Week 11 (Session 10)

Technology Assessment and Forecasting; Developing a Framework for Understanding What Come Next

This.is.it. The final session of because the next week will be presentations for the group project and also the day that I did my individual presentation. I didn't have a chance to choose the topic that I had to do and was just left with this week. To be honest, I felt that this week's topic was the most difficult as it was quite abstract and there wasn't any particular technology that you can link to it. When I first started out preparing for my presentation, I didn't know where to start at all. All I could think of is - If it happens, it happens. Why would we need a framework to understand what comes next? Don't inventors just invent things when the light bulb simply lights up?

However, after looking through the readings and after the lesson itself, I could understand things more. Technology don't just appear simply like this. Because the world is so vast and technology is appearing everywhere at every minute. Why do we need a framework then?

Here are some of the reasons (taken from the slides)

• The need to gain an understanding of what kinds of changes a new technology innovation might bring – in economic, social, ethical/legal, environmental and other terms.
• The need to prioritize in deciding whether and when to invest in research and development of new innovations and technologies
• The need to prioritize, given limited resources, on whether and when to implement and use new innovations and technologies – especially important in developing countries

In the world today, we have various issues to address: Scarce Natural Resource, Mobility, Healthcare and Infrastructure. How then, do we use the current resources we have to address the issues? Which one is most important? Of course, this would differ from every part of the world. What will be the possible impacts of future technology? How will it affect social, ethical, legal and environment?

The thing that made me interested is the "framework" that prof talked about.
You essentially get an advantage if you work back from the future instead of project from the present.
• You cannot run away from the past and present
• Start with the blank sheet
• What would you want the world to look in the 5 years time (without any constraints)
• Then you bring out the sheet of paper in the past. How are you going to move from the past/present to the future?
• Convert stumbling blocks and convert them into stepping stones
• The future forward you look, the more uncertain you are

Indeed, we are all uncertain of the future. Who will be the ones deciding our future?

My presentation was actually about "Kids for the future". After all, it will be the kids now that will decide what will happen in the future. Kids nowadays live in a very different from us, even more so as compared to our parents and grandparents. For example, I recently saw a toddler (maybe about 2 years old) playing with an iPhone and she actually know how to use it! I was actually quite appalled by it because at 2 years old, I think many of us were still playing with alphabet blocks. It is amazing to see how technology is affecting our way of live. Of course, this may not be a bad thing because if we were to deny technology, then we will be at the losing end. So what we could do it actually to embrace it and make the best out of it. Even though children are highly dependent on technology and it could have negative impacts, but think about the positive impacts that it could possibly bring as well!

Many think that with more children spending more time on their computers and video games, they would not learn any social skills. However, with the advent of social media, more children have Facebook accounts. Even though it is mainly used to play games, but this would connect them socially to their friends as well as they could talk and share about their experience while playing the games. Also, more games these days are multi-player, children can also get a chance to interact with others. The thing to note is that when allowing children use the internet, parents must be especially careful because the internet is very hard to censor and it may expose children to different things that may spoil their innocence of even be dangerous for them.

Rating for lesson: 10/10

Week 10 (Session 9) - Emerging & Future Technologies

Emerging & Future Technologies

Which question will you ask: "Why" Or, "Why Not?"

Someone with the rising star mindset will think "Why Not?". Think, how can I change things around instead of asking "Why" things happen and look back to the past instead of looking into the future.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

- Albert Einstein

There is a need for both types of people in the world. People who knows a lot (knowledge) and people who can think out of the box. With both types of people working together, only the can we have success. The question is: How many of each? Will the people who knows a lot have conflicting knowledge or will people with the ideas have conflicting ideas? Of course, this is in human nature to be different, yet similar in many ways. The way to get this thing through if people can be more receptive to other ideas. This is how new technologies come about.

The drivers of technology are discussed again. The main focus being the unmet market opportunity and need.

There are two ways that technology can be "created'. One that already has a market demand, and another that creates the demand for it. Usually, the technology driven industry is the one which needs a market. However, what is safer is trying to respond to the needs of the market rather than seeing what the market doesn't see. Supply creates demand.

What about the 4 "smarts"? Smart people, ideas, money, alliances and partnership. Yes, these are all important. But are we focusing on them too much that we ignore the "dumb" people as well? Well, beauty smartness is in the eye of the beholder. Guess it really depends on what is defined as 'smart'.

With all these drivers working together, it would bring future technology to a greater height.

If you can imagine it, it can happen.

Who came up with teleportation? Did the technology exist then to allow him to think of it? NO!

However, we can see that there are many studies today that is exploring the possibility of teleportation. Similar to many of the other interesting things that we see in science fiction movies (I'm not exactly a great fan of it. I haven't even watch Star Wars)

Longing + Imagination = Attainment

The video of the female robot reminds me of a particular japanese drama serial where a male robot and a female human falls in love, etc. so as the same as all other robot-related romance movies, except that this one is in real life. IT MAY ACTUALLY HAPPEN. But what about the emotions part of it? Well, it can easily be stimulated/programmed in the future. Who knows? Maybe combining it the biological advancements, you can even put a cloned human brain in the robot so it works exactly like how a human does even with emotions.

Some perspective that people have is that machines can never be smarter than humans. This was what I thought in the past, but after what prof said. Machines can actually be smarter than human especially if it is programmed to be that way, to be self-learning. After all, the machine can have 'access' to the whole internet database. eg. IBM

What about machines/Robots taking over human jo

bs? How do they earn income then? Does the traditional method (you work, you get paid), still work? No country has yet solved this problem. Maybe one possible way to solve this, as said by prof, is that everyone has a minimum sufficient amount to make sure that they survive. And to earn more money, you will need to do higher value added jobs.

What if, machines actually take over the human race like in "Terminator"?

Could that really happen? If so, what would humans do to prevent it from happening? These are questions to think about because the future of technology is so vast and unpredictable. Anything is possible.

Rating for lesson: 9/10

Week 9 (Session 8)

Energy and World Change

Key drivers of the Global Energy Change are the rising energy consumption and the need for economic development, the need to sustainability, and new technology and approaches.

Looking at Energy and World Change, it is essential to look at the 2 different 'parts' of the world. The developed, and the under developed. For the developed countries, unless we are willing to change our habits, we are not able to save the place which we are living in. As for the under developed, how can they make use of Energy in the most efficient way?

E=MC2
The equation of energy where it is equals to the mass of an object, multiply by the square of the speed of light (3 x 108)

That is actually a very large amount. Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted, and almost everything on Earth as a mass so does this mean that every object can create energy for itself? Not quite.

Looking at the slides, it was said that "The Sun provides more every to the Earth than to humankind currently uses in an entire year This shows that here IS enough energy. But how are we going to use the energy from the Sun, or anywhere else for that matter of fact to our advantage?

Week 7

The Biobusiness revolution 2

Agriculture and the Environment: Past, Present, Future

Can we grow what we need? That was the very first question asked at the start of the class. Or to be more specific "when we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability”.

At many parts of the lesson, a point has been brought up quite often. If everyone on this globe lives and consumes like an American, we will need 3-5 earths to fulfill the wants of close to 7 billion people. We have been told time and time again that our resources are running out and we need to find alternative methods of meeting our needs. Ta-daa! Here comes the bio-business to save the day. But does it really save the day?

Yes, because it offers us alternatives instead of the old fashioned, traditional way of using food (ie. just for eating). Food can now be even be converted into Energy which will be discussed more in the next topic.

No, because think about how much the bio-business has affected the world. These talks about biofuels, bioplastics, etc. does help in a way or another, but it has also brought out many issues which can be quite controversial. What about what goes into our food? No doubt that technology has been used to enhance not only the quantity, but also the quality of our food, but these two do not work toge

ther. To get more, quality will be comprised, vice-versa. Some people can be too caught up with watching what food they eat. To me, as long as you are eating healthy (i.e. 2 servings of fruits and veg a day and plenty of water), it should not really matter where or rather how the food is produced. Of course, saying this is easy, but after you know how the food you have been eating is produced, you may think twice about eating them in the future. In conclusion, eat happy, die happy.

So how do we ensure food security?

Food Security - A condition where all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO).

People in developed countries have so much food that they are become obese but in developing countries, people are starving to death. So, this is not the matter of having not enough because as what Mahatma Gandhi said “There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.” It is more the issue of distribution that matters.

Rating: 6/10.

The session actually talks more about bioTECHNOLOGY itself instead of linking it specifically to agriculture and environment.