2nd week of class

To start off the class, Prof Gurinder showed us this video on the rise and fall of empires through recorded history of man, and the fact that the continent of Africa had a significant percentage of ancient empires left a huge impression on me. Right now, when people mention about Africa, they only think about poverty, hunger, AIDS, corruption and poor governance. Yet Mali used to have the world's richest and greatest empire centred around Timbuktu, where it was said that even the roads were paved with gold. So it was a huge shock to me that great empires could fall so deep in such a short period of time. Another example was the Roman Empire, which once ruled the whole of Europe till Turkey, having the world's first parliament, which was the inspiration behind the current U.S. system of governance. It was trade and an openness to new ideas from all over the world that preserved and grew the wealth of the Empire, yet the bubonic plague reversed years of progress and prosperity, when the people decided to turn to religion and superstition because the top scientists of the time did not have answers to why as many as 12,000 people were dying every day. People started to isolate themselves in closed groups and denied access to strangers from foreign lands, who were the sources of new ideas from outside the Empire. And yet the start of the Renaissance Age was also sparked off from the same bubonic plague, when the religious bodies did not have answers to stop the deaths, and scientific methods to quarantine infected people worked. The credibility of science was regained, and important figures such as Copernicus, Galileo and Newton came from this era who challenged the set of beliefs of that era and proved that their own theories were correct.

Then we watched a video on how a professor used a new method of teaching, using videos and vivid graphs to show clearly the correlation between wealth and life expectancy. I knew beforehand that the world was pretty balanced in terms of wealth and life expectancy before the 1700s, before the Industrial Revolution brought about an explosion in technological advancements that led to vaccines, pasteurisation and ultimately wealth for the Western world. Over the next 300 years, the world shifted from the poor and unhealthy quarter to the rich and long life expectancy quadrant. So what Hans Rossler predicted was that the world will continue to see a shift diagonally upwards towards a wealthier and healthier lifestyle. I think that it is entirely possible that technology advances will lead to better vaccines, broader access to healthcare facilities and better medicines that will cure disease such as cancer, yet like all things mortal, there will be a limit to how far we can actually go. It is unimaginable that humans can live forever, that because the oxygen we breathe to live will also oxidise and age our bodies, we cannot exist in this world indefinitely.

To conclude this post, I would like to rate the class a 9/10, because the video made by Hans Rossler really opened my eyes and made me realise that teaching could be fun and innovative, and also because of the lively discussions in class which allowed me to hear about different views from people on the multiple issues which we touched on during the class.

First lesson of TWC

I must admit, I did not know what to expect from the TWC class when I first stepped into the Seminar Room. So it was a pleasant surprise when we started the module with a video 'Shift Happens'. This video tells about the history and advancement of technology as well as the accompanying world change in terms of real geopolitical rise and fall of nations. In 1900, UK was the most dominant power in the world, where the sun never set in the British Empire. Just 45 years later, at the end of World War II, the USA emerged from the destruction and chaos to claim the throne of greatest power on Earth. It got me thinking, with the irresistible rise of China, with China predicted by Goldman Sachs to overtake the USA in GDP in Purchasing Power Parity terms by 2016, and 2025 by absolute terms. Even then, when both economies are of the same size, the Chinese will still be earning about 5 times less than what an American will earn. If the Chinese earns the same GDP per capita as the Americans, China's economy will be 5 times the size of America's! This is a scenario not without consequence. Currently, the US dollar is used as a reserve currency because of a few reasons, mainly because of the size and liquidity of the US bonds market, and because of the size of the American economy, the largest in the world, comprising 25% of the world's economy. This means exporter countries such as China and other East Asian tiger economies will naturally target the largest market in the world, pushing up the demand for dollars and hence the price of dollars. Once China overtakes America as the top economy in the world, demand for Yuan will rise at the cost of the dollar. Other countries will target the Chinese market to try to sell their products instead of USA, hence reducing the demand of dollars. The role of the dollar as a reserve currency will inevitably diminish over the years, with currencies from India and China possibly filling up the void left behind by the Americans, and historically, the status of the incumbent superpower follows closely with the fate of its currency as the reserve currency of choice.

Next, we watched a video of the big bang theory theme song, which summed up the entire history of the universe from its birth all the way to the modern era. The video was riveting and it made me think, just how fast recent technology has advanced, with transistors following Moore's Laws for the past 40 years ever since the first integrated circuit board was invented by Jack Kilby in Texas Instruments. Which meant to say, integrated circuits have improved over a million times over the past 40 years! Compared to the start of recorded human history, when the time lapse between the stone and bronze ages lasted over 2000 years, this is a recent phenomenon. Given the rush in technological improvements, the latest integrated circuits have reached the nano scale such that quantum tunneling, a phenomenon when electrons would appear where they were not supposed to by conventional physics, has become a significant factor in limiting future advancements. Would Moore's Law finally be upended by nature, or will mankind trump nature with science? Dr Moore thought that his law would endure for only 10 years when he first proclaimed it, but, to quote the Economist, "The irresistible force of human ingenuity has ensured it has done far better than that. But that force is now up against the immovable object of atomic physics. It is a fascinating contest."

Last but not least, I will rate the session 9/10 for the colourful and meaningful discussions that we had during class and the interesting videos showcased.