Scribbles For NCT

After presenting about the future of learning, i have received some very interesting feedback from my peers.

I came to realise that the education system of which Singapore is currently under is rather ineffective when it comes to really stretching a student’s potential to its maximum. Our education system wants us to deliver, not question. Students nowadays tends to take things just as it is, without having the thirst for more knowledge and to ask questions.

This is rather saddening. Considering that the next generation are the ones that are going to be running the our world. What good would it do to have 100 people, all equipped with the same knowledge, all able to do the same thing, but all lack the desire to do something beyond it, to aspire, to dream?

While i agree that the basic foundations, such as elementary mathematics, english, mother tongue and sciences are essential, they shouldn’t be the prime of education. Students should have the freedom to choose what they want to learn. With that freedom of choice, they can then find what they are really passionate in and eventually excel in their field of study.

Think about it, how much of the thing you’ve learnt in your primary and secondary school days are actually retained? How much of those are actually being used? This marks my point, that we are basically studying just for the sake of it. We study not because we thirst for knowledge, but simply cause it is what is expected of us, what we have to deliver. Good grades, a university certificate and a mediocre future. How depressing.

With such rapid advancement in technology, the future of learning is already being redefined. We are no longer robots, trained to be working in factories. Hence, the freedom to choose should also advance with technology as well. We should be able to make good use of technology to further push forth the traditional methods, ideologies and really groom a new generation of scholars that are passionate, driven and well-equipped with the right skills for their choice of studies.

Technology brought along convenience and interactivity. Studying is no longer strictly based on textbooks. Instead, for a change, we have interactive communications that aids not only in learning, but also as a way for us to communicate with our peers.

Teachers are still needed, not as someone to spoon feed information, but someone to guide students along the way. Students should make good use of whatever technologies there are to pave their own way when it comes to what they want to learn. 

I look forward to the future of learning. The new atmosphere, new ideologies, new batch of driven young people and a brand new world. 

After watching this particular film, I must say that i’m more than amazed, to the point that i felt a little disturbed.

If that’s how the future would be like, sure, things would be way more organized, way more personalised and everything can be settled much more efficiently and effectively. 

However, all these comes with at a price. We would be trading up our privacy for convenience. Now the question is, will it be worth it?

Present day, with social networking sites like ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’, every single place that you’ve been to, every single thing you do and basically almost everything about you is being exposed, regardless if you want it or not. One moment, you’re our watching movies with your friends, at the next, some other friend texts you to ask ‘Why didn’t you ask me along??’. You’d be surprised at first, until you realized one of your friends actually ‘tweeted’ something like ‘Watching Minority report now with xxx, xxx and xxx. Can’t wait!’.

Isn’t it a little disturbing to have your every movement monitored and made known to basically everyone online?

Everything you post, every word you type, everywhere you went, there’d be records somehow. Be it a status update, a tweet or tagged photos. I bet your facebook account knows more about what you’ve been up to nowadays than your parents. All of these are made even more ‘convenient’ with the help of smartphones. Take a walk down the streets and you’d see that in 10 people, at least 8 of them are using smartphones. Posting on ‘Facebook’ walls or tweeting is made so much easier than making a call to your mum to inform her that you’d be watching a movie with some friends.

In the movie, what fascinates me most would be the futuristic advertising tactics. Everything is so personalised and it makes it seems like as if the virtual sales promoter really acknowledges that you had a bad day and would probably need a beer (etc.). Such effective advertising would prove to be VERY convincing indeed.

Iris recognition would be one of the cleverest invention ever in my opinion. This really takes personalisation to a whole new level. It’s impossible to have two people with the same type of iris. Thus, everything would really be authentically ‘You’ in a way. So gone will be the days of having to crack your brains for suitable and strong passwords. Why the need, if you’re able to safeguard everything with your iris, which is the strongest ‘password’ that can ever be forged, recreated etc.

However, something that i really frowned upon in the film would be the use of ‘Pre-Cogs’ and the development of a ‘Pre-Crime’ sector in the police force. Sure, it managed to keep the city free of crime for years but then again, looking at it from another point of view, these people are judged and punished way before they did anything. You may say that prevention is better than cure, however, who are you to be given the right to just decide the fate of another human being without giving him or her a chance to change things. 

This brings down to one point, the existence of the minority report means that nothing is ever certain. Thus this system is doomed to fail right from the very start. Foolishly abiding to it would be the biggest crime in my opinion.

Also, there’s something that we are missing out on. Technology and machines cannot be infallible. At the end of the day, humans created and urged the advancement in technology. If humans, who are prone and bound to err, created a something, it means that that particular creation would have moments whereby it would malfunction too. 

Thus, i strongly believe that no matter how advanced technology is, it will never be infallible. Nothing is ever certain. I believe that technology will never stop advancing and that in the near future, there’d be shocking and amazing breakthroughs in this sector. However, there won’t be perfection. 

Humans are the epitome of imperfection.

Okay hi, this is actually created for one of my modules- New Communications Technology. 

So yeah, bear with my nonsense and random scribbles about technology and what not… 

:)