Concluding Thoughts

With the end of our last TWC lesson, I find myself pondering Yali's question: "Why do the white men have so much cargo and the New Guineans have so little?" Jared Diamond, in his book summarised that Europeans' geographical location close to the fertile crescent enabled them to master agriculture and livestock, freeing them time develop technology much quickly (inadvertently contracting diseases from those livestock as well). However, I would also post an alternative answer, that is, Europeans living in temperate climates had to survive winters where food was hard to come by, and therefore had to master the agricultural technology to efficiently stockpile enough food surplus. Not only that, they probably had to develop the technology to effectively transport people and goods from one place to another. Also, following an evolutionary train of thought, the presence of winter meant that it was "Survival of the Smartest" as well, since it is possible that only communities of people in the temperate region were able to master the technology were able to survive and carry on their genes and technology to successive generations.

While most of us start learning about human history from the agricultural revolution, such the Indus Valley Civilisation and Mesopotamia, we should not forget about the Hunter-Gatherer society, which has far preceded the agricultural revolution. Jared Diamond recently published another book which I recommend, titled: "The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?", aptly named, since really most of human history existed before agriculture came about.

Diamond, J. (2012, December 31). The world until yesterday: What can we learn from traditional societies? [Print Graphic]. Retrieved from http://jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/The_World_Until_Yesterday.html

He highlights the things that we can learn from these traditional societies that many of us probably would usually ignore or even be oblivious to.

Eye Ubiquitous. (Photographer). (2012, December 31). Image from The World Until Yesterday [Print Photo]. Retrieved from http://jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/The_World_Until_Yesterday_files/Plate 15.jpg

The course was one of the more interesting courses of the semester, due to my interest in areas such as History and Technology, especially in Social Media and the Internet. This was particularly the reason why I focused my Individual Topical Review Paper on Social Media.  I felt that Professor Gurinder took advantage of social media to allow us as students not only to learn from him but to learn from one another through the course. This is really unique from my other courses in my formal education so far and I was honestly quite impressed by it, We are able to read from our peers' blogs as well as join in active discussions on Facebook, a format which we are already all too familiar with. Given the chance to write my first Academic Paper in this course was beneficial in allowing me to learn the proper writing style and especially citation methods, which would be a skill that I can put to use in my academic journey.

Social media and history aside, we went into detail into technology in industries and spheres of society that I was not even aware was so revolutionary, such as green technology, biomedical sciences and healthcare. He taught us a useful model which I still remember: The Shahi Organisational Behavioural Model for Identifying Innovation Leaders and Dominant Players, where the Rising Star, Dominant Player and Falling Star illustration can even be used from an individual scale to countries in general. I believe that to be one of the most important takeaway messages from the whole course in general such that I should look at receptiveness to innovation and new ideas with a positive mindset.

Regarding issues that I wished we could have discussed further, I wished we had the time to go into the specifics of some of the pre-agricultural revolutionary technology that allowed humans to survive as a hunter-gatherer species for such a long time. I would rate the course an overall 9, and I would like to thank Professor Gurinder for his efforts in guiding us through, our teaching assistant, Victor for taking the time to look through our papers and offer his suggestions, and my Project Group 6: Cedric, Michael, Alister and Hui Qi for their hard work and interesting ideas and sessions we had together to build a website on a topic as interesting and unique as Transhumanism.