WEEK 5 - ICT AND WORLD CHANGE

The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.

The fifth TWC session focuses on Information and Communication Technology and World Change. To be honest, I hadn't really grasp the concept of ICT before I went to class. All I knew was that ICT could be a system to manage communication and information and I did have a vague idea that the internet is a big part of ICT so the class was going to be rather exciting.

Our discussion of ICT and world change touched on the areas where information and communication technologies have made an impact. For example, advancing information and communication technologies have changed mass media. Mass media is no longer in a one way communication format where audience are unable to respond or interact to what is being fed to them. In fact, audiences' responses have become key. This is also evident in the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and  now, we have Web 3.0 and according to our Prof, the Web 3.0 is a super all knowing brain.

The important point to note that ICT is part of our daily existence whether we know it or not. Apparently, most of us didn't know we were using Cloud Computing until Prof pointed it out to us. ICT has shaped and changed the way we communicate and disseminate information. In fact, today, content is very often being generated by users and peer reviewed. Our discussion also led to the question whether we have truly captured the potential of ICT? However, millions are still unable to benefit from ICT due to lack of funds and infrastructure and opportunities.

I felt that the oral presentations given by my classmates really helped to bring points of ICT and world change home. I particularly enjoy the presentation on advertising. There is an evident shift in advertising patterns as a result of internet and more so with semantic web. Yuhong reminded us that we must not focus only focus on what's in now, but also, what's in later!

I liked Ivan's presentation on new agencies and how we shouldn't accept news at face value. Although I think news are generally facts but how the news is presented can create biasness in our minds, just like what the Prof said about the different opinions of the same thing presented by 'opposing' newspapers - New York Times and Washington Post.

I would rate the session 7.5/10. I think I still need to do more reading on ICT in application to fully appreciate how ICT can help to achieve millennium goals. I look forward to the next class!