested from solar energy may not be significant due to the lack of space to install solar panels. Also, most people live in high rise apartments and residents may not be able to stand to gain as much as these “profits” have to be split among many families in a single building. However, we should still work towards converting to renewable energy sources.

Another point that was brought up was that nations such as Dubai, which rely heavily on oil for their economy, are looking towards other sources to generate income for the economy. Having recently done an Leadership and Teambuilding (LTB) project on Sheikh Mohammed, I read that Dubai would run out of oil as soon as in 5 years time, which is a really short period of time. Hence, Sheikh Mohammed has focused on other industries to boost the economy, such as building more infrastructures such as the worlds most luxurious hotel, tallest building as well as the largest shopping mall in the world, in order to boost tourism in the country. Hence it can be seen that we can no longer rely on non-renewable resources like oil and have to look towards renewable sources in order to achieve sustainability.

The question of whether the world would be able to achieve 100% reliance on renewable resources for energy. I feel this may be possible, but it depends on how fast technology in capturing solar energy advances. If we are able to utilize even 20% of the sun’s energy, we would be able to possibly achieve this aim. However, presently Germany is only able to achieve about 20% reliance on renewable energy sources, and if I’m not wrong, is one of if not the highest in the world. However, not only the larger nations need to work towards making the switch to solar energy, but the smaller nations have to play their part too, even if the energy they use is much lesser, but nevertheless, still significant.

I would rate this lesson an 8.5/10, as it is very relevant to the world currently. However, we were unable to cover everything and go more in depth into the topic due to the lack of time in just 1 lesson. Hopefully, one day the world will be able to run completely on renewable sources of energy.

BioBusiness Revolution 2: Agriculture and the Environment: Past, Present, Future

This week’s lesson was a sequel to last week’s, which was on the biobusiness revolution. While last week’s lesson focused on the medical and healthcare industry, this week’s focused on agricultural biotechnology. Prof started the lesson with a quote of his own: “When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability”.

This is true in the sense that if we are able to constantly produce energy sources such as fuel and oil, we would no longer have to worry about what happens after we run out of these natural resources. However, in order for it to be truly sustainable, we have to ensure that we are able to grow the resources faster than we consume them. As mentioned in one of the earlier lessons, if everyone consumed at US’s rates, we would need 3-5 earths to support the entire world’s population. Not forgetting the rapidly increasing population. With the advancement of technology in the healthcare and medical sectors, the average life expectancy rate has increased, and the infant mortality rate has decreased. It is estimated that the world’s population would increase to about 10 billion people, from 7 billion as of today. With an increase in the number of people in the world, consumption rates would also increase, and limited resources get depleted at an even faster rate. Hence, although being able to grow the resources we need would allow us to achieve sustainability, I feel that it is more important to control our consumption, as well as find alternative resources in order to ultimately achieve sustainability.

Another point to note is whether we can effectively distribute these resources to all parts of the world, not just the wealthier and more advanced nations. Similarly to food, there is more than enough to satisfy the hungers of the entire world’s population, yet there are still many people in the poorer regions such as Africa who do not have enough to eat. In a way we do have enough resources, just that it is not distributed evenly among everyone. We look at those without sufficient resources and conclude that the world does not have enough when in actual fact we may actually have, just that it not properly and efficiently utilized. Hence, one of the solutions to this problem is to find ways to grow things faster, or produce more within a shorter period of time, which brings us to the topic of genetically modified foods.

GM foods came about in order to solve the problem of food shortage. For example, crops such as BT corn, golden rice and GM salmon have resulted in better and faster yields, and more nutritious food. However, some have labeled these as ‘Frankenfoods’ and many ethical and social issues have come up. There are concerns whether these GM food are safe for consumption and whether it poses a danger to animal, plant life and the environment, as these processes involve recombining plant and animal genes. Although it has been declared many times that there are presently no danger in consuming these GM foods, many are still protesting. In my opinion, I feel that people should learn to trust technology and the ones who are protesting are probably the ones who do not go to bed hungry. There are other issues with GM food, such as patenting and intellectual property rights.

As with the medical and healthcare biotechnology industry, patents and the protection of intellectual properties in the agriculture business have prevented poor farmers from using such technologies. Although farmers may be interested in employing these technologies in order to increase yield, they cannot do so as they cannot afford to economically. Unless big corporations are able to look at the bigger picture and not be only concerned with their selfish wants, the agricultural and biotechnology sector will not be able to advance as quickly as it could have been.

This week’s lesson has been very interesting and relevant to me and I would rate it an 8/10. Hopefully one day technological advances would allow food resources to be distributed equally to the poorer nations and that no one would ever have to go to bed hungry.

BioBusiness Revolution - Helathcare and Biomedical Sciences (Past Present and Future)

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in”.

This Greek proverb tells us that people have to constantly think and innovate for future generations and not just think about our present situation in order to succeed as a society. As with the biobusiness industry, specifically the medical and healthcare industry, we have to constantly come up with methods of preventing diseases instead or solely focusing on finding cures in order to prevent future generations from contracting them.

Now for some numbers. The BioBusiness industry accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s GDP and employs about 40% of the world’s labour force. This shows that a lot of focus and emphasis is placed on the BioBusiness industry and this includes the biomedical, agri-veterinary, environmental and industrial industries. This lesson focused on the biomedical and healthcare industry, which is unsurprising as it makes up the majority of the BioBusiness industry. However, an interesting statistic to note is that the USA spends a higher proportion on healthcare compared to agriculture or the food sector, while the Asian countries spend a relatively lower proportion on healthcare, whereby agriculture makes up the majority.

We also looked at the trends of the global leading cause of death. In the past (around 1990), lower respiratory infections was the leading cause of death. Presently, heart diseases are now leading, with the percentage of deaths caused by respiratory infections falling. This is a sign that the biomedical industry has successfully discovered sufficient cures and preventions over the past decade. The increase in cases of heart diseases is also reflective that people are beginning to become more obese and not watching their diets. There is a very simple prevention for this which is self control, but the convenience and availability of junk foods are slowly turning societies into fast food nations. Another interesting point to note is that deaths caused by road traffic accidents and war have been on the rise in the past decade. These are hardly causes that can be prevented by the bio business industry so it’s also a sign that either the biomedical industry has been successful in coming up with cures for other diseases, or that there have been more wars and drivers have become more reckless in the past decade.

The issue of immortality was again brought up in one of the individual presentations. The question of whether should ‘eternal youth’ be available to a small proportion of society, if we would want to have it. Personally, I feel that I would like to live longer, but not forever. There’s only so much we can do in life, and once we have done everything on our bucket list, it would be pretty pointless to go on living with no purpose. Someone suggested that we could redo everything, but I feel I would get bored quite quickly.

Gene testing was also brought up. It is the process whereby we would be able to predict the exact probability of contracting some form of disease, or our exact time of death. I don’t think I would want to know when exactly I would die, as the stress I would have is likely to make me die earlier than expected. However on the other hand, it may give me an opportunity to plan what I want to do. Say for example, if I knew I was going to die in exactly 2 weeks time, I would be able to plan the things I want to do before I died. I would be able to die happy and without any regrets. So this thing about gene testing has both it’s pros and cons, and if it were to become a reality, I feel people should have the choice to choose whether they want to be aware of the results.

Overall, this was a pretty interesting lesson and I would rate it a 7/10.

ICT and World Change

Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Love it or hate it, we make use of ICT everyday in our lives. Recently on a trip to Malaysia, I observed that the first thing everyone did when they reached Singapore customs was not to check their passports or other important documents, but to check their phones for their emails or Facebook updates. It would be an exaggeration to say that we cannot live without ICT, but things will definitely move along very much slower without it. To borrow a quote from last weeks lesson, “Man's mind, once stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is also applicable to ICT, whereby once we are introduced to a new technology, such as wireless connections or 3G mobile, we find it hard to do without them.

We viewed a video regarding the ‘Project Natal’ about how technology has allowed us to interact with a virtual character, called Milo, which was reactive and was able to respond according to what the user did. It was supposedly unscripted and realistic that the person in the video behaved as though she was interacting with a real person. Although I thought the idea was interesting, it failed to convince me that the video was totally unscripted and that the character was truly able to react to every different situation. Nevertheless, it is an interesting insight to what could happen in the future of artificial intelligence.

We also discussed the different areas of ICT, such as passive vs interacting mass media, whereby we used to be able to only get information from sources such as newspapers and not be able to voice our opinions to the public. Also, the evolution of the internet (from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0) is pretty interesting as sites such as Google and Amazon are now able to predict what users want, based on previous searches on purchases. This gives us a greater variety of choices, as we may see something we did not know about and actually end up buying stuff we do not really need, or end up researching or reading up on another topic whereby the subject is miles away from the initial intended topic. Cloud computing was also brought up and the question of whether cloud computing would totally eliminate the need for personal storage equipment, such as hard disks. I feel that we still need our own personal privacy and uploading and storing our stuff on a common server would eliminate privacy completely. Hence I feel that cloud computing would slowly become more pervasive, but would not completely overtake.

This would be due to the risks and dangers with ICT, which was discussed in the last part of the lesson. We are beginning to lose our privacy on the online world, whereby everything we do online, be it a blog post or twitter update can be seen by every one around the world. Also, we are exposed to other harmful information or corrupting influences online, such as pornography or sexual predators and there’s little we can do about it but to educate the people. The risk of impersonation online is also higher, as it is difficult to certify who we are communicating with online is really who he claims to be. This exposes us to being more easily cheated and such cases are becoming more and more prevalent in our society.

I would rate this lesson an 8/10 as the topics that were discussed got me interested and I ended up spending some time researching on some of the topics, such as the ‘Project Natal’ and the future of artificial intelligence. I’m looking forward to the next session on the BioBusiness Revolution!

Individual Report Brief Outline

Changes in sports broadcasting

Before the advent of ICT and the mass media, people used to travel great distances just to catch their favourite sports teams in action. These days, millions of people around the world can tune in at the same time to watch a sporting event, such as the Olympics or a Barclays Premier League match. As a result, sports have become huge businesses, contributing immensely to the economy. Over the years, with greater improvements in technology, such sporting events can be broadcasted to almost everyone in the world. It is interesting to see how sports broadcasting has developed over the years, from tuning in to the radio to catch the live commentary of a sporting event, to 3D screenings of such events.

Executive Summary

Here I’ll be focusing on how ICT and broadcasting has made sports a multi-million dollar business.

Background

I’ll be looking into the history of how people used to turn in or catch the latest updates of sporting events and how it has improved drastically to recent times.

Past

From travelling great distances to catch their sporting heroes live, to tuning in to other means of broadcast just to get the latest updates on certain events. Sports were never as huge as it is today.

Present

Live broadcasts in high definition, various camera angles to capture every single piece of action during the event to 3D broadcasts, sports broadcasting have improved drastically over the years.

Future

Technologies to allow viewers to feel as though they are watching live at a certain stadium, even more cameras (such as player POV cameras) to capture the action on the field.