Week 10: Technology Assessment and forecasting

Hey guys, this is my 11th post right here in this learning journal blog of TWC. After going through ten solid lessons of TWC by Prof Shahi, I've really learnt a lot and gain much knowledge and insights into things that are happening right now or in the past and future. The knowledge to gain is tremendous and through this ten weeks of lessons, I've tried my best to absorb as much as I can. I believe these knowledge I gain will be beneficial in the long run and for the future. I remember there was one lesson when we talk about GM food. It so happen I was walking along the streets and I got approached by this surveyors to talk about GM food. So the surveyor asked me, " have you heard of GM food and what you know about them?" Immediately I thought of my TWC lesson and what we discussed in class, so I was well equipped to answer the surveyor and gave a good 15mins survey. My reward was a $5 voucher...:)

This week 10 wraps up this whole module and talks about forecasting and assessing whether this technology is a rising star or a falling star. I believe that in forecasting, no one can know exactly what is going to happen in the future, but one can at least try and forecast what is going to be the next big thing. In order to succeed, one need to forecast the future and create something that is new and useful that the world is going to need in future. We have to be one step ahead of the rest, we got to be the first and the best.

I like this quote given by prof, and yes we need to invent our future. Our future lies in our own hands, how we want to shape it or model it. We can go towards the path of destruction if we continue using non renewable fuel or we can go towards sustainable eco green technology. All these really depends on us humans to make the change for the better. I myself will definitely try and invent the future and make it a rising star opportunity to make money.

-The best way to predict the future is to invent it”

- Alan Kay -

Today's rating for the class is 9/10. A good rounding up end to the TWC module.

Lesson 9: Emerging and Future Technologies

Hey it's finally my turn this week to present to the class and the topic this wk is emerging and future technologies. When I was choosing through the list of topics to present, this topic caught my eye immediately. Future and emerging technologies...hmmm... must be something cool,fun,fascinating and I can present on something wild and crazy! So I went to search online for interesting topics...all kinds of amazing stuff pop up and I was spoilt for choices on topic to present. Eventually, I found this emerging innovation that I like, Surface computing. I read up lots more about it and spent TWO whole days to come up with the slides,ideas,script,rehearse etc... Lots of effort put in because I really want to give a good interesting presentation to the class rather than just a simple normal one. And here goes! I really hope my presentation is good and feel free to let me know if there's any area where I can improve on. This is my first presentation so far in SMU! So I really need as many pointers as I can get.

Ok back to discussion of lessons by prof, today he showed us many future emerging technologies videos. I was quite impressed by some of them and some look really high tech and cool. For example the first video on claytronics. The concept look so futuristic like how is it going to reaally happen. But I believe it's still possible in the future, who knows what may happen! In the future, we may be travelling with transportation? or flying cars? This flying cars is discussed in my research essay. I think it'll be so cool to travel in flying cars. I can just zoom over to school in less than 5mins? how convenient and time saving is that. Prof also showed us a video about AI robot where these 2 guys created the 'perfect woman' which is a AI robot. This 'perfect woman' can massage you n talk to you and understand you. It sounds like so cool but in my opinion I still feel no matter how 'real' the robot is, it can never replace human and the way we interact. I can't imagine dating a robot girl, like it's so weird. At least to me for now, I dont know what may happen in the future, maybe when there's a shortage of girls like 100 guys is to 1 girl, then this may be a possibility. I believe that the society should be able to accept this. Right now there're people even marrying their pets or animals. So probably marrying a robot may not seem like too far fetched an idea. If the robot can give birth too, how cool is that. haha. The last video prof showed us is about electricity cars. I do agree that in the future, we'll definitely look towards electricity cars. Right now, there're more and more hybrid cars on the roads already. If the cost comes down, and the government places policies that push for such green electricity cars, why not man. we'll no longer depend on the exorbitant petrol fuel when we can just use electricity to power our cars.

This week's presentations are the most interesting, not because I presented but may be it's due to the topic nature. Ryan presented on robotic arm and it's pretty interesting to have a robotic arm. However that arm must look exactly like a normal human arm then I would not mind getting it. Imagine with it, I can have super strength and I no longer have to go to the gym and slowly train and train but the muscles still take a long time to pop up. I presented on surface computing and I definitely want to get a microsoft surface and put it in my house living room. It'll be a good talking point when guests go to your house and you can have so much interactions and fun with it. Instead of putting a useless antique marble table that can cost up to $10000, why not just get a microsoft surface table! Gideon next talks about Airbus 2050 and it's really cool to see all the new features these airlines are trying to put in place. However, my consideration would be how expensive would it be and can people ever afford to experience it? If majority of the people can't afford it, wouldn't it be so elitist and exclusive.

Personal rating 10/10 because I presented in this lesson :)

Lesson 8: Energy and World Change

Hey guys! I'm back from the one week recess break of hell and projects and assignments to complete. Been really busy with lots of school work during this recess week which should be renamed as project week or catchup work week! Today's session of TWC talks about Energy and World change. Oh ya and this lesson is the first ever lesson that ended early! amazingly and surprisingly! I can slowly stroll over to my next class after this wk's TWC lesson. YAY! Although lesson ended early this week, it was still filled with thought provoking content and interesting presentations although I felt this week's presentations wasn't very well done relatively when compared to other weeks' presentations. Prob the other presenters set a really high standard to keep up. Next week shall be my presentation finally... so guys pls look out for  it and I'll really try my best to give a good one.

Today session about Energy and world change talks about the past,present and the future where we can go about in terms of energy especially in the area of renewable energy. Energy is very important in today's world as the current situation seems to be bleak. As prof mentioned, if the world consumes the amount of energy an average Singaporean or US citizen consumes, the world's oil reserve would deplete in 9 years time! Yes, 9 short pathetic years which can go past in a quick flash. This is how severe the problem is and there're people who predict that the world will end because of lack of energy, fossil fuel to power up the world.  Right now the world still relies on almost 80% of unrenewable fossil fuel as energy sources. IF we continue this heavy dependence on fossil fuel which is unsustainable, we will be leading to a bleak future of destruction. What we should do is to shift to renewable and green energy sources like solar energy which shows great potential.

So what are some of the possibilities we can look into in the future for renewable energy sources. Prof mentioned that the sun provides more energy to the earth in one hour than humankind uses in a year. This means that solar energy has great potential in providing lots of energy however this also means the super high inefficiency of fully capturing the potential of this solar energy as solar energy only occupies 0.7% of the world's energy sources. Germany is a good example of a country tapping the potential of solar energy as seen in the video which prof showed us. Government policies plays a tremendous role in implementing this shift to green and renewable energy sources. This is seen in Germany where the government gives out incentives for the people to use solar energy. However, this only works in well to do developed countries like Germany where the government has the ability and money to provide such incentives. In developing or poor countries, how can they support such actions and they will continue to use cheap non renewable energy sources. Energy conservation and shift is a world wide global effort, the leading and developed countries should do their part to help the developing countries. Obviously one barrier of entry is the extremely high cost to change to renewable energy sources. Installation of solar panels are expensive and this is stopping many countries from switching over. However, a good leader should think long term, say in 100years time, what will happen to our kids, or our grand children if we still continue relying on non renewable fossil fuel. Will they be able to survive? We shouldnt be so narrow minded and just think of ourselves in the short run. I read in an article about this oil company Exonn Mobil which just refuses to invest into alternative renewable energy sources. They are very stubborn and continues to just concentrate on fossil fuels. This is due to their extreme high profits, greatly exceed the other oil companies that's why they believe since they are doing so well, why bother to take a risk and diversify into alternative oil sources which could affect their profits. I kinda disagree with Exoon CEO thinking which I feel is very short sighted. I'll be waiting for the day where fossil fuel runs out or when people switch to renewable energy sources and Exxon will be left lagging behind. When that day comes, let's see who has the last laugh.

In Singapore, Prof mentioned that he felt that Singapore has not been doing a good job in switching to renewable energy sources. I agree to a certain extent but Singapore do has certain initiatives and is very slowing trying to switch. the key word is very slowly...I mentioned in class that Singapore has built the first Eco green HDB in Punggol where it is run on solar power with solar panels installed on the roof top. Kenny who is one of the presenter, coincidentally stays in that block! I believe this is a good effort by the government and hopefully the rest of the HDB will be converted to this eco green concept. I think that the government is trying to use that Punggol HDB block as a case study and see how effective it is and only if it's effective then they will implement further actions to build more eco green HDB block. The cost of such solar panel is not cheap and the efficiency level may not be high enough to justify the cost. Being a practical government, they will not just plunge into this eco green concept. So I believe we need to give the government more time, and slowly we will be able to see more of such HDB.

One good strategy discussed in the class to help countries switch to green renewable energy sources is the use of taxation on fossil fuel. Countries can impose higher taxes on fossil fuels to reflect their externalities and with this money, they use it to build solar panels and invest in green technology. This is a good way to offset the high cost of new technology. However, this may not seem as easy as it seems. Oil companies are very powerful and have great influence in the world. They will not easily let this happen. What we can hope for is that green renewable energy technology can be improved with cheaper cost and higher efficiency and this will thus help to justify the switch over. Let's look towards this green future from now on!

Personal rating: 9/10