Week 2 - Global Dominance & Human Development

Brief Overview

Global Dominance - When I hear about Global Dominance, one thing that I used to thought of is colonization. But after the lecture I understand that it's not only about colonization, global dominance is more than that. For example, Korea Pop as we normally know as K-Pop, its music, style and dance have a significant influence in Asia. Almost all Asian countries are 'invaded' by K-Pop, they adopt K-Pop into their music, dance and fashion. The lecture also introduced me with an interesting concept of Raising star-Dominant Player-Falling Star. So to be a Dominant Player, first we need to be the raising star, in which we stay innovative, creative and openminded. But once we are the dominant player, we must stay openminded, don't fall to the common mistake that most of the dominant player did, which is being arrogant and thus not open to any idea or opinion, because this attitude will lead to the next phase which is Falling Star, in which we are basically not open to any input, opinion and idea.

Millennium Development Goal - Prof Shahi mention about Millennium Development Goals for this topic. He told us that there are still many unfortunate people out there and how many countries in U.N. get together and try to focus on solving 8 world major problems, which are Poverty and Hunger, Education, Gender Equality, Child Health, Maternal Health, HIV/AIDS, Environmental Sustainability and Global Partnership. However, although technology has advanced rapidly in this few years, however we still yet to achieve the MDG, which was targeted to be achieved in 2015, which is barely 4 years from now. Being optimistic, I hope that MDG can be achieved in 2020, however realistically speaking I doubt the technology could facilitate us yet to achieve that.

Key Takeaways

The concept of Falling star, Dominant player & Rising star stuck in my head for quite some times. This concept really make me think through, because before knowing this, I know that there are companies or organizations that are losing their dominance but I never really understand what make them losing in and what make other companies gaining more and more popularity. And it is this concept that enlighten me, thus this concept is really the key takeaway from the lesson last week.

I would rate last week class 7.5/10. Although the concept introduced by Prof Shahi is insightful for me, the air time used for discussion is sufficient and the presentations are clearly explained, however not much explanation for Technology and Human Development is given last week, thus I am not able to gain much understanding in that topic. So, for future class, it would be great if more explanations are given to the topic.