This whole idea just struck me as I was searching for the book, Stuff, The hidden lives of everyday Things. Then I found, Cradle to Cradle, a book by William McDonough, whose presentation about his development of 12 green cities in China was... simply... jaw-dropping. Then I found, Worldchanging: The User's guide to the 21st century.
Today, we are witnessing the intersection of politics, social technologies, and the environment. I believe that we are entering into another Enlightenment more enlightened than the previous one. I think today, we are in the Green Enlightenment. Our era will be defined by how we were able to tap on all of our technologies to solve issues of sustainability. Because I think, even the issue of climate change pales in comparison to the isse of sustainability. What must we do in order to survive this century and the next? Climate change is only part of the problem - there is this entire disaster that stems from our immense consumption of the resources of the planet...
I'm not Thomas Friedman, so I can't fly around the world asking for the opinion of TEDsters and other movers and shakers of the world. I do not believe that all these problems are too big to solve - it is rather, that the size of the problem should make us want to solve it even more. All the more we have to take this problem to the global level.
Just maybe, this is what our generation will have to do...
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
an epiphany 23rd jan
Sunday, 20 January 2008
after watching too many ted videos...
My 'TED' wish, is to set up a TED community in NUS. This community will come together to share ideas, about the things they are passionate about, and it'll be held like every month or so at some lecture theatre there. This thing will be entirely voluntary, the most difficult thing is to publicise this thing.
Anyway, here's something else - its slightly bigger and many more times more ambitious. My second 'TED' wish is to transform Singapore into a leading edge global city that does not merely want to catch up to other cities, but carve a place for itself in the world. Get what I mean? Its going to be about technological literacy, getting more tech companies to set up centres here, not just for marketing, but for research and all.
Here are some ideas - consolidate our education system - education should be more dynamic, not only restricted to schools, and teachers should not be limited to the classroom. Give our teachers more space to do their work. Who joins the teaching profession to do things other than teach? Schools should be seen as a public good. We should revise our ranking systems - seems to commercialise schools. Ranking system has become counter-productive. Schools emphasize ranking over the education of their students - which sucks for our kids. What we need may only be some indicators of areas schools are good at.
If the children of a village in Peru can all have laptops, why can't we do the same? OLPC!
Implement the open-source learning for teachers (from TED).
We cannot just mouth words like 'innovation' and 'creative'. Watching TED videos have seriously revitalised my belief in the power of innovate and create. but in order to do either, we must first open up ourselves to possibilities. I believe Singapore can be a cutting edge city. Do others believe? The world will move faster and faster....