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

  

Technology & Innovation Management

What is the most contagious parasite? 
"An idea" is what Mr Cobbs, the main character from the recent phenomenal movie 'Inception' claims the answer to this question is. An idea, he goes on to say, from the tiniest seed, spreads like a virus. How do we contain this virus? In our world where ideas are born every split of a second, what is the best way we can efficiently churn these ideas into realistic opportunities that bring world change? 


Breakthroughs in technology have reached astronomical proportions, this drives customers expectations up which in turn drives the need for more innovation. Companies now have to shift from the 'technology' age to the 'innovation' age. They not only have to manage manpower, they have to manage brain power. Manufacturing not only goods, but ideas. Accounting for not only monetary capital but intellectual capital. There is always a gap between the R&D and the application in the R-D-A process, something we learnt in class today. If we were to cover that gap, we would accelerate innovation, taking advantage of more business opportunities. Translating 'dreams' to reality, again reminding us of the movie inception. However, we can really draw lessons from the movie: 


Rapid growth, as we learnt from prof shahis value creation pipeline, always starts with a concept. If a concept, just remains a concept in our minds, then we are all stuck in 'limbo'. There is a process to take us there. This process includes technology validation, 'productization' and business case validation. As we can see, many different groups of people are needed to transform an idea into reality. In the movie, Inception needed the team effort of various different individuals: the extractor (I call in real life, the inventor), the architect (I call the designer), the chemist (I call the scientist or anyone involved in the technological creation aspect), the forger (I call the businessman!), the tourist (I call the investor). If you watched the movie and loved it, you'd probably be agreeing with me right now! But if you haven't, my point is, that for an idea to come to life, we need the collaboration of many (the inventor, the designers, the IT people, the salesman etc etc.). 


As brought up by prof Shahi, we are in the age of collaboration, not competition. Alliances are the way to go, if you fear  a competitor, get him on your side. Not that firms should encourage their employees not to rise above the competition. However, as learnt in last weeks topic of globalization, the interdependence of countries and economies are rising extra-ordinary levels, we are becoming a global village where we leech on a single idea, copy it, improve it and move on to the next. No one can survive alone. Also, as quoted in reading 3, "It is in the understanding of interdependance across all borders and a shared mission, that we can begin to view the global enterprise as an innovation system of expertise which promotes the collective wisdom unachievable by any entity individually"


I wish I had sat in class G8, where there was a presentation on "Goodbye to Google Wave". Something that has puzzled me recently, how something so brilliant could be ignored by the whole world, simply brushed aside. I would think that in this virtual age, something that could revolutionize email, would have spread like wild fire in the cyber world. I was quick to ride the wave when I first found out about it (Wow, finally time for a change in the way we do email, I thought) only to have the wave die out on me. I never really used my account at all, simply because no one else was signing up on Google Wave! I was not surprised when I heard the news of its closure. This is a classic example of how a concept with excellent technology validation, could not realize its market potential, without the proper business strategies. Or is this what we have been discussing about in previous lessons- People were simply to comfortable using their current email accounts that there was no need to enter the painful, yet necessary, process of change. The resistance to change of the people over-ruled the brilliance of the technology. 


I'll end of with a small extract from my all-time favourite movies, V for Vendetta.
"We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them." - Evey Hammond, in V for Vendetta


Class rating: 8

Technology, Society & Global Dominance

He who rules the media writes history. A disturbing thought but a sound argument. Is history what I read in textbooks, in the newspapers, in published journals, what I watch on television? Or are they printed lies disguising atrocities hard to swallow. Have I been "euro-centralised" without even knowing it? Was the education system that I grew up in modeled after western structures, causing me to undermine critical facts of history and make non-substaintial assumptions about the positive consequence of colonial rule?


These were the questions that surfaced in my mind upon reading Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's article on the Colonial Holocaust and its legacy. It opened my eyes to a new point of view, a non "eurocentric" point of view. It made me ponder on the fact that the comfortable life I am living now could be a product of this "legacy". I never knew the story of Christopher Columbus well, other than the fact that he was a national hero. America has been taught to celebrate Columbus day, a representation their freedom and their progress, which makes you wonder how much the media has blinded them to the truth, for how could something achieved through genocide and the brutal slaughter of our own human race be something worth celebrating? This is the cruel state of our world; we celebrate marginalization, we celebrate inequality, we celebrate the elites. Have we really progressed when 80% of the worlds wealth is being consumed by the richest fifth of the population? 


An interesting fact in the article that I was not aware of initially was that prior to colonization, much of the continents that eventually became victims to western conquest, were advancing economically and politically. They were doing fine on their own. There are many claims that the global dominance of the British and Americans was what brought many countries out of poverty and stagnation, however what they did was to replace a country's idea of development with their own idea of development, out of self-serving political interests and their thirst for power and material wealth.


I am careful not to overlook the benefits that have come with colonization and I don't want to appear ungrateful. The university I study in, is a product of the American system. The estate I live in, was beautified by the British during Colonial rule. The article has just broadened my perspective to what could have been. We will never know what our world would be like at present without Colonial influence. I was glad that Clement in his presentation argued against the notion that unipolarity is a bad thing, offering us a perspective from the flip side of the coin. The illustration of the double-edged sword arises again. There are those who gained from it, however there are also those who suffered and are suffering immensely because of it. There certainly lies a problem, question is, are the people who benefited going to do something to solve the problem?




So here we are today, and we can go on complaining about the injustice brought about by the hands of blood-thirsty and power-hungry man. I am not condoning the immorality of the Colonial troops on the indigenous people in the many native lands that were invaded. My heart goes out to the countless lives that could have stood for so much more but were wiped out by the greed and selfishness of their fellow man. As quoted in the article:“There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than other savages.” However, the stories of the past should only serve to spur us on in the fight for a better future. Applying here my favourite quote by Mahatma Gandhi: BE the change you want to see in this world! 

It was brought up in the class discussion by one of the students that our world would be a better place if countries were to stop pressing for their own economic goals. I would definitely agree with her. However, I would use the word self-serving goals instead of economic goals. Economics, is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. Economics should be the solution to marginalisation and not the course of it. Is our resources being distributed to the people who really need them? Or is quest for excess bringing our world down in flames? There is enough freshwater and food to feed the planet, so where are the economists when we need them? Probably striving for a better pay cheque. 

We're all guilty of this crime.

Class rating: 9

The Rise of Civilizations

Brief Overview

"Who moved my cheese?" is a book about how we deal with change in our lives.  The "Cheese" represents everything we strive for in life. In this book, four mouse-like characters are scurrying through a maze to find their "cheese". The maze represents the place we are in, be it the living community, school, or whichever organization we belong to. At the end of the story, some characters are more successful in adapting to change and thus finds the cheese they are looking for.

Change is inevitable. And our fast-evolving world is like a maze. It is how we cope with change that determines whether we grow or remain stagnant. This is why some societies flourish while others lag behind. Technology is available, but are the people embracing it?

Observations & Takeaways
"Technology is easy, people are hard" this was the phrase that provided the backbone to our first TWC class. I saw this first hand when I visited Sri Lanka a month ago. There I saw slums, I saw beautiful building structures, I saw slums built around beautiful building structures. Why is no one cleaning up the streets? I met the people there who made bricks for a living, not even knowing what a cement mixer looked like. Yet I also met bankers, fluent in English, who added us on Facebook a mere 10 minutes after we met. In the 1960s, Singapore used to model after Sri Lanka, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, but ever since the country was wrecked by civil war, the country took a huge step backwards, allowing Singapore to advance beyond it by leaps and bounds. The country, its people so full of innovation and highly-skilled in craftsmanship, went from a leader of change to a victim of change.

That leads me to an observation. Something in common about the societies throughout history that thrived on change was the presence of a strong & visionary leader. For the Romans, there was Caesar, for the Egyptians, there was Pharaoh and of course for Singapore, there was Lee Kuan Yew. In the video we watched 'Guns, germs & steel', three factors of change was brought up when looking at societies like the Roman and Egyptian empires;

1. Advance in Technology
2. A Large Population
3. An Organized Workforce

All these 3 factors needed to be glued together by leader. A leader that sees beyond the horizons of practicality, yet is able to manage an organize his plans to the minor detail. Yes, innovation needs to be systematized too. One of the qualities often describing a good leader is that he is a catalyst for change. History tells us that societies grew because they had a leader that was a driver of world change, and who was not afraid to ride the wave of technology. This is one of the answers I would give to the burning question asked by the Papa New Guineans repeatedly in the video "Why you white people have so much cargo, and we don't?"

However, we might have noticed by now, that Singapore has done without one of these factors- A large population. This shows how technology has become so advanced in the recent century that it has eased the burden of manpower, creating substitutes for human labour. A man needs to do less, to achieve more.  This brought us to our next heated argument:        


Is technology a hazard to human health? Is this cyber age, where the world is at a man's fingertips, causing the degradation of the human body?

It is true, as generations pass, that the body is less hardy than what it used to be. This is evident in our military, where the training has gotten much easier physically as the years go by, yet the number of health problems and even deaths due to training are ever rising. Too much TV and video games? A cruel consequence of technological advancement in multimedia? Yet this is only the flip side of the coin. Technology has also made exercising (not only eating) more efficient. A person who makes the effort to take care of his body, has the supplements and equipment more available now then in the past to do so effectively. A modern day swimmer can swim at speeds faster than anyone that came before. World records are being shattered over and over again. Training techniques involving technology has made that possible. Sports shoes are being manufactured that are lighter, quicker, and better for the feet.

Choices. Choices determine destiny, not technology. And change and improvement is simply a consequence of that choice. Should we then resign to our fat, I mean fate? No. We can do something about it. Right now, it is easier to buy a burger from McDonalds, rather than cook a healthier meal at home. Therefore, what we need to do is to make these better options more available and accessible.  The gym should be easier to get to then the LAN gaming shop. Health products at present are being priced so high, it makes being unhealthy more cost efficient. If we don't do something about it now, we're in danger of decreasing our average life expectancy to even smaller digits.

Issue for further discussion
We use technology to maximize our time, to increase our efficiency, so that we can achieve more in a day and by getting our hands less dirty. But what good does it do us if it is killing us faster? Making life shorter, thus decreasing the time we have? The irony of it all.

Class Rating: 9