Lesson 9: Emerging and future technologies

This week's lesson focus our attention to emerging and potential technologies that is emerging in the future. We discussed mainly on nanotechnology, robotics, surveillance technology and computing-based simulation technologies. The quote of the week shared by Dr Gurinder is


"In terms of the development and application of new and emerging technologies, we are limited only by our imagination - and, all too often, the lack there of."


What is meant by the above statement is that technologies knew no bounds and the only boundary is the boundary set by humans; lack of imagination. Just like what George Bernard says, "You see things and you say, 'why?' but I dream things that never were and say why not?" What he trying to suggest  is that we need to let our imagination run wild and this is only when we can create new technologies that will benefit our society. In addition, the source of motivation to create that wild imagination is actually the unmet market opportunities and need. In short, the market force is the one that drives R and D and hence, new technologies emerge.

One of the interest things that i have observed for this week's lesson is robotic technologies. The "perfect woman" was developed by 2 Japanese and that "perfect woman" is someone that all man would desire. The project was initiated as he has seen that there are a handful number of people in this society who are lonely and lack of friends. This is one good example of the development of robotic technology and other products include robotic pet and robotic "hands" in factories to assemble complicated parts. Another interesting observation is the rising of nanotechnology. Prior to this lesson, i was not sure how much nanotechnology can do to improve our lives. However, my knowledge has expanded with the video that prof has shared and the presentation that one of our peers has done. I am amazed by how cryonics can do and it is inexpensive. However, every emerging technology will face some ethical issues. In this case, it involves resurrection and people might start the question if this technology is morally right as we are indirectly playing the will God has created. The question that i hope that we could have more time to discuss on is how are we able to eradicate this perception and make people accept this technology.

One of the key takeaway message that i wish to drive across is that whatever new ideas or technologies that introduced, it's bound have conflict with ethical issues. However, I feel that sometimes we have to put ethical issue aside in order to have breakthrough. Another key takeaway that i want to share is that the difference between us and computer is that a computer is able to retain all the knowledge that the world posses but humans can only retain a certain portion of it. Hence, we can see that we must create a relationship between computer and us so we are able to maximise what the computer has with what we know in order to create the limitless imagination that I have mentioned earlier. Only then, new breakthroughs could be made and new technologies could emerge.

I would rate this week lesson 8/10 and i hope that i will benefit from the leftover 3 sessions with Dr Gurinder and gain interesting insights from TWC.