Biobusiness Revolution: Agriculture

How do we feed the growing appetite of our planet? 3 main factors that lead to the growing demand for food; a growing population, income levels increasing and urbanization. We cannot stop these from happening, in fact, they signify progress, but how can we make sure no one gets left hungry? Certainly there are numerous that are underfed or undernourished in developing countries; this highlights the importance of technology in agriculture and how it can change the world, save the world rather.

Yields and crop intensity has to be increased. In class, we learnt of many innovative ways of harvesting crops, from almost any environmental condition. We learnt of how the study of genetics can lead to more biodiversity and more production of crops. All these are encompassed under agricultural R&D, a driving force that has led to the rise of  issues; such as genetically modified crops. GM crops; a cause for debate?

To me, we're way passed the issue. GM food are in our everyday diets. It has already penetrated into our systems long before we even knew what it was. What harmful effects it has, well we won't know till we know won't we? So is it good for man to venture into something where long-term results are yet to be known? Well, my view is that we have always been doing that since the beginning of time, and many things we have invented are not sustainable and have harmful effects we discovered long after we invented them. Well, what are the grounds we can allow ourselves to innovate. We can't fight it unless we weigh the benefits of it. GM foods can assist in meeting the predicted demand for food. We can't fight it when billions are going hungry. Its a matter of choosing between the 2 evils. This of course is not the ideal, the ideal is something sustainable, something that does not have long term harmful effects so as we have to create more technologies with harmful long-term effects to solve. Green technologies such as fuel derived from plants are sustainable and should be strongly supported.

With unpredictable climate change holding in itself high risk to the traditional methods of growing crops, and with the degradation of our ecosystems due to, you guessed it, humans with technology in their hands, we have to start being open to such ways of growing the resources we need. We have to find a solution to the problem we've created. Global warming affecting food supply? We can't point the finger at anyone else but ourselves. 

To me, I can't make a stand whether GM foods should be encouraged or not as it has already been chewed, digested and spitted out from our system. If I am not wrong, KFC chickens (notice that the C in KFC does not stand for chickens anymore) are genetically enhanced. How many people visit fast food for a meal everyday? Not only in the chickens but in our fries and our drinks too! So now here we are, and the best thing we can do is enhance what is good about GM foods, focusing on its solution to many of the risks affecting food supply. 

With the rise of GM and other technologies, we must focus also on how developing countries can adapt to this change. Poverty reduction can lead to higher supply in food, vice versa. There has to be a strong social safety net- built on the structures of sanitization, education and assistance. No matter how advanced we are in agricultural R&D, we need the right frame in developing countries to carry out this change. Other wise we have a bottleneck in countries with limited capacity to import food. Trade must be fair and competitive. Benefiting the change makers and the change followers.

One of the presenters brought up the issue about whether labeling GM food should be done. I feel it should be done. Not because it will change our dietary preferences in anyway. But labeling the products will assure consumers that the product is safe and there is nothing the manufacturer is hiding from them. So I don't see the need to holdback the labeling of GM foods if producers believe in the GM product. Or is there?

Class rating: 8

Healthcare and Biomedical Sciences

Technological advancement & new innovations have certainly revolutionized the biomedical industry. Diseases that could not be cured in the past are now easily treated. In the past, if a person were to contract diabetes, he would await his pancreas to slowly destroy his body and take away his life. Now we no longer 'contract' diabetes, we live with diabetes. It is made possible to carry on with our daily lives with such living conditions. My mom is a diabetic and dedicates her life to helping others with the same conditions. There was a time, two months before she got married, she fell into a diabetic comma. Almost to the last brink of hope, a doctor tested her for diabetes, and just in time, they were able to inject insulin into the body. Without proper treatment, diabetics, even if they were able to survive the disease, have many related complications that prevent them from leading a normal healthy life. However, my mom was still able to give birth to a pair of twins against the odds. I'm alive today largely because of the progress of healthcare technology. Need I say more about the impact of this progress?

I classify this positive impact into 3 categories. Treatment, Recreation and Outreach.
Treatment- This refers to the the breakthroughs in medical research, and how this research has saved countless of lives. A person with short sightedness would go blind if we did not innovate. Fast forward a little, now lasik is the trend, removing the whole problem instead of just treating it. We had a presentation in class on how scientists are getting down to the root of the problem of Malaria. We are cable of issuing immunizations without the side effects, that prevent diseases before we have to cure it. There also has been much progress in food & nutrition. Aside having pills for almost everything, we have organic this, organic that, things that enhance health, its not just about maintenance anymore.

Recreation- Health as a hobby, health as a lifestyle. New & better infrastructure built; pools, gyms, stadiums etc. More programs and courses for the taking. From yoga to dance, its becoming a trend to take our health seriously. Look at how many people sign up for the standard chartered marathon each year. Its a growing trend, and if you're concerned about public health, that would be good news.

Outreach- Health Education. The internet is a tool that has been a catalyst for healthcare growth. Not only is it used to store all our medical records as we learnt from one of the presentations, it is used to disseminate information about health. People can treat themselves online, people can find out more about the medicines they have to take. You don't need to travel far and wide these days to get medical advice or to purchase medicine. the availability of healthcare has become widespread.


This is the bright and idealistic side of healthcare. Like I said, there is no denying this bright side of healthcare. However, the weakness of man has once again come into play. Health like any other business in the tertiary sector is a business. It is a service, just like education or banking. However, healthcare has always been treated within some moral boundaries. Healthcare, by virtue is to provide health and care, not to feed on patients money. The large percentage of global GDP spent on healthcare can be both a good and bad thing. The question is how much of this money is being used for good, and how much of it is simply driven by greed and unessacary inflation. We create problems so we can cure them, and so we can make money out of that cure. And as much as we celebrate the progress in healthcare, the people that need the technology the most are not receiving. As an effective business, its not really working out. Healthcare cannot be measured by looking at a screen in wall street, insurance cannot be about how you're gonna get the highest return of investment. If we go down this road further, healthcare could be yet another cause for the increase in worldwide disparity and inequality.

In the movie Patch Adams, dean walcott, representing everything wrong about the healthcare system says: " Our job is to rigorously and ruthlessly train the humanity out of you and make you into something better. We're gonna make doctors out of you. " As ridiculous as it seems,  we should look into ourselves before we start pointing the finger. Are you more concerned of health or wealth? Cure or profit? People or money? Healing or Power?


Class rating: 9



 

ICT

The topic of ICT usually brings a certain amount of stress to me. I used to tell myself "I can't keep up with this, its for the IT experts" or "I don't like computers". But I was then greatly deceived, ICT is not about just computers, its about people. Furthermore, the whole ICT revolution is driven by the fact that it is for the masses, not the just the IT whiz. It is indeed an "Internet for dummies". I started embracing the wonders of the internet when I started using Skype as a tool to contact a love one overseas. It's an amazing yet simple tool. Technology that I could never fathom when I was growing, made possible by a few clicks of the mouse, DIY, instructions included. But what drew me to the technology was not how amazing its functions were, but rather the emotions that the functions allowed me to feel. When I talk to my love ones over Skype, the distance is not felt and suddenly, they're right there in front of you.

It is the human touch in the programs that marvels me. That was what struck me about the video prof Shahi showed in class on the capabilities of gaming technology. The character in the video was able not only to interact with the 'live' user, he was also able to 'feel'. There was an not only IQ, there was an element of EQ displayed. He demonstrated certain emotions such as 'mischief' which was captured so well with the way his facial features and movement. Characters that are able to translate not only words and numbers, but emotions, now thats amazing. It's a scary thought however, to have machines being able to read and analyze things for themselves. We are in the age where artificial intelligence is not a distant idea anymore. Robots and machines helping man with tasks is no longer a thing that will happen in the future, it is happening NOW. How is man going to embrace it? There lies the issue. If we reject its use, are we stopping progress and denying the future generations off something that can improve their lives. I correct myself, its not really for us to decide, its coming whether we like it or not.

I was in the train the other day and decided to see for myself, make a bet with myself rather, how many people on the crowded train had their eyes glued to an iphone screen. I took a quick glance around, and the statistics shocked me, there was a good half of the people using iphones, thats not including those who had their iphones in their bag (ok who would keep it in their bags really?), those who were just listening to music with their earphones (under-utilizing the amazing functions of this technology) or those on their way to buy one. Yes, that many people surf the net on the go, on the go where? Probably to somewhere with better internet connection for net surfing… "Those conformers" I thought to myself and took out my trusty non 3G phone. But it truly is amazing how technology that used to make our jaws open wide in wonder when we were young is now impacting so many people. It has become a norm. It has become so much a norm that it is abnormal NOT to have an iphone. iPhone Apps are as good a business, making a mere 200 million dollars each month. iPhone users have formed a community and soon they might form the majority. I might go get myself one.

Drivers and Leaders of Change

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

- George Bernard Shaw -

I beg to differ with George Bernard Shaw's conclusion in this inductive statement. Since our world is ever-changing, adapting to the world would mean adapting to change. Unreasonable people, as put here, are the leaders of the change. That, I perfectly agree with. However, progress is only made when the reasonable man accepts the idea of the leader, and adopts it. So the very success of the unreasonable man depends greatly on the reasonable man. Like what we saw in one of the videos presented in class, it is the first follower that makes the leader not just another 'lone nut'. And it is the many followers that join in the after that that makes the movement huge, and distinguishes it as progress. Yes, the unreasonable man drives the change, just like a bus driver. But if no one boards the bus, then he is simple taking himself to the destination, with no purpose or profit whatsoever. There are many bus drivers who drive buses with no passengers on board. I believe they are among us, and their number is more than we can imagine. They are the unheard voices. Unfortunately, you have to shout really loud in this world to be heard, precisely because of the many voices drowning each other out. Only few ride buses carrying many on board. And these are our leaders of world change. 

Who/What are the drivers of world change then? Many of them were discussed during the lesson. Technology, the environment, ideologies, globalization and in more depth sustainability and consumer expectations. I believe these are the vehicles of world change. The drivers of the vehicles are us, the human race. 

So what drives the human race? Why are we constantly breaking our own limits, constantly innovating, constantly learning, constantly consuming more and more and more… Surely they are our values, the values we are rooted upon. We talk about self-interest and enlightened self-interest. Using firms as a model, we look at how they either strive to fill their own pockets at the expense of others or to fill their own pockets bringing solutions to the imperfections in our world today. There is one underlying motivator here, and that is pride. Pride drives a man to want more than he should have, drives a man to always fight his way to the top, drives a man to think destiny is in his own hands. It is pride which drives man to conquest. Columbus is such an example, so is hitler. Did they influence change? Most certainly. So is pride the main driver of world change?

However dominant pride may be in influencing world change, there is an opposing force. Again it boils down to values. There are people who live for something more than themselves, for something that lasts beyond their lifetime. These are the Mother Theresas, the Ghandis and a more recent example would be Mohammad Yunus, founder of Grameen bank. Man's intentions for what they do, we will never be able to fully read into. But the world is shaped by this battle of Good vs Evil. Question is: Who is the judge? Puts into perspective the choices we have to make and the decisions that have twisted our fate. 

I know i'm diving a little deep into the question. Its just the most prevailing thought of the day, out of the many others. I did think the presentations today were thought invoking. However, my feedback for this class is that the topic is simply too wide. I believe in the empowerment of students to make about what they want to learn in each topic, however, narrowing it down would make it easier for them to process these things that learnt. Its just the feedback for this particular topic. Hope it helps! Still very engaging though.

Lesson rating: 7