TWC last session

The last session of TWC was about technology assessment and forecasting the future.



My Interest Is In The Future Because I'm going to spend most of my life there - Charles Ketttering
This quote explains the need to forecast the future as after all we are going to live through it. It is important to understand the new technology that may be created as it may after all impact our lives. We are then shown a video about a vision of Microsoft for the future. The video shows some ludicrous technology such as interactive newspaper. It was the ending that really struck me. Microsoft claim that it will take about 500 years for the vision to be a reality. Likelihood, 500 years from now, I would not be living in this world and this may not be a cause of concern to me but shockingly, majority of the class felt that it can take place in 20 years time! I would be living in the era of immense technological advancement. The question is are we prepared for it. How can we prepare ourselves for such technology advancement? I think this is why there is a need for technology forecasting

 Tomorrow Belongs To The  People That Prepare It Today - African Proverb


Interestingly enough, the concept of laggards is briefly implied in the quote Look Before, Or You Will Find Yourself Behind - Benjamin Franklin
In  the previous session, laggards is define as those that are unable to embrace technology. Could their inability to forecast technology results in them unable to embrace technology. I suspect so.

 P.s It sucks to be a laggard

Key observation for drivers of forecasting future technology
One key observation is that the drivers of forecasting future technology is mainly derive from a need for something. For example, with the advent of technology, there is a change of global social needs and this drives people to forecast future technology that may impact social needs. Sustainability - one of a session topic - drives people to forecast future technology that can be developed because there is a need to ensure that the benefits of future generation are not compromised due to limited resources on earth.

The drivers of change

Methods used in forecasting

There are so many methods to forecast technology such as conducting interviews and road mapping. The one I would like to highlight is gaming (since I'm a gamer myself). Surprisingly, the number of cases mapped for each region to use gaming as a mean to forecast future technology is zero yet there are a few real-world technologies inspired by video games. Technologies like auto-aim and programmable projectiles are actually inspired from video games. In fact, video gaming is a great method to forecast future technology because in gaming, there are no boundaries. You are not hampered by external factors such as time and resources. People can just develop ideas freely for games and such ideas may be a future technology. 

As what John F Kennedy states, “For time and the world do not stand still…

Change is the law of life.

And those who look only to the past or the present

are certain to miss the future.”

Gaming to predict the future

Lastly I would like to highlight about something not being covered in the session which is social media forecasting the future. As a matter of fact, social media has speculated real time events such as stock market and political voting. In the context of future technology, it is interesting to know that we could possibly be the predictor for future technology.

It is the last session and there are mixed feelings to it. Saying I would be melancholic as this is the last session would sound too contrived but definitely TWC is a memory to stay with me. I would also say that the rainbow after the storm draws near also as the last session of TWC concludes. Overall, I would rate this session 8/10.

There is no good or bad; its just opinion and perspective

Squall - Final Fantasy VIII 

TWC session 9

TWC session 9 was about emerging and future technology

 An illustration of augmented reality

In this session, we are exposed in many areas of possible future technology as well as the forces behind the innovation of future technology.

Key observations on what are the forces that drive the innovation of future technology

. Individually

1) Willing to take risk. Without the capacity to take risk, we would not be able to enjoy what we are having right now. People would just want to stick in their comfort zone. Dr Shahi gave us a quote by George Bernard Shaw that explained that people often question the risk that arises with future technology but the innovator always asks himself the wonders that come with such technology. In my own words, its high risk, high reward.


2) Imagination. People needs to see it happening. Without imagination, we are unable to design the things we want to see it being real in the world. For imagination knows no boundary while knowledge is limited. This is from a quote by Albert Einstein.



3) Willing to commit. Action speak louder than words. You can have a million ideas in the world but without any commitment to make it a reality, its just ephemeral ideas. However, in order to commit, there are certain considerations that have to be met. For example, you need the budget and tools to innovate.

Before I continue on, I would like to use the example of Janet Echelman to illustrate the above qualities are needed for future innovation. Janet Echelman is a sculptor. She had worked on small scale sculptures for many years and one day, she wanted to create a sculpture over the scale of a city.

Willing to take risk - There are rules and regulations that sculpture cannot be over the street. So she make it floating. The hardest part was to respect your ideas - Janet Echelman

Imagination - I try to imagine my goal as a reality, and then work backwards to figure out all the steps I need to take to make it so. -- Janet Echelman

Willing to commit - She put her ideas into paper and constantly remind herself of how famous people like Gandhi - the case of salt march - did the impossible.

With the investor supporting her, she managed to create sculptures that overlook cities.

  A sculpture by Janet Echelman suspended over Amstel River, overlooking city hall. 

Of course, it is evident that the forces of future innovations does not lie solely on an individual. You need money, tools and the right people to aid you. This is what Dr Shahi call the confluence of the 4 Cs. These forces can be derived from market demand as well. Lastly, with new technology, people are able to come up with ideas, using past technology as its basis.

In this session, we are exposed to many possible future technology.

- Claytronics: A programmable matter
- Augmented Reality: Imagine walking on a street and you are able to see information about everything on the street. For example, you are able to see the temperature of a drink you just ordered or you are able to see any potential environmental hazards around you. This is one technology that has potentiality to become a reality. Right now, we have things such as the Google Glass. It would be no surprised that in the near future, augmented reality becomes a reality.
- Robotics: Japanese scientist created lifelike robots that had people to actually fall in love with it. Robots are also designed to perform task. What if I order the robot to murder someone? This is something to contemplate about in the areas of robotics.

There are many more future technology that was covered during the session as it would be endless. Imagination knows no boundary. The concept of future technology is ever-growing. At this point, it is worth mentioning about something that was touched upon in session 1 - Singularity. At one point, the rate of advancement of technology will be so fast that the gradient would actually be 1. At that point, people described it as technology has overtook human being. The question is when.

I would rate the session 9/10. I learnt a lot from this session and I think it is very interesting to learn about future technology that I never see before.

Twc Session 8

Twc session 8 was about energy and world change



The session started off with a unnerving quote that if everyone consumed as much energy as the average Singaporean and U.S resident, the world energy resources would be depleted within 9 years. This would mean that we are consuming too much energy in a finite world. However, is it really the fault of humans to consume so much energy? Without a doubt as countries develop, there would be a greater demand for energy. .

 The question is how do we sustain and yet at the same time allowing room for backward countries to develop

Energy primarily comes from 2 areas - Above ground and underground. Some examples of energy that are above ground are solar and wind while those from underground are oil and coal.

Interesting enough, those that are above ground are actually infinite energy resources while those that are underground are finite. Dr Shahi then shared about Brazil alcohol program in which the government uses ethanol for energy consumption. I read about it and it is actually a successful program. It helps to free the country from the vicious chain of rising oil prices and at the same time achieving sustainability.

 So are we ready to use ethanol as energy? Apparently not. There are many factors such as unsuitable conditions to grow sugarcane as well as competition with sugar.

Next we are shown a graph about the global energy consumption for each sources of energy. Top of the list would be coal, natural gas and oil. The interesting observation here would be that the amount of solar energy generated by the sun in one hour is equivalent to the amount of energy we consume on one year!


So why are we not using solar energy?

So I went to research on why the world is not turning to solar energy. One of the reason was that the amount of sunlight shone per unit area is too small. It was calculated that to provide enough energy for a house, it requires a solar panel with the an area that is at least 10%  that house floor area. There would be not enough space to build so much solar panel for every house in a country! Furthermore, the technology is currently very expensive.

Since we are at this topic, I would like to highlight about the use of space solar panel to harvest solar energy. This is Ayesha's oral presentation topic. The issue here will be about the amount of efficient energy transmitted to earth. Energy will be lost as heat energy in the stratosphere and the antenna on earth is unable to capture all the microwaves transmitted due to its limited area. Maybe in the future something can be done to increase the amount of efficient energy.



Next, we learnt that renewable energy is unable to sustain the whole of America's population. The world is consuming so much energy that maybe it is time to look back and see whether there is a need to consume so much energy. Renewable energy can only prolong our use of finite energy resources.

We also learnt about the impetus of renewable energy research. Apparently, China top the list. China use of coal for consumption has resulted in some debilitating environmental concerns and that is the impetus for their government to research on clean energy consumption.
 Air pollution in China

Lastly, we discuss about the application of clean energy in everyday technology. The most ideal example to use would be electric car. It does not use oil as its fuel and does not leave any carbon footprints. The downside would be its shorter distance mileage, long charging time and the lack of charging station. Despite being a green technology, why does Singapore not adopt the use of electric car? It was even discuss on the straits time about the use of electric cars. One reason I could think of is the inertia for Singaporeans to switch their cars due to extremely high COE and their mindset that a good car symbolizes wealth.



To end off i would rate the session 8.5/10. Session was finally able to end on time and there was ample discussion for every individual presentation.

The link to individual topical paper draft

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Sd9_EanuT6VlYPxBht4f_jojhVRFEZDhh2h-Pvghq5g/edit

TWC Session 7

The topic of session 7 was Agribiology and environmental life science. The first thing I learned was the difference between agribiology and agri-biotechnology.

Agribiology - The study of processes in agricultural process.




Agri-biotechnology is the application of science to create tools for agricultural process



Firstly, why is there a need to study this topic? Sustainability is a necessity for us because whether we like it or not, we are stuck to planet Earth and if we harvest natural resources at a rate like how we did in the past, we would not survive in the long-run. In fact in a video shown during the session, humans is likened to be a parasite of Earth.So the question is how we move on from here?

"There is enough food for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed" - Mahatma Gandhi

This quote highlights the first issue of sustainability - food wastage. Why is human so greedy? One insight drawn during the session was the change in human needs and wants. This is especially true for places undergoing rapid urbanization. Just take a look how much food is thrown away in a typical restaurant everyday.According to UNEP, roughly one-third of food produced in the world is wasted!


Food wastage harms the environment as well. The food wasted decays and produced methane that is a greenhouse gas. Wastage is prevalent in the world today. Other than food wastage, there are other forms of wastage that have resulted in devastating results. Some examples are New York Love Canal and the Great Pacific of Garbage. So much for the effort in sustainability.

Another issue was food security. Famine is not something that should be taken lightly. The Great Chinese Famine had caused 43 million death. Food security means having the physical and economical access to food. Many technology has been created to tackle this issue and I have make some interesting observation for some of it.

 GM food

GM food stands for genetically modified food. The argument for such food is that it provides food security. Some GM food are able grow in extreme weather conditions and this means that there is constant access to food. However, after doing some readings, the production of GM food is actually controlled by companies and it is illegal for farmers to grow GM food without permission. In fact some farmers had been sued for producing GM food unknowingly because of cross-pollination This brings about the question about the purpose behind GM food. Is it to provide food security or is it to economic security for the rich.

Some interesting ideas were brought up during individual presentations that deals with the issue of food security. Examples are vertical farming and in-vitro meat. It is not yet implemented because the methods are way too costly. I will not delve into these 2 ideas.

Lastly, one take-away point for me during the session is about bio-fuels. Dr Shahi quoted that "It is not inconceivable that we may one day develop efficient home bioreactors for converting household biological wastes into energy for powering our household appliances" . I learned that there is this process called flash pyrolysis that converts biomass into energy. If we are able to have that in our home, I dare say that humans have make a big step in sustainability. 


 A machine used in the process of flash pyrolysis

Overall, I would rate this session 8/10. It was fun learning about the different issues of sustainability. However, there room for improvements such as discussing more about the ecnomical impact of agri-biotechnology. It is understandable that due to time constraint, the topic cannot be covered in-depth

TWC session 6

Time flies....

Its week 6 and we are halfway through TWC. Session 6 topic was about healthcare and bio-medical science.



Before this session I always thought bio-medical science is all about cells, diseases and anything related to the human body but I am so wrong about it. Bio-medical is one big industry that includes stuff like

 Diagnostic equipment


 Medical devices

Dr Shahi showed us a video about Microsoft ideal hospital in the future would be and I'm totally fascinated by the video. This would streamline so many processes and healthcare is more readily available. The part on e-dollar is interesting. What if we were to lose our card?

Now lets move on to driving forces of bio-medical industry. As technology advances and people become more affluent, our lifestyle starts to change. Change in lifestyle and technology advancement are some driving forces of bio-medical advancement that I would like to touch on.

How does a change in lifestyle drives the advancement of medical industry? In the past, when humans were still hunters and gatherers, work were physically demanding. Now, people sit in the office and rarely move about. Furthermore, with the advent of junk food like MacDonald, people are growing obese.



So what does that mean? We see a rise in diseases related to obesity such as high blood pressure and diabetes. ( Just some fun fact : From World Health Organization, overweight and obesity are linked to death more closely than being underweight. Start shedding those weight!)

Lets move on to technology. How does technology advancement drives the advancement of bio-medical industry? With technology advancement, the probability of contracting communicable diseases drops. People have access to safe drinking water and clean food. Moreover, vaccination eliminates the risk of contracting such diseases. Some interesting examples are " The Black Death" and America "Yellow fever" outbreak.

So one thing I learnt is that as people become more affluent, the rate of chronic diseases rises while the rate of communicable diseases falls. It is the opposite for the poorer countries.
Some fun fact again.

  The fun fact is about rice. In the past, the hunter gatherers did not have rice as their staple food. However, with technology advancement, this thing known as rice was discovered and it gradually becomes a staple food. Rice is actually cooked sugar and what happens when we do not burn away the carbohydrates that we consume is that it is stored as fats. I'm not trying to say that we should not eat rice but if we are already on the risk of being overweight, we should cut down the intake of rice.

Next we look at areas of medical innovation.

The one that particularly intrigue me the most is prosthetic and stem-cells. Why is it so? Somehow I believe with research and development in these 2 aspects, one day humans may achieve immortality.




1) Using stem-cell to create artificial brain and body?
2) Using prosthetic to create parts of the artificial body?
This picture explains it all.

So how does bio-medical answer the question why some countries are so backward and some are so advance? Lets look at the human development index. One of the criteria is life expectancy. By giving the poor countries the necessary bio-medical technology, they are able to live longer and thus, fulfilling their potential and contribute to society. However, it should be noted that there are consequences to it such as having an obese population.

I would rate this session a 8/10. I enjoyed the individual presentation as the topics were interesting. However, I believed what can be improved is that we dwell deeper into topics like bio-medical weapons.


                                                        

TWC session 5

After reading some of my TWC classmates blog, I decided to try a new approach to my blog

TWC session was about ICT



Yes, I decided to put in pictures after reading other people's blog.

ICT encompasses of many different aspect. I'm not going to list everything as it is too expansive. However, I'm going to list down some of the areas that fascinate me.

Gaming



The advancement of ICT has seen gaming industry taking over the music industry and is catching up with the film industry. Will it one day dominate the entertainment industry?

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a system which every information are stored in one database. Technically, you can let people to gain access to such information and you can access it anytime you like as long as you have access to internet. Examples of Cloud computing would be like Gmail, iCloud and even our own SMU Elearn. However, cloud computing has it issues too such as security and privacy.

So the question is have we maximize our potential with ICT. The answer is not yet.
So why not?

Key observation
Despite the fact that ICT has helped streamline many processes in the industry, our productivity gain only multiplied by 5, whereas in the past, a revolution would see a productivity gain of at least 25 times.

One main reason that we have yet to fully maximize our potential is that we have not yet bridge the digital divide.


The divide is real and a copious amount of people, especially in the third-world country has no access to ICT. Even with access to ICT, the older generation may not be able to embrace it as easily as the younger generation like us.

Furthermore now it is still too early for us to fully tap on ICT. There are still fundamental issues that need to be addressed such as hacking and espionage. I would like to cite a recent case of Gmail password being leaked onto the internet. (Looks like a strong password does not matter now). Also there is the Playstation Network Outage on the year 2011 which Playstation Network users' credit card details were leaked online

Take-away point
How does ICT helps in addressing the issue of why some countries are so backward while some are so advance. With ICT, a whole new industry is being created and this provides opportunities. I would like to cite the gaming industry as well as how cloud computing has allowed small companies to have an equal standing with large companies. However, a system needs to be in place before the poor countries start to ride the wind or they will get swallowed by the waves.



ICT has its downside but most of it arise from human actions. Issues such as hacking and pornography are all cause by humans. The internet cannot hack and post derogatory remarks by itself. After all technology is just a tool. Education is very important to teach us about internet etiquette.

Some interesting fact here: Some studies have shown that pornography actually reduces the number of rape cases. Alright back to issue here.

There are a few people who shun away from social media as there is a risk for loss of privacy. However, in the 21st century, do we really still have privacy left? Our IP address are traceable, spying devices are ubiquitous and of course we always have friends that will secretly take picture of us and "tagged us".

Rating of session 
I would give the session 8/10. I like the video about Project Natal. That was the first time I actually heard about the project. Kinect derives from Project Natal. However, there are some features that the Kinect do not have which Project Natal is capable of. I was thinking if Project Natal was real, I would just need to flash my examination question to the artificial intelligence and get it to do for us.