Comment on "What Will The World Be Like in 50 Years"

Alvin

I've read this discussion in the students online conferences and there were many view points raised in the discussion. What I will be posting would be come comment on some of the points.

Firstly, the Europeans, Canadians, Australians are saying that electricity and oil will be depleted, discussing alternative sources of electricity, while the Indians are blaming the Europeans for the poverty they are suffering now because they said that "Europeans colonized them and took away everything from them and made them barren". Other than that, there are some people who said there will be hovering cars, living on the moon, living under water. Actually, what they are discussing do have a point. Electricity may run out, but it has nothing to do with oil. Hydrogen can be used for cars in future, and there are other sources of electricity like what they say. So why do they worry about these two issues. Moreover, scientists are also doing research for better technology, therefore these two issues will not really pose a problem in 50 years time.

Secondly, there are people who think a nuclear war will break out with the technological advancements, where they think more nuclear weapons will be developed and will be used in warfare. In my opinion, this is quite possible, because countries are one by one being granted use of nuclear, for electricity purposes for now, but i feel their ambitions will grow. Moreover with the current North Korean threat, more countries around them will demand to have nuclear weapons as a form of self defence against North Korea. Although America claims that if N.K even fires one missle, U.S will launch their full force on North Korea. However, can the countries really trust U.S to do the right thing? This is said by Bush. So what if (though likely) Bush gets ousted in the next Presidential election, and a so call Democrat takes over the office, will this assurance still be existent? In addition, there are already countries who sees another country as an eyesore and cannot wait to eliminate them (probably China-Japan?) . Militant groups will also exploit this opportunity to create chaos, worse still if they gain access to nuclear weapons, but because there is North Korea around, countries will still feel threatened until the day Kim Jong Il is gone, and is confirmed that the nuclear weapons are well stored. Once counties gain access to nuclear weapons, there is no telling what they would do, because in the end, the worse will be the total annihilation of both parties.

However, i feel that for them to be thinking of these issues is still not really time yet, because many of those who are supposed to be the "pillars of the future" are still not ready. Those issues they are looking at are big issues, the environmental issues. However, they might have forgotten about the social issues in 50 years time.

Currently, there are probably still alot of youths of our age still wandering around, not knowing what they want in future, and worse still, there are youths on the streets who are the "gangsters", going around behaving rowdily and creating trouble. We have our "Ah Bengs" going around smoking, spitting on the streets, vandalizing and littering. They talk about pollution in the discussion, but this is where some of the pollution came from. They talk about diseases, new and old, curable and uncurable, but these are the potential lung cancer patients. How can we depend on these youths, who are not going on the right path, to change the world into a better place in the next 50 years? Not saying that smoking is bad, but what about the spitting...? Furthermore, smoking contribute some extent to pollution don't they...? There were someone in the forum saying "doing small little things can amount to a big difference in the future". So, these are the small little things that needed some attention, where they did not really paid to...

So my conclusion is, before they even look into big issues, take care of the small yet important ones...

Just my two cents worth...