TWC WEEK 5 – ICT AND WORLD CHANGE

Society of today relies heavily on the use of info-communication technologies (ICT). And of course, this is a known fact to all of us. In fact, the world has benefited through the means of ICT. Such drastic change allows us to research on any information all over the world within a short timeframe, know of all the first hand news through mass media as well as enhancing our way of interaction with different forms of communication means. Thus, getting to know information of today is said to be readily available.

I agreed with what Prof. mentioned in class, “Automation of efficient operation magnifies efficiency” and vice-versa. It is definite that this meaning holds truth. But it does not always mean that efficient operation will eventually result high efficiency, low or average efficiency may result in un-circumstances too.

The digital divide, till today such problems exist. Are measures like providing the less needy, un-developed countries with the appropriate ICT knowledge and skills going to be helpful? I would go for this idea. There is a saying which states “give a person a fish and it will fill his stomach, teach a person to fish and it will fill his stomach forever.” Therefore, we should think about the rationale of rather trying to improve the disparity of digital divide, why not solve it. By treating the problem, this enables un-developed countries to adapt to ICT and ride on the benefits of it, moving away from digital divide.

Although ICT can do us good in many ways, still we have to be cautious of the dangers of ICT. There are always pros and cons to every idea that comes along.

Food for Thoughts on readings:

There are many readings and the readings on Cloud computing differentiates itself from the rest.

Having said that, cloud computing has contributed to efficiency in private and public sectors, promoting growth, competition and business creation. Such application allows us to access all our documents from any device anytime anywhere. Goggle doc is one good example. Cloud computing generally saves on huge cost and creates multilateral network effects among businesses. Thus, it certainly have a great impact on the global economy since the use of cloud computing provides huge benefits as compared to traditional use of storage through servers. However, It cloud computing is seen to remain limited for the future years ahead, where it will have significant macroeconomics impact. Ultimately the most fundamental of this IT is the size of its fixed cost savings. All in all, the use of cloud computing definitely has its drawbacks like systematic risk, security and privacy issues, reliability, data governance and lastly the complexity of usage. However, applying cloud computing policies have to be studied in a way to optimize the process of adoption of the new technology and to strengthen its benefits.

Creation of ICT also helps in the pursuing the millennium development goals (MDGs). I feel that government should do something such as to exercise a choice that will secure the future for today’s generation. How do we include ICTs into MDGs agendas?  Basically, ICT can be used to enhance the capacity to monitor, measure, and report on the progress of these goals. It is vital that ICTs too provides a role in development and not just economy growth

Also, the networked world today allows us to bond from one to one, one to all and many to many. Expansion of access to the network provides more powerful human to machine interfaces. Thus, it tells us that today’s centers of information and resources become ever less important.  One important factor we have to consider will be to balance control and freedom of such uses and this leads to the second law of technical change: Expect unexpected effects.

In conclusion, I feel that ICT has more to come with new innovation and creation which will provide much more in the future.

Week 4, Drivers of World change & Change Management and Change leadership

TWC, Week 4, Drivers of World change & Change Management and Change leadership


There are in fact many drivers that can lead to world changes.

Environmental Drivers has been a huge problem in today’s society. Society has been precautious in minimizing pollutions and global warming. However, precautionary actions taken are just treating the problem and not solving the root of the problem. Considering the issue of Global warming; does a reduction in CO2 emissions helps in reduction of such driver? Definitely more applications to the diagnosis of global warming issue have been introduced. Until today, global warming is still a major problem. I feel that society should predict what would be the outcome of the effects of global warming and draft precaution plans to be prepared for the worst since this driver is unstoppable.

Looking at the driver of “Germs”, I find it as an unpredictable driver of world change because it happens just so sudden which catches all of us off guard. Say for example the SAR case where countries all over the world were badly infected and deaths were inevitable.

Dark Ages and plague epidemics

Depicts a story of Roman Empire in the 2nd century A.D. where they were the beacon of learning, trade, power and prosperity in the western world. However, their success was not sustainable. Their Empire came to an end by the 5th century where barbarian warriors came in waves of invasion slaughtering, stealing, and settlement. Because of a changed in culture, Europe had been hit by famine, plague, persecutions, and war constantly resulting no peace.

Ultimately, the Western Europe would rise from the Dark Ages to a level of cultural and political power unseen for a thousand years.

Video of Dark Ages on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhcJpalbFxo

Global Drivers of Change: Their implications for the Zambian Construction Industry.

It shows how Zambian construction industries took a change from the old construction corporation to a brand new construction landscape. Such driver of change has lead to a creation of new market place which provided liberalisation and privatisation programmes and the rise of free market. As such, it created new businesses as well as attracting international financial investment leading to a globalization of its economy.

It can be seen that the key driver was its technological changed. Transformation of Zambian construction industry had created global telephony, satellite communications and video links widely available providing information easily accessible. Thus, it had become a platform for opportunities and challenges for international marketers.

However, to maintain such an industry, it is always crucial to keep implementing and seeking new changes. The continuous of business transformations is therefore inevitable.



Change management and change leadership.

We often discuss how to differentiate managers and leaders.

Managers are the brains of a business – concerned about the business, establish systems, create rules and operating procedures.

Managers – react when it happens.

Leaders are the heart of a business - settle a direction, communicating it to everyone and keeping people motivated when times get tough.

Leadership – leader takes initiative - make it happen, react when it happens.

The article “Directing and Managing Change. Manfred Davidman” shows:

For directing and managing change, it all boiled down to the importance of this 3 rules,

1) Adapting to chance and deciding what needs to be done.

2) Planning ahead, getting results and evaluating progress.

3) Appraisal interviews and target- setting meetings.

Basically it tells us that we have to predict what the likely possible issues (By adapting to Changes) and plan ahead (where we need to forecast and do planning) and then act accordingly (this is where our decision policies and implementing policies have to be certain). Besides all of these, we have to consider the importance of style of management in achieving results too. It plays a role in the effects of relationship between management and workers in producing effective and efficient results to meet the targets.

Ultimately, I feel that all of us have to be proactive in managing change. And yy doing so, the chances of us achieving something great would be higher.

TWC WEEK 3

TWC week 3


To begin with this week’s session, the idea of a linear industrialization had led me to ponder on the past industrialization strategy versus to today’s strategy of a cyclical industrialization. In the past, the use of linear development had a great setback, an opportunity cost. Although it provided us economic well-being, it was at the cost of our environmental well-being; be it pollution, loss of natural recourses, climate changes etc… Because of the failure to take into considerations of these externalities, our society today had created a change. The new creation of a cyclical industrial approach considered the ends and the means of the industrialization process. It took into consideration of the externalities and accounted for, for the environmental impact. This aims to provide a sustainable industrialize development without reducing the options for our future generations.

Our discussions had talked on how the development and application of industrialization had first come about, how industrialization is seen to be an important engine for growth of developing countries today. The idea of “advantages of backwardness” showed me how countries had actually been able be to capitalize on industrialization at the later game to expand its growth much rapidly, efficiently and effectively. For example:

Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea 5%

Malaysia 6%

India and China 12%



In my opinion, I feel that industrialization definitely plays an important role as an engine of growth for countries if not we would not have become what we are today. So ultimately the key factor would be Industrialization and its implications. There will definitely be implications and I must say that even new innovations today will somehow or rather have a negativity impact.

Interestingly, the term aqua-ponics had led to much controversy on its feasibility in the society. I find that this innovation does play an important role in saving the environment, renewing resources to beautify the greenery does sounds great. However, as to reality I feel that the probability of implementing of such innovation might not happen in the near future.

The most memorable part of the class today was the youtube video regarding on the beer advertisement. Although the ultimate goal is for our benefit, yet again, we should look at it in another perspective; if such innovation were to actually exist, what are the drawbacks?

The term Wei Ji in mandarin means when there is danger, there will be opportunities. Thus, another point to note: “Great dangers bring about immense opportunities”.

Invention, the first step leading to innovation is always a tough process. Going through validation, marketing strategies may or may not increase your value proposition and thus affecting your level of risk.

Question raised on innovation being technology or market driven? At the end of the day, it all boils down to the organization’s business model. If they are desperate for market share, be more market driven and vice versa.

Lastly, I feel that the way GOOGLE has based their strategies, innovations; corporate culture etc… which has made them so well positioned today is actually something meaningful for our learning platform for all of us to learn.

TWC Week 2

The article on “The Colonial Holocaust and its Legacy” shows how Colonialism had served primarily to shape the foundation of today’s society, of which today’s international political and economic structures became the result of colonial history. We were introduced to a new term called “Euro – centric”, it simply means the law that was passed down from Europe.

Next the theory of “The rising star and the falling star” truly tells us how industries as well as countries will either be a rising or falling dominant player through their operation attitudes. That if a company were to close itself up from learning from others, it will lose out eventually. In reality, the prediction of China becoming the next world players could be seen arising. I feel that besides China, the next rising star would be India too.

The idea on firms becoming more socially networked seems to be happening even as I write my journal, because if friend’s referral is already accepted as a mean to recruitment, what’s more for firms to become more socially networked. I agree that firms may soon be socially networked, as most of the people, has many social networked accounts be it LinkedIn or Facebook etc… even I myself have to admit that I too have these accounts.

Many new terms was introduced on America’s world military superiority. It shows how America was able to maintain its military power throughout the years. What caught my attention was that the difference on military planes already considered “old” used by America and how Singapore purchased F-15 (consider new) but was actually older. This definitely shows a great contrast in terms of their military superiority.

If we ever wonder how “Human Development Index” is was actually measured? It basically means the 3 qualities – Health (life expectancy), Income (cost of living) and GDP (gross domestic product). Does this actually measure humans’ qualities of life? Certain it does to a certain extent, however Prof too mentioned Happiness, a very important quality to everyone of us

So how do individuals maximized their own potential? I feel that the Idea of it lies in each individual themselves. I feel that “Singularities and Nightmares”, how extremes of optimism and pessimism about the human future, that everything is changing. The future is unknown but predictable.


The video on millennium development goals, with questions on “what if...”, it tells us rather than waiting for things to happen,  all of us as individuals should stop and thinking. If every one of us could just contribute a little and work together, we could actually achieve the goals and overcome the problems.

TWC - Session 1

To begin with our first class, Dr Shahi gave us a short briefing on technology and world change. When we say technology and world change, most of our first thought in mind would be IT (Information Technology). However, the principle does not mainly revolves fundamentally on IT, it too involves our everyday transportation, buildings, medical welfare and many other more that we can think of.

From our introduction, I have have picked out some issues that I remembered of as follows:

1) “ how advancement of medical benefits (Bio- technology) is able to benefit everybody and changed their lifes enabling them to have a better lifestyle, through new research of drug for a particular symptom. “

2) “how Information Technology modifies our everyday lifestyle; through the uses of internet resources like facebook, MSN, SKYPE as well as gadgets like I Phones. Helps us to connect to friends and family from all around the world”

3) “How the company’s aircrafts systems are improved to provide more efficient and effective usage; for eg. Having a computerize system to detect engine failure in its early stages during flight so as safety measures could be taken.

4) “How Japan is by far the most efficient and effective in terms of their own technologies as compared to the rest of the world.

After hearing all the thoughts from my classmates, It really keeps my mind going to think of what I really knew about technology and world change, and ultimately just a vague aspect of it. And this spur me to want to know more.

Apart from these, our attention was brought to this sentence: “Technology is Easy, People are Hard”. It tells us that creating new technology can be easy or to understand technology can is easy, however, people on the other hand it is hard to change mindsets. For e.g. when people developed a habit for a current technology so suitable for themselves, they might not even consider taking on new technology (Use of writing materials VS typing on laptops).

Besides that, four learning issues of technology and world change was talk about; Information and Communications Technology, Life Science and BioBusiness-related technologies , Energy and Industrial Production Technologies and Emerging Technologies (including nanotechnology, robotics, other exciting technology areas).

Next, we covered on : Technology and the Rise of Civilizations: Historical Timeline and Technology “Revolutions”

We have discussed on how Some Revolutionary Developments in Human History had came about.

Besides that we watched a video regarding Guns, Germs and Steel which showed us how civilization and technology changes overtime, an example was the an example was the usage of guns between china and U.S, where china discontinued the use of guns while U.S took the idea of guns usage to their advantage.
As well as the very vivid questions that the new guinean asked: “why u white people have so much cargos and we black people do not”, most of us agreed that because of the new guinean culture and the environment that they are in inhibits them from the whites who are more developed even though new guinean they themselves have the abilities to pick up skills fast.

Key take away points:

1) In our everyday life, we are living in exponential time. This means that we are already unknowingly  living in   future time, for e.g. “preparing our students for jobs that didn’t exist yet”

2) “Technology is Easy, People are Hard”.

Issues for futher discussion:

Are we humans’ a player of technology or have we unknowingly become a tool of technology in this society. Often it seems like humans are the ones developing new technologies like electronic gadgets, faster transportations, etc., but haven’t we humans relied heavy on such technologies to keep our lives ongoing. If we were to ever consider these available technologies taken away from us, what would really become of us?
Well, for me I feel that we are both a player and a tool of technology in many ways which plays a big part in changing our future lifestyle as well as its impact of the world.
Personal Ratings for Session:

In my opinion, the session was enjoyable after all. I will rate the session 8/10. Higher rating the next time round if more videos could be shown during class!