Thoughts of 'Top Tech Awards'

I know this blog is not a suitable place to post this entry---pure science & technology innovations, barely has anything to do with any of the keywords of the blog. But in such a complex world, full of confusion, uncertainty and stupidity, it is really a pleasure to learn some amazing achievements and breakthrough---the creativity we are presenting and the capacity we are demonstrating make me more willing to believe that we have the potential to create a brighter future.

And thinking about the role of science and technology have been playing, everyone has to admit it is extremely critical. It changes people's view of power, people's lifestyle, structure of society, the way wealth distributed, and therefore has a fundamental impact on how people view and understand themselves and the world.

It is sad that although we have made tremendous progress on science and technology, we as human being, the nature of us haven't change much at all. And so many times, the progress or advance of technology amplifies the dark sides of us, which is getting more and more scary, since we are more and more capable of destroying ourselves in more and more ways.

The limitation of science and technology lays in smaller scales too. For example, with the great possibility of understanding things/people better because of the availability of information, the walls of peopel's minds, built by ignorance, arrogance, self-righteousness and prejudice, still are as solid as before---in so many places, all kinds of hate exist without any changes over hundreds of years; in lots of places, people haven't become open-minded and respectful to other cultures, although they learn international studies, which made me lose my faith in the value of education. Obviously, people is still way too complex to decode for the current level of science and technology, not to mention to change.

But still, among all the other forces which might make us become better human beings, I choose to believe in science and technology. Its beauty is stability and rationality. The equations, diagrams, rules and experiments are the same no matter at what time or to what audience. There is a reason, an explanation behind everything. It captures the rhyme of nature and since nature has been developing for millions of years, it is stable, efficient and rational.

While other fields related to human beings, like financial industry, politics, the issues are too complex to decode to a simple report with equations, supporting data/experiments which everyone could understand and agree on the same conclusion if he/she really want to. Look at middle east, it is a vivid example of how impossible it is for people to agree on something. And the current financial crisis is so scary because nobody could really explain/understand it. These fields determined purely by people are too easy to make mistakes.

And in my opinion, the biggest contribution of science and technology development is in the telecommunication field. Information is power. Through TV, Internet, you will see the rest of the world, learn how other people live their lives and what possibilities out there are attractive to you. You see doors which you don't know exist before, you can decide which door you want to go through and you can get access to the information about how. Not everyone has the willingness to think and care but at least for those who do, they have the power. It’s really beautiful.