WEEK 13 - PRESENTATION PART 2

Tablet Technology

The group discussed the growth of tablet technology... One thing that dawned on me as they presented was their point on 'ease of use', especially with touch screen technology, the group mentioned a little bit on how kids, and I mean young kids, can start using the iPad with such ease and within seconds, it's almost baffling. Well I think this just speaks volume of the 'naturality' of such technology.

The group also posed a question to the class - do we wear watches? A bunch of us still do and the group  mentioned how we, humans, love multi-tasking objects, so we rely on our phones for the time, the weather, for setting an alarm, to remind us of deadlines and whatnot. Well I see the point that the group was trying to make, except most of us actually raised our hands! But then again, perhaps the whole function of a watch has changed. It has become an accessory. It is multi purpose now!

During the Q&A session, one of our classmate questioned if we were really going to replace PC with tablet technology in offices. I believe this appears to be the direction we are taking. Both my brother and dad's office replaced all desktop with laptops.. and perhaps they will slowly attempt to replace laptops with tablets. There is really no reason why we shouldn't, with advancing technology, tablets should be able to perform the same tasks that a PC does. I certainly look forward to the day where tablets are the norm. Besides, this 'disruptive' trend will offer opportunities for businesses - if they are able to manage the 'changes' in computer trends. A laptop maker doesn't always have to make laptops.

Beauty enablers through technology

This is the most interesting presentation I've seen in SMU, the transitions were funny, group members actually 'pushed' each other off the stage and free perfume samples were given out to people who asked their questions.   The project was basically on how technology 'enabled' beauty, which is an interesting topic and was probably a fun research topic. One would expect the group to dwell on surgical processes but they didn't!

Technology has enabled beauty - no one can argue that. When the group discussed the future of beauty, it dawned on me that the future direction appears to be more secretive, you pop a perfume pill (almost as though you smell perfect inside and out), you use dissolvable lenses (no need for contact lens or glasses - nobody has to know you're short sighted), you create a perfect baby (nobody has to know your true self as you can just put in genes and stuff you like). Perhaps the goal is to look beautiful naturally and no one needs to know you had those procedures.

Well, in any case, I felt that the group could have discussed the use of technology in creating creams and lotions. In recent times, I do believe none of us have been able to pass cosmetic halls in department stores without huge posters from luxury brands claiming that they have some special nano particles or timed 'particles' or whatever in their creams that promises to make you young and beautiful.

Social media and politics

This project focused on the use of social media in elections and politics... The advent of social media has changed the face of communication in all areas. The group discussed the impact of social media in elections campaign.

Well, although I had to vote, I wasn't entirely up to date on all of the campaign happenings. From what I know, social media helped to highlight every detail of the candidates involved.

Communications online - whether from the candidate himself or stemmed from discussions of netizens... will be dissected and pull apart and commented on and re-tweeted and whatnot. This only goes to show that activities online and on social platforms needs to be monitored closely. More firms are actually making sure their employees take a course on how to communicate effectively online.

Technology in terrorism

The group discussed the use of technology in terrorism and counter terrorism.. I thought the presentation was very clear and concise. The presentation offered insights into how technology is used to create terror and stop terror.

I believe communications between rioters in the London 2011 riots depended on BlackBerry messengers, FB, and twitter.. Obviously these technologies were not invented for the purpose of organizing riots. However, it was created to allow seamless/fuss free communication between people across the globe and etc, technology will often offer us opportunities and it is up to us to use that opportunity and we could use it for both good or bad. I suppose this is where technology assessment or change management (esp in the workplace) comes in to ensure that the 'changes' caused by technology are primary good.

And that marks the end of our class!

WEEK 12 - PRESENTATIONS PART 1

EcoTechnology

The first presentation was on EcoTechnology. (This was my initial choice of topic for my review paper!) The group identified Starbucks as a good corporate citizen and demonstrated a few examples of Starbuck's green initiatives. The group also identified other initiatives whereby corporations engage in responsible behaviour. I think this really points out the fact that you can do business with the environment in mind. It can't always be about economic sense over environment protection.

Photography

When I first saw that a group in our class was focusing their final group project on photography, I was pretty amazed. I had wondered what you could possibly discussed about a camera. After the presentation, I realised I took the camera for granted and saw it as a baby invention that didn't warrant much time/research.. I realised now, after browsing the site, that cameras are important documentation tools, which was a main purpose for the invention of this technology. Where would people be if cameras weren't invented. I bet this would be a good movie idea. We would have led our lives very differently and all history would have to be reliant on words. In any case, it was mentioned in the website that 3D camera technology will advance and become commercialized most quickly. A bit of googling showed that a tech blogger suggested that 3D camera would hardly be a requirement. Well, I'm pretty sure that's what a lot of people said about a smartphone.

E-commerce

Well, I was really happy to see some one doing a project on this topic as I think it is super interesting and I thought the research part would have been quite fun. I remember reading somewhere that people can BUY anything online and most have started to order everything online and nobody has to go anywhere to get anything.

Prof posed this same question to the class - What couldn't you buy online? I had a few answers.. they seemed to answer themselves though. The first thing that came to my mind was pets, but you can buy pets online, so what about houses, but online real estate websites are thriving. Then I realize you can buy a lot of things online, even products that required you to touch and feel them... Well the thing, businesses understand the drivers of growth of e-commerce and have since expanded their retail channels to the web. E-commerce is often complementary to brick and mortar stores.

It was also asked in class if we could ever get to that stage where we would buy everything online? Well, I sure hope not. But it could happen and I'm just saying.. a LOT of people would need to find a new hobby. I don't recall seeing no shops in futuristic movies though.

But, I digress, with the advent of augmented reality technology, this could be a real future, albeit a far future? I still see a lot of sense in brick and mortar shops. I believe e-commerce should be complementary to brick and mortar shops. I think the group answered this part pretty well with the few future innovations they suggested, like T-commerce where people can expand the advertisements shown and purchase the product they like. I think this is a wonderful example of how technology can complement commerce.

Food for the future

This is my group's project on Food For the Future. Our research attempts to evaluate current food production methods and examine what could we could expect in future food technologies.

OK we know all about food security issues, my group aims to investigate how we have been meeting people's needs and how we could do so responsibly. A few innovations were suggested, like the bubble gum meal, inspired by my favourite book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. When I was a child and reading this book, I honestly thought somewhere in America was a shop selling Willy Wonka's gum with a 100 flavours. The future of food seems to be concentrated on smart farming, smart foods and smart packaging. These 'smarts' help to ensure that food production is maximised responsibly.

I enjoyed doing this project. Research was fun and although it was extremely vexing to put the website together with a unreliable laptop (mine)... I am proud of it and am glad we could share our work with the class!

I would rate this session 8/10. I felt like we could have discussed a bit more on the various projects.. I look forward to the next session!

WEEK 11 - Technology Assesment and Forecasting

This week's session on assesment of technology signals an end to our TWC course. It is very appropriate that today's topic marks the end of our learning journey. After going through 9 TWC sessions, understanding the different forces shaping technological change and such, we were introduced to methods of assessing (new and current) technology.

We discussed the importance of doing a technology assessment, whether it meant  analyzing the impact of a current or emerging technology.  A lot of this week's topic is on preparation and creating a desirable future with strategic decisions...

It is obvious that we need to assess the impacts of technology. The exponential growth of technologies has created a need to udnerstand changes caused by technologies in order to reduce negative implications and react to surprises. For example, we were all happy to have discovered burning fossil fuels as an 'efficient' way of producing energy yet if we did a thorough technology assessment, we may have been more aware of the externalities caused. This is an simple example but it brings the point across. Technology assessment is important.

Organizations rely on technology assessment to understand when, what, and how much to invest in new technologies/current technologies/upcoming technologies in order to make strategic decisions.

It was also discussed in class how one can plan for the future. There are 2 ways, we can either look at existing realities or forecast a desired future and move in that direction. Personally, I don't think there's a better way, these two broad methods are catered to different problems and should be used together.

We were also introduced to the different methods of foresight and common uses of foresight output. One of the discussed methods was stakeholders mapping which involved getting views from the people involved. Understanding impacts of upcoming technology on stakeholders can help to improve on current technology or future technology decisions. Stakeholder analysis will provide insights from different perspectives so better or a more adjusted and well rounded decision can be made. A common foresight output would be used in policy recommendations to help in directing us to the desired future.

Reading 2, Perspectives of Futurology summarizes the entire topic for this session. The article highlights the importance of understanding the present to predict the future. As Voltaire said 'The present is pregnant with the future'. The present will shape the future. What we lack now will be created in the future. The key lies in anticipating emerging trends. This is very relevant for businssess as anticipating emerging trends helps them to make informed business decisions and avoid pitfall. Futurologists try to predict the future (not in a hocus pocus manner!) or what's best for the future and try to pave the way towards that!

Like Rongxuan mentioned, foresight does not aim to predict the futurew with certainty, it only seeks to reduce uncertainties.

This is the end of the TWC class and for the next two sessions, we will be shown the projects that our class groups have been working on and I'm looking forward to knowing what my class groups have been up to and their take on their chosen topic.

Reflection

My initial impression of TWC is that it involved something technical, probably the study  of computer technologies and its impact on the world. In a way, this is right, but we touched on more than the computer. Technology isn't just technical stuff , technology is knowledge, and the sessions on how different technologies have changed the world, what caused the change, how to mange the change has been really interesting...Writing a review paper on a specific innovation, from its beginning to its future direction really helped me to seriously consider how we have evolved (in my topic of discussion) and most importantly, the implications of this specific innovation. The individual assignment, although  daunting at times, allowed me to reflect on what are real changes caused by my innovation of choice.  I can't believe I'm saying this but I do like TWC, I just wish I read ALL the readings, so just a note to whoever who will be reading this when you're a freshie in TWC class, attempt to read all the readings as it helps you understand the topic better! You will hate reading because you it's really long and you see that there are 16 pages in the pdf file, just remember that 2 to 3 pages are basically cover pages, content page and a end page so do not be afraid.

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WEEK 10 - EMERGING AND FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES

This week's session discussed emerging and future technologies and all the individual oral presentations introduced a new kind of technology... it would be very interesting to see how these new technologies become common in the future.

Well, the session started off the usual introductory remarks on drivers of emerging and future technologies, it is important to understand what 'drove' the need to develop new technologies. Some of the examples given unmet market opportunities, supply creating demand (example:iPod), increasing knowledge of technological know-how which creates more possibilities for humans. I felt that this week's session simply brought us to the 'realm' of possibility... possibilities that were deemed impossible in the past. Some of the interesting examples of emerging technology that the class discussed were, 3D printing, augmented reality and brain computer interface.

The session also included a short discussion on robiotics and the age old debate on will robots ever take over the world and disobey us humans. We had this discussion in one of the earlier sessions but some new points were brought up in this week's class.

1. One of our classmates felt that robots wouldn't outsmart us as we are the one who program the robot! I completely agree with her... We could always program the robot to do what we want, for example, robots in the assembly line and etc.

2. Yet, it seems as thought people would abuse the 'rules' of robots for personal gains - for example, ordering a robot to 'harm' some one and such.

This discussion also led to how Japan is driving the development for robiotics in order to tackle the aging population problem. It was brought that robots can easily take over menial tasks that border on demeaning - such as factory assembly line work. Some may argue that the manufacturing industry is labour intensive and we wouldn't want many people to lose their jobs to robots, yet it forces people to upgrade and improve their skills instead having a 'safe' menial job in the factory.

Personally, I felt that this session was wonderfully interesting. To be honest, I couldn't really 'grasp' the concept of 3D printing until I did some extra reading. It was inconceivable to me that it was possible to PRINT a hammer or a hot dog or something... yet it is possible.

Another future technology that got me really interested is augmened reality. It also gave me an idea to research augmented reality for my individual review paper on technology and courtship. Imagine seeing the world with a layer of HELPFUL information. It'll be similar to your personal tour guide. This would be one technology I would welcome with open arms and a red carpet. Augmented reality would be a really great addition to education and retail. It would be nice to walk into a shop and use my smartphone and point to a piece of clothing and let the digital information flow in... I would be able to see photo reviews, ways to wear it , price comparison and similar options in other stores. I think that would be super wonderful. For now, I would just need to wait for the technology to be adopted on a broad scale.

I would rate this session 8/10. I had a great time listening to all the presentations and discussions on our future and emerging technologies..

INDIVIDUAL REPORT DRAFT - TECHNOLOGY & COURTSHIP

Hi everyone,

Here is the link to my draft report TECHNOLOGY AND COURTSHIP

I am still working on:
1. Future  considerations
2. Research/background information on arranged marriages
3. Stats on infidelity as a result of internet dating

Just post any feedback and whatnot, thanks! :)

WEEK 9 - ENERGY AND WORLD CHANGE

The debate on environmental concerns VS economic rational continues in this week's session on energy and world change. Firstly, we were introduced to the drivers of changes in global energy sources. The most obvious being increased consumption. Developed nations need more energy to sustain their growth and emerging economies need energy to grow. A key point in our discussion is the obvious, yet seemingly overlooked by giant corporations is the need to get our energy through sustainable means. Well, the good thing is new technologies has given us the opportunities to approach the use of consumption differently, but are we adopting and embracing these opportunities? How do we adopt or encourage the adoption of responsible energy consumption mindset at an individual and organizational level? One of the ways mentioned is through education, however, apparently education changes aren't especially helpful unless it is used in conjunction with other policies. In my opinion, education is definitely step one as it engages future generations and creates awareness of environmental crisis and instill values that stays with you for life.

The switch to renewable energy sources is not easy to implement. For example, communities stop the building of industrial wind turbines as it upsets property prices. The class agreed that society decides whether renewable energy sources will be actively pursued!

I suppose most agree that buring coal has a harmful impact however I think most do not really consider the true cost. We will always use whatever that's convenient or have always been using. We often need to find ourselves on top of a burning platform or creeping deadlines before we are forced into actions.

It was also mentioned in our discussion that we focus too much on the cost renewable energy!! The cost of non-renewable energy sources are often neglected in the economic equation. The current economic rationale seems to point to the fact that is 'cheaper' to invest in coal/gas etc, the true consequences are often not taken into consideration.

In addition, even if incentives were in place, as demonstrated in the example of  Germany, the success of these initiatives will still be dependent on how actively people adopt the technology to earn the incentives. Not everyone will see the final 'output'. Moreover, we mustn't neglect the fact that incentrives come from a government budget. More would need to be done to achieve the goal of relying at least 50% of our energy consumption from renewable sources. Our debate on topic led to the question of how reliable and cosnistent renewable energy sources are. I believe methods of harnessing renewable energy will evolve to accommodate our energy needs safely. Necessity being the strongest driver of innovation. Although history has shown that humans often tend to exploit others or rather Earth for our needs, the great thing about these sources is that they are renewable which brings us back to the concept of achieving sustainability.

I would rate this session 9/10. I found it really informative and loved the inputs Prof's guest gave in our discussion.

WEEK 7 - BIOBUSINESS REVOLUTION - AGRICULTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

This week's class is on the BioBusiness Revolution - Agriculture and The Environment. Prof started the class with this trends in urbanization chart which shows that more and more people are moving from rural to urban areas which meant that peoples' ways of lives have changed. For example, people no longer grow their own food which means they're more dependent - which probably resulted in a 'revolution' of old agriculture way - this resulted in an impact on the environment. As people move to urban areas, they are becoming increasingly dependent on others for food, standard of living has also changed as urban areas have better infrastructure and more opportunities for employment. With increasing population growth, there is an increasing need to address food security issues. I think urbanization has impacted the way we eat and obviously, the environment has to 'pay' in some sense as people milk the environment for resources in order to urbanize.

One of the key issues that we talked about was on GM food. Our discussion led to if we should label GM foods. Well, I think it has its pros and cons and is highly debatable. I understand why some may think we shouldn't label GM food because labelling means you're just basically saying this food is different from the others however, Prof said labelling could be a good thing as we could somehow track the effects of GM food. A good thing may come out of it, should people who eat GM food become immune to some disease and such. Well, I think... you should label it, Prof's guest from Japan mentioned how people are labelling their food as non-GM as a marketing tactic. I think labelling it allows consumers to choose but I don't think there would be a need to print in it bold Genetically Modified as it sounds awful. Labelling GM foods means that consumers would know what they're getting and it's only their right to know. Personally, I think not labelling has created some sort of negative connotations to GM food, people may start to think you're not labelling because it's 'bad' and you're hiding or something.

The food security issue was also brought up and presented by Lenard from our class. As mentioned by Lenard's chosen article, there are around 1 billion hungry people around the globe. In addition to ensuring that there is sufficient food production, we mustn't neglect the fact that hunger is often related to poverty...

In any case, I really like this lesson (7/10) as I learned more about GM foods and the ethics behind it! I wish there was more discussion on the industrial biobusiness..