Future Technology

This week’s session could be described as surreal or just pure wild imagination. It was an extrapolation of what the future might hold in terms of our progress in technology. Decades back geographical boundaries were thought to be insurmountable yet now we have communication giants such as Facebook or travel modes such as airplanes. So much has progressed and thus the possibilities and opportunities in the coming years cannot be doubted as anything can be possible.  

One very interesting technology that could be a norm is plastic technology where high-tech plastic could be embedded in anything we can imagine such as contact lens, clothes, curtains which may change the dynamics how things work in our day-to-day lives.

A throng of innovations are being introduced into the market continuously. Most die out while some become a huge success. The prof has mentioned again that the success of the product is determined whether it is market-driven or technology -driven. If there is a need for the technology, it would be widely accepted. Innovation does have its perks where, constant modification alters the application of a technology which can be used in a simpler way deeming it to be more convenient for people to use. Motion sensors in gaming is not limited to just video gaming but is applied in different sectors such as the medical field.

The prof posed a question of the difference between sales and marketing. Seems similar yet it has very stark difference in its strategies, where sales has a push force on the public while marketing has a pull force. This is really interesting where it comes back to the whether a product is market driven or technology driven. If the product is a need in society, it pulls their attraction when the product is marketed. One Singaporean company mentioned was Creative Technology where it is seeing losses due to not being able to keep up with the market needs which other companies such as Apple is able to provide.

Other two most-discussed future technologies are robotics and augmented reality. These were further analysed through the presentations. The first presentation covered the concept of trans-humanization where individuals could replace their body parts with machineries work and appear as a human hand but are of course, made to do things more efficiently, faster and go through tougher jobs and brain transplant could have us think faster. However, why not have robots or machineries that are not incorporated into our bodies, to do the jobs separately? Would we want to go beyond our human capabilities and as prof posed, at which point would we seize to be human as we adopt cyber technology with artificial intelligence.

The second presentation was on Future of aviation technology by Gideon. The presentation covered the futuristic feel on flights and their uses to be more efficient as a transportation and entertainment mode where the public could enjoy flight cruises. Most of my classmates do believe that in 40 years, such a concept will be possible. However, I feel that possible or not, it is not our priority looking at the dire needs of the world that have not been tended to yet.

The next presentation by Daryl was on the pervasiveness of robots where there has been a major shift in the industry. Would robots taking over every job of men and women while people reap their benefits? This is something I would like to see for myself in the future.

The last presentation by Michelle who spoke on augmented reality and its pervasiveness. Would information on everything be so readily available to us that accessing sites such as Google or Facebook become moot? This technology can be used in any field, education, medical, aviation to provide a better and richer experience for patrons. Again the crime of infringement of privacy crops up if one had the access to a person’s bio-data just by looking at them. However, with modifications of this technology this one will be really pervasive and prevalent in society and I would like to experience that for myself.

For the pure fun and imagination that this class brought up, I would rate this 10/10.