Down and out

For the first time in months, I came down with fever and a throat infection. My temperature on Monday morning measured at 38.7°C, rendering me unable to attend all the my lessons on this fateful day and the next, as I rested at home and tried to sleep the fever off. Well, it was a little regretful being unable to attend lesson, as I missed out on presentations as well as quite a bit of things. After updating myself by asking around and looking through some of the websites created by my peers, I was able to gain a little insight on what went on during the session.

There were two notable quotes presented in class. One of them was "Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification." by Martin H Fischer. Knowledge is no longer as highly valued as before, due to the abundance of information sources and the increasing ease of attaining access to these sources just about by anyone, at any place, at any time. The information available is also generally quite accurate. True value lies in wisdom. However, I wouldn't say that wisdom is the simplification of knowledge, although it is a part of it. I would term wisdom as the ability to see beyond the piece of information and attaining new meaning through knowledge. It is to be able to reach an epiphany through self-thought and realization. It is sad to see that the students nowadays are laden with knowledge, yet the wise ones are few and far between.

The second quote is "You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.". We have knowledge tucked away at the depths of our brains, thus we know more than we think we do. However, the fact of life is that we will never know everything; it is just impossible. However, we always yearn to attain new knowledge for various reasons, whether it is of use to us, or to give us an edge over others. We should never stop doing that, because if not we will stagnate and the human race would have never grown to the magnitude that we see today. This quote seems to be more motivational than meaningful.

Poking my nose around the websites, the one on land constraints caught my eye. Personally, I am quite affected and empathetic of this constraint scenario. Every day on Orchard Road, or in SMU, or in the MRT train, I feel the effects of this constraint; our population is rising, but we do not have the land to allow us to retain the same population density, and each and every one of us has less and less space. This, coupled with the heat and humidity of Singapore, is making the country an increasingly unpleasant place to live in. I feel that many of the solutions proposed by the group presented a very concise summary of what the world can do to counter the problem of land constraint. It is also quite well structured, giving the viewer a clear idea of what the website plans to achieve. However, I feel that the measures may not be extremely effective; it might come to a point in time where overpopulation and the lack of land will overwhelm the human race. Perhaps the world should look at controlling birth rate and slowly reducing population growth as a possible solution as well. After all, humans are the problem.

Flying cars on the other website provided a fresh and futuristic perspective as compared to the land constraint problem. It is interesting, and we may be driving such cars in the future. However, I am quite skeptical about the idea due to various reasons, such as the danger, regulation problem and overall unfeasibility.

Having missed the lesson, I feel it is inaccurate for me to give a rating on the lesson itself or give insights on what to improve. I think that would come next week, which will be the day of my group's presentation. I would give a rating, nonetheless, on the groups' work and the quotes given.

8/10

A little teaser.. The end is coming.