Session 9: Emerging tech (fave lesson thus far)

“There is a space between man’s imagination and man’s attainment that may be transversed by his longing.”

-       Kahlil Gibran

Brief summary:

1.            We explored the various aspects of emerging technology like nanotechnology, computer-based simulation technologies and so on. We recapped that technology is either market-driven or technology-driven, and established that innovation has two parts: the invention and the bringing of the idea to the market place.
2.         What are the possibilities for emerging technology? Whether an idea gets implemented or not depends if there are these 4 Smarts in place: 

o   Smart people- creativity, hands- on approach in wanting to apply idea to market

o   Smart ideas – Need to create conducive environment for ideas to bounce about.

o   Smart money  - You can’t drive things forward without $$. Coming from either governments or investors.

o   Smart alliances & partnerships – Marketing & advertizing/legal people (for patents). If you want to take it global, make sure you have distributors and contacts.

Interesting observations & ideas:

- ‘The perfect woman’.

•          There is an ongoing project to make an artificial woman who can give you a hydraulic massage, cook a meal. Inventors said that there are millions of lonely guys around the world, thus there will definitely be a need for it. Yes, I guess it’s true that there are more and more lonely people on this world especially with increasing hectic lifestyles. Perhaps this will fill a great need for efficiency, including efficiency in finding the perfect partner and getting one’s needs fulfilled by the relationship. Will a perfect partner be the answer to this? I shall write a separate post about this later because I REALLY FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT THIS! Haha.

 

- Augmented Reality

• Where reality is richer and more interesting. This is a very exciting technology as it has many applications in different fields. Would really like to have the application on my mobile phone, as it makes thing so much more convenient. Especially useful in today’s busy times when we don’t have time to seek out information actively; such a technology will present information to you when needed.
• The emergence of this will increase the need of companies to keep up with technology, perhaps to monitor their reputation online. What about those that are lagging behind? This also opens the commercial world to sabotage and criticism; one can no longer have such a tight grip over corporate image, as the main platform for this is now consumer-based.

Pornography as a driver of technology.

• How technology has progressed very quickly in areas with these applications. As Brennan pointed out, we have YouTube because of porn. The same goes for other advancements in 3D technology and artificial beings. I find this quite funny but true. This is an example of market-driven technology, where there is a true human need. And this need is never-ending. Besides, there is no such thing as a monopoly in this field as variety is perhaps celebrated. (haha)

Key takeaways:

1. I found it interesting how today’s discussions became closer to the heart, or the essence of being human. Perhaps this is symbolic of how technology has progressed: from meeting the basic needs like food and water (in previous weeks) to more intermediate uses like mass media and communications, to emerging fields such as even having artificial partners. It is similar to the triangle of human needs (Maslow's hierarchy of human needs):

1. Reinforcing the concepts learnt from previous weeks, the need for understanding the market before implementing the technology.
2.  The theme of technology being a very powerful tool, yet one that is potentially dangerous and controversial at the same time. Thus the need for good regulation and receptive minds (or do we really want to receive it? This depends on what we stand for in life.)

Issues for further discussion:

-       1. How can we change mindsets to accept radical kinds of technology? Or do we even need to try? (if it is a matter of time.) Perhaps we could do a case-study on any past controversial technology, and see how this psychological barrier was overcome.

-       2. As we go up the ‘human needs’ triangle, what about technology & religion? Is there any way that these two traditionally contradicting fields can converge? Human-created things vs God-created things.

My ratings for this lesson

9.8/10. Very interesting & loved the topic. The possibilities are infinite! Wonder what life is going to be like in 5 years time. But I will certainly NOT love a robot. Minus 0.2 points because it ended late and I ended up being late for my next class!