Session 9 – Emerging and Future technology

This lesson was an interesting one, a perfect penultimate ending to our technology and world change module. I’ve learned so much, and the way how people keep coming up with new inventions constantly amazes me. If you restrict yourself to everything you know, you’ll forever stay in the same circle. Whereas if you let imagination take over, endless possibilities could happen, which is a rising star mentality.

Some interesting emerging inventions showed in the class videos were about:

Electronic plastic – Flexible plastic displays – food packaging, medicine, on clothes, or even contact lenses!

Newspaper – all on a single sheet – can save the environment!

My key takeaways from the lesson are:

1) Supply can sometimes create demand -> You don’t realise what you need until you’ve experience it! I believe this is an important theory in creating new future technology. Do we honestly need an iPhone? Do we really need text messages for that matter? The people  in the 40s-50s probably didn’t rely on text messaging as much as we did, but now it’s a vital part of our life. To me, we have already gone past the brim of creating what we need, most of the inventions now are based on what we want, and simply making our lives either more complicated or making us lazier. To come up with new technology that will be well-received, we ought to create new wants and not focus on what we currently lack or need.

2) Market-driven opportunities

3) Mass media and advertising  – shaping the consumer’s perceptions

4) Creative Technology Company -> Very innovation-drived, but had poor marketing strategies. Marketing builds desire, and requires adequate amount of investment too! Is this characteristic of Spore companies or linked to Spore’s education? Marketing strategies are important because they influence the way how people think of your products.

5) Japanese using robotics to boost economy and labour force instead of bringing in foreigners who don’t understand the Japanese culture. I have never really went to think about why the Japanese excel in creating robots, until Prof mentioned this in class. The Japanese culture is a unique one, and is rather hard to fit in if you come from somewhere like America.

Drawing parallels from this to Singapore, I doubt Singapore will ever stop the influx of foreigners coming in because Singapore’s culture is basically a “chapalang” one, there is no distinct and unique factor that sets us apart. For one, we don’t speak a single language. Most of us speak English, but relate better to Singlish, which is a mix of dialects and different languages. Therefore the market for robotics to combat foreigners in Singapore remains small.

6) How leaders are distinguished from followers. Again, this is a very repeated concept from the start of the module till now. We are constantly drilled to think that we ought to be leaders, but sometimes the education system in Singapore favours the formation the followers rather than leaders, in which we are taught that conformity is best and we are exposed to cook-book learning – there is always a model answer for everything, even compositions where students are supposed to be able to use their creativity. In university however, I appreciate how courses here, especially in my course Business,  is unlike what I’ve done for the past 12 years, and I have no model answer to refer to.

There were 5 presentations:

1) Nanotechnology -> Would you willingly undergo surgery to enhance yourself beyond the limits of being “human”? What about brain implants? Using technology to enhance humans. Eg. Lasik for athletes to see beyond 15m. When do you stop being human? I think that this question is very interesting indeed, but I feel that as technology advances, the moral and ethical standards of human beings fail to advance too. We seem to always achieve new goals like creating holograms which can talk etc, but our understanding of life as it is is stagnant. As the grey area between robots and humans get bigger, I feel that there is a need to clarify this matter. Also, what do these enhancement surgeries have in difference with eating supplement pills for that matter? One could argue that the latter is temporary, but they are both used for the same purposes!

2) Surface computing -> Microsoft Surface

3) Future of airplanes

4) Robotic Technology

5) Augmented Reality -> Gaming

---