Science and Technology: Empower Or Enslave Us?

GP Video and Articles

The State of Technology

Overview of Video

This video gives a comprehensive and accurate depiction of our technologically advanced society. It covers adequately a scope of the discussion such as the features and impacts of technology without focusing narrowly on just one aspect.

The video starts off with a man in a sea of pollution. It alludes the impacts of excessive consumerism of electronic gadgets which generate huge amounts of wastage. Also, many features of technology such as smartwatches and drones were shown. 

Then he is transported into a city life. Here we see driverless cars on the street. Humans are wearing smart glasses and walking like zombies on the streets. As the man continues walking down the street, we can see people utilizing new technology such as cloning, 3D printing and even plastic surgery.

Overall, this video may contain much more information that was not picked out. Feel free to make your own interpretations! 

GP Tutor's View

I felt that this video gives a unique presentation and takes on the issue of technology. Its visual depiction of daily life without voiceover allows the viewers to make their own interpretations and opinions. I love that it blends in the features of technology and its possible impacts on our behaviour and actions. 

 

Here are my two unique interpretation of events shown in the short video:

As the man was walking down the street, he was almost hit by the driverless car. This got me thinking of its possible ethical implications. In the event of the accident, who is to be held accountable? Would it be the technological company that invented the car or the driver on the front wheel? If the driver had no autonomy on the steering wheel, would it be fair and just for the technological companies or even the software engineers to be charged for the offence? I think that such situations are complex and would require the creation of new code of laws and legislative framework to decide on the relevant punishment. 

When the man donated some money to Santa Claus, it made me wonder why this meant. Then we are transported to Santa Claus’ workshop, which seems like a flailing business. Perhaps youths nowadays are engrossed in their technology and virtual world such that they abandon traditional and meaningful activities. They no longer love to write letters to Santa Claus and this puts Santa Claus out of “job”. I think this depicts a much bigger problem. Youths and teenagers are so engrossed in media and technological use such that they abandon other meaningful aspects of life. The usage time has led them to abandon other activities that enriches their lives in diverse ways too.

Open-ended Question

People in the workplace should fear rather than embrace technological advancements. Do you agree?

Share with us if you agree or disagree? We appreciate that you can provide us at least two points on this issue.

If you are interested in getting our view on this issue and get notified when there are new issues, please provide us your information after you submit your opinions. Thank you.

GP Class Activities

News Articles

Overview:

In our GP tuition, news articles would be provided to build up the current affairs knowledge of students. Students would be connected to real issues and learn to utilise these informative gems for their essay writing.

 

Classwork:

We will be making discussion on the following articles during our GP tuition classroom or online. The articles are as follow:


The future of mental healthcare is digital | Straits Times

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/electric-dreams-the-future-of-mental-healthcare-is-digital

Exploring remote work, digitalisation in legal sector amidst COVID-19 | Singapore Business Review

https://sbr.com.sg/professional-serviceslegal/news/exploring-remote-work-digitalisation-in-legal-sector-amidst-covid-19

 


Write a paragraph on how poverty surface in developed countries.

Flipside Notes

Overview:

What’s about Flipside? For these structured notes, questions about the issue would be brainstormed and various perspectives on the issue would be provided. These notes are crafted in a manner so that students can identify the determining factors of perspectives which would help them in their essay development.

 

Classwork:

Notes:

  1. Impacts of Science and Technology

    • Ethical

    • Social

    • Individual

    • Educational

    • Environment

    • Religion

    • Economical

    • Political

Essay Outline + Model Essay

Overview:

In our GP tuition, we are going through essay writing skills on how to create the structure for the following questions. Students need to understand how they can derive the key areas of writing and examples to apply in the context of this question. 

 

Classwork:

Essays:

  1. To what extent does Science and Technology make us less human?
  2. Too much responsibility is placed on Science and Technology to fulfil the hopes of modern society. Discuss.
Compre SAQ/ Summary/AQ

Overview:

In this part of the gp tuition, students attempt the comprehension and understand the requirements of the various types of question. Students are also taught on how to read, extract and express the answer to fulfill the requirements of the different type of the questions

 

Classwork:

Comprehension SAQ: Smart Cities and their Insidous Effect

Skill Development

Overview:

This part of the lesson is to develop and upgrade the various essay writing skills and comprehension answering techniques.

 

Class work:

Learning Content: