TWC Lesson 10, 28/10/2013

Brief Overview/Summary

Today's lesson was on the importance of technology assessment and forecasting. The lesson started with a video by Siemens on the trends of the future such as the shift of the world into becoming more urbanised with a greater number of people living in cities. As a result the quality of life would improve thus energy and water would be in greater demand, as well as healthcare. There will be a shift from basic healthcare to more advanced medical needs which would mean that healthcare would be more about quality than quantity. Urbanisation would also generate a need for improved transport systems such as through "intelligent" communication systems. The improvement in the technology available as well as greater congregation of people would also mean the need for more sophisticated security which would be needed. There is also the need for more efficient and convenient methods delivery systems in the future.

There was discussion on Siemens strategy in displaying their plans for the future through a public youtube video. Through the use of online media, they could gain feedback from customers, as well as get publicity and attract other corporations or investors with similar aspirations to collaborate together and support their aims. However there are obvious drawbacks to this, because their competitors would now know their business strategy for the future and thus make plans to compete against it or even just simply copying their strategy.

We learn that technology assessment would be to assess current technologies, analysing its strength, weaknesses and thus the reasons for its proliferation in the current market thence moulding future innovations accordingly. It also considers implications the technology has on the society and for the future. Technology forecasting would be to predict future technologies that would be mainstream based on current technologies and trends. Through identifying potential bloomers, the company will be able to make informed decisions on the areas of the market which they should explore.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

With such rapid change in technology in the past decade, it is imperative that companies have an idea of what the future holds so that they can keep up with the change in technologies and make constant adjustments to their production goals. Technology forecasting is important given the large number of ongoing developments such that it is impossible to accurately predict future trends in technology with merely a layman's knowledge. Expert knowledge needs to be employed to do so.

The example of the crumpled paper vs the new sheet of paper. Companies who adopt a rising stars mentality develop plans on a "new sheet of paper". They plan the future according to what they want, and then make adjustments accordingly.As a result they will progress, compared to the "crumpled paper", where the plans for the future are made to address the problems that they are currently facing and are limited by current limitations and issues.

With globalisation and the decreasing income gap between countries, western countries no longer hold the monopoly in advanced technology and research & development. A number of technological developments are taking place in the lesser developed countries and it is important to take into account such developments when attempting to forecast the future.

While TA and forecasting have traditionally be a "talk to the experts" session, with evidence on the importance of crowd sourcing and communication between stakeholders, technological assessments should now include customers and regular citizens into the picture. By only consulting the experts, they would tend to miss out on the more obvious weaknesses as to the practicality of the innovation that the actual intended users would pay more attention to. This is seen in the rise in the number of citizen panels, questionnaires/surveys and interviews used.

Key takeaway points

The current technological climate is rapidly changing and TA and forecasting has increasing relevance to companies. To maximise a product/innovation's relevance to the consumers, technological assessment would need to be done with respect to not just expert opinions but also the reviews of customers (given the ease of access the opinions of many customers can be consulted within a short period of time and give rise to more practical and well-rounded products). Understanding the future technological climate is imperative for the survival of companies and should be of significant priority in any companies planning and outlook for the future.

Issues for further discussion

How do companies engage in getting the opinions of citizens? Then what about privacy itself? Wouldnt seeking the opinions of the general public mean disclosing the companies' strategies for the future to its competitors? Would such an undertaking be worth the potential rewards?

I would rate the class 6/10, as important as TA and forecasting is, unfortunately not as interesting as other topics that we have previously covered.

TWC Lesson 9, 21/10/2013

Brief Overview and Summary

Today's lesson focused on emerging and future technologies. We discussed on the creation of various innovations and the implications of newly emerging technologies. Drivers for development of such technologies consisted of:
market driven research and development
technology driven research and development
creation of demand from supply
mass media and advertising
confluence of the 4 smarts :"smart people, smart idea, smart money, smart alliance and partnerships
The lesson also covered on some of the emerging technologies that held a high probability of being applied widely in the future, such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence as well as robotics.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

The majority of innovation are market driven and seek to address consumer wants and needs of the present. A reason for this would be the higher chance of the innovation to succeed. Other types of innovation would be to create a demand from supply, such that it addresses a need in the consumers that they previously did not know they had before. An example would be 3-d printing, or the iphone.

A 

With the increase in affluence of countries and through globalisation and increased interconnectedness, there is an increase in scientific knowledge available as well as the technological know-how. This provides an environment for new technology to grow and be value-added. This interconnectedness(such as through cloud computing and crowd sourcing) combined with technological knowledge has shown to be useful in solving problems such as mentioned in class today regarding the gamers who collaborated together to solve a problem regarding the structure of the HIV virus.

The innovations today are more of the innovative usage of a number of technologies, such as the use of robotics combined with nanotechnology in the claytronics video shown, or the genetic modification used in biotechnologies in the areas of medicine. The use of nanotechnology has particularly many applications. As mentioned, most of the products today are made by breakdown large materials into the desired shape. Nanotechnology has already been applied such as in the area of claytronics whereby the material is made up of independently operated robot particles. The use of nanotechnology together with claytronics could make it possible for products to be converted to its required use and help to reduce wastage.

Key takeaway points

One of the key points this lesson was the importance of the extent to which a technology or a new innovation could influence the economy and other societies rather than what the technology does itself. An innovation could be useless on its own but new or existing technology could be applied together with the innovation in novel ways. For instance, electric cars might not be viable currently due to issues such as lack of charging points and the weight of the battery, but then with the development of wireless charging through the use of magnetic conductivity electric cars could be viable in the years to come. As such we have progressed in such a way that the way forward would be more on how we could use existing technologies and combine them together for practical solutions as well as focusing on increasing availability of such electronics such that the powers of crowd sourcing and cloud computing can be harnessed.

Issues for future discussion 

I felt that the implications of technologies such as surveillance technologies and biometric technologies could have been discussed in greater detail. Also, the methods and policies to nurture such emerging technologies, in light of current technologies such as solar energy which have their developmental potential limited due to vested interests of groups involved in competing technologies.

Today's class was interesting especially the part about wireless charging and artificial intelligence, it fascinated me. 8/10 for this class!