Week 10: Session 9

This week, we discussed ‘Emerging and Future Technologies’.

The session covered possible technologies that could emerge in the future. It linked in with a lot of things that we have discussed in previous sessions.

We talked about the 4 smarts again. Smart people, smart ideas, smart money, and smart partnerships will make it more likely and easier to develop new technologies to meet the unmet needs of society, and make use of unsatisfied market opportunities.

There are numerous possibilities for technology, and it can be used to do pretty much anything in the future; serve good and bad purposes. With the development of new technology, there might also be a growing concern with regard to privacy, and it is necessary to think about, and implement necessary regulations to protect peoples’ privacy.

Some possibilities that we discussed, that I found very interesting were:

1. Wireless transmission of electricity on a large extent and across relatively large distances will be a ground-breaking development.
2. We watched a video about electric cars in the future. It is really amazing what these cars would be able to do, in terms of the way they are charged, how they communicate with other cars on the road (Web 3.0), and how they can pretty much drive themselves and take you to where you want to go.
3. 3D printing, as discussed in previous sessions, will enable us to print everything that we need, from basic requirements and small bits and pieces, to actual body parts.
4. We also discussed the concept of augmented reality. “Augmented reality (AR) is the integration of digital information with live video or the user's environment in real time. Basically, AR takes an existing picture and blends new information into it” (Rouse, 2011).
   While augmented reality has the ability to educate people and provide them with more information about various things on the go, there are still concerns with regard to endangering privacy, and the misuse of information.

In order for these emerging technologies to bridge the gap between people who have and don’t have access to such technology, it is important to design systems that are easier to use, such that people can learn to use the technology easily and fast.

Moreover, like all other technology, we must consider the good and the bad impacts, and it is important to consider regulations that can be put into place to control the usage of such technology and address security issues.

I give this session a 7 out of 10.

References:
Rouse, M. (2011). Augmented Reality (AR). Retrieved from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/augmented-reality-AR