3^rd lesson of TWC! First time coming back on a Saturday as well. Went through the issues of sustainability and how to manage technology in a way that is ethically justified as well as beneficial to the user.

One interesting point to note would be the issue of sustainability. This was the topic most hotly debated in class today. The idea of sustainable development is a popular issue among most of the developed countries today, and even in some developing countries. The concept of sustainable development would be to develop the country in such a way that future generations would not be troubled by the lack of resources available, to put it simply. The key debate issue was that if sustainable development is a feasible situation in such a selfish and greedy world as today. One of our classmates presented on the first sustainable city in the world, Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. The city had many features that encourage sustainability, such as a “No Cars Rule” and a waste disposal facility that converts all waste back into usable green energy, among others. Furthermore, the positioning of the city is such that the city would remain cool, along with wind turbines, as the city has a “no air conditioning” rule as well. While the prospect of a fully green city has stirred up lots of interest and praise, I felt that it might be difficult to implement such a project. This project is only feasible due to the large cash reserves of Abu Dhabi. The push to develop such sustainable cities would largely be unlikely in many developing countries today, which also happen to be the countries that are the most heavily polluted.

Professor Singh also introduced a new concept today: The Landscape Model of Technology. 3 key words were introduced in this model: Valley, Summit and Cloud. Technology located at the Valley portion are often those which there is low investment interests, and there are low barriers to entry. Summit portions tend to have greater barriers to entry in investing in innovation, but the returns tend to be large as well. Those in the cloud portion are currently unattainable, yet if breakthroughs are possible, the returns are huge. According to this model, the type of innovation is interchangeable between the 3 categories. This is an interesting observation, as it seems to resemble somewhat the Pyramid Model of the previous lesson.

I feel that the most important takeaway from this lesson would be that sustainable development, while a very attractive prospect, is largely unfeasible currently. The rarity and difficulty in employing green technology has caused the costs of constructing and maintaining a sustainable city to be extremely high. As of the current situation, this would be largely unfeasible for most of the countries, even some developed countries, today. Hence, I feel that the development Masdar City is not necessarily a huge breakthrough in the pursuit for a sustainable city.

Another point I would like to take away would be that innovation should be widely encouraged, especially in a constantly changing world such as ours today. Yet, judging by the rapid pace of developments in technology, we as a society must also be responsible in managing these developments, ensuring that it does not harm the Earth excessively.

I felt that in most aspects, today’s lesson went without much of a hitch. However, the portion of sustainability could have been spent in discussion longer.

I would rate today’s lesson an 8.5/10. Most parts of the lesson was explained in sufficient depth, and we had ample time to discuss on the issues posted by the presentations today.