End Course Review

TWC End of Course Review

The 13 week journey in TWC with Prof Shahi really broadened my horizons and benefitted me a lot. From being dumbfounded by Yali’s question at the start of course, I progressed to being able to provide some semblance of explanation to these inequalities.  I shall now give a brief summary of each topic, hopefully my humble explanation is adequate.

Introductory Session

Learnt about what is Technology, Science, Innovation, and Invention. Thereafter we were given an introduction to Yali’s question.

Technology- Knowing how to apply knowledge to solve problems

Science- The creation of knowledge

Invention- subset of innovation

Innovation- Invention is the first step in innovation, and the whole translation process in the market is called innovation

Technology, Society and Global Dominance

We learnt about the model of rising star, dominant player, and falling star and the characteristics of countries/companies/individuals in each category. Then we moved on to the impact of colonialism in shaping the development of countries today. These countries are able to keep themselves ahead because they exploit their colonies for resources.

Technology and Human Development

We defined development as generally change in a positive direction. Over the years, development has been happening in all areas(social, industrial, tech, cultural, economic, human), but increasingly,  sustainable development, ie development w/o negative consequences, have been increasingly important. Also learnt about human development in different areas such as 1. Health 2. Education 3. Income.

Technology and Industrial Development: Toward Sustainability

Industrial development has helped reduce the gap between developed and developing countries. This is due to their entry costs such as worker’s pay being lower than that of their counterparts. As a result they have a competitive advantage in the manufacturing industry over developed countries and can produce products at a lower cost. However countries like the US and South Korea are still ahead of the rest because they have shifted away from the manufacturing sector (labour intensive) to more knowledge and capital intensive industries. An example would be the mobile phone industry.

We thought that our industrialization would only have just a miniscule impact on Earth. However, (homeostatic) mechanism of Earth has been overstressed by human activity.

Eg. US- 5% population consume 30% of earth resources. If everyone consumed like this we would need 3-5 planets. Hence the need to go towards sustainable development. Also refers to going from linear to cyclical approach of consumption. We were then introduced to the many frameworks for sustainable development. Also talked about the benefits of developing late which means that these countries already have the template of development to follow and will not have to innovate much.

Technology and Innovation Management

We learnt that invention happens before innovation. And in innovation management, there is the R-D-A Translation process and the innovation creation pipeline. So the further we go from the translation process, there will be a higher chance of success.  And at the start of the translation process, more technical skills would be needed, while at the application stage, more management and business development is needed.

Drivers of World Change

The world’s processes are going from non- mechanised to mechanised and from energy intensive to sustainable development. So the drivers of change include Technological innovation, Social, demographic, cultural, ideological changes, Competition, Globalisation and Changing expectations with changing times. We also discussed Evolutionary and Revolutionary change, and the differences between the two.

Change Management and Change Leadership

Leadership V Management. Main difference is that one is proactive and other is reactive. So we must proactively manage change and use the modern model of continuous monitoring and renewable instead of the traditional freeze unfreeze refreeze model. Leadership is important as it could decide a developing country’s growth, especially when government do not make policies that are popular but instead focus on long term needs of the nation.

ICT and world change

Learnt about the evolution and change of many types if ICTs. They have the potential to empower people from developing countries with the tools to break out of their poverty cycle. Eg, Children with access to the internet can learn from outside advancements and gain knowledge capital. They can even innovate and come out with new things to change the world.

BioBusiness

We learnt how it can change the world through biomedical, agri-veterinary, environmental etc sectors. Already it takes up a huge proportion of global GDP and is expected to grow exponentially.

Energy and World Change

Our resources are limited and the true cost of fossil fuels are not factored in when we use them for buring. On top of monetary cost, there is opportunity cost as these fuels can be used for other more useful purposes. Then there is environmental pricing as we are actually polluting the environment. As such there is a need for all countries to adopt renewable energy and not only let the burden fall onto the developed countries.

Emerging and Future Technology

We were introduced to many emerging technologies and what were their drivers.

1.    Unmet market opportunity and need

2.    Growing tech know-how

3.    Supply creating demand

4.    Mass media and advertising changing our needs

5.    4 Smarts

Bottom line is that if we can imagine it, we can make it happen

Technology Development and Forecasting

We need to have the foresight to predict future trends as it will be where we are all heading to. Learnt about the many different tools used as well as between technology assessment, forecasting and foresight.

Final Remarks

This has been a fulfilling course where I have gained a lot of knowledge and insights from everyone in the class. Although the workload is rather heavy, I feel that the individual and group report really helps you to gain a better perspective on different matters. I have learnt to open my mind to more possibilities and not be too critical and deem something to be impossible. After all, never say never as change is the only constant. Thanks to Prof, TA, and all classmates!

TWC Thoughts Week 13/ Sesion 12

Today is the final session of a very enriching TWC experience with Prof Shahi. We had quite a few presentations today as one group from last week had to bring over their presentation due to time constraints.

Group Project Presentation

We had 5 group presentations today. And the topics covers a wide range from Prosethetics to Sex.

1.      Mind Controlled Prosethetics

Group 4(of the previous week) presented on Mind Controlled Prosthetics and I thought that it was a very intriguing presentation. I have learnt a lot ranging from the strength of prosthetic limbs being able to exceed any possible human strength and the ability of prosthetic limbs giving users a sense of touch. With the advent of 3D printing, these prosthetics could become really affordable to the common handicapped person. However with these developments comes certain implication as well. As mentioned in my individual paper, athletes who are enhanced with these prosthetics would have a large advantage over able bodied athletes in competitions. Hence there has to be a need to differentiate these 2 different types of athletes. Perhaps sporting authorities come up with a separate class of competition where these enhanced athletes can compete in. Another significant implication would be the use of prosthetics as a means to commit crime. As Sam mentioned, these limbs do not leave fingerprints and can exert large amounts of force. So this implication does not seem too far-fetched. Nevertheless, the benefits are pretty exciting isn’t it?

2.      Transhumanism

Group 1(for the session) presented on Transhumanism which I thought the content was rather similar to the previous group. However this group raised a very relevant point with regards to healthy and physically intact individuals choosing to replace their body parts with prosthetic. This will not sound inconceivable when prosthetics in the market far exceed human capabilities. Another important benefit would be the use of prosthetics for military purposes. Soldiers who lost their limbs during missions could get new limbs and carry on with their frontline duties.

3.      Food for the Future

Group 2 started their presentation with a very refreshing skit of a traditional farmer vs a huge conglomerate that uses high tech methods for farming. The farmer then posed the same question as Yali about the inequality in their situations. What I found most interesting about the presentation would be the future food preservation techniques. There are already experiments done on burgers from Macdonalds’ showing how they do not change in appearance after left in the open for many days, and even dogs do not want to go near to the burgers. Now, there is even the SuperSandwich which can last 3-5 years without refrigeration. Even if the scientists tell us that it is safe to eat these burgers, I shudder to think about the long term health implications that this could have on our bodies. What I felt this group could have done better was to include how to ensure food security among the developing countries as such food preservation and biotechnology would not be easily accessible to these countries. Even the smartphone application that the group mentioned for eradicating food wastage would not work in developing countries as the poor do not have the means to buy a smartphone.

4.      Sex and Advertisements

At first when I heard of this topic, I was left wondering how far can the development of sex in advertisements be linked to technology in the past present future sense, but I have to say this group made the link well. The future of sex advertising was particularly interesting as there is 3D sex ads added with augmented reality, which is just every guy’s dreams. The fact that facial recognition combined can be used to identify the target audience is also helpful as the young and impressionable will not see these ads in forms like augmented reality. Those who have squeaky clean record or those simply not interested in explicit content will also be spared from these content because of their previous “search histories”. However, the group acknowledged the sex advertising would bring about many negative implications on the society so there is a delicate balance for companies to strike.

5.      Virtual Reality

The last group presented on virtual reality. Their introduction I thought was fantastic where it showcased virtual reality well. The rest of the presentation was about all the possibilities of virtual reality such as augmented reality, which I feel will really revolutionise the world, starting with Google Glasses.

Personal Rating

As a whole, the presentations were insightful and interesting to keep my interest levels high throughout. Would give it a 9.5/10! What a fitting way to end my TWC journey!(at least before finals)

TWC thoughts Week 12/ Session 11

Prof started lesson by telling us that as university students writing an academic report, it is absolutely crucial to attribute any borrowed idea to its authors. Even so, we cannot just copy and paste the entire section into our own report. Instead we will have to paraphrase the entire sentence so as not to commit plagiarism. For myself, I had an 18% index on turnitin but when I opened the report, I could see chucks of work that were highlighted which signifies that it appeared somewhere else. This shows that a low turnitin index is not sufficient, we must also ensure that we do not lift any information from any outside source. After viewing the document I immediately knew that I had work to do.

Digressing a bit, I feel that we have to change our habits of copy and pasting because for other modules, we will not have a chance to check turnitin before confirming our final submission, unlike TWC.

Another interesting quote from Prof that I should take note of, “It is only when you are able to explain a concept/idea to a 10 year old kid that you truly understand it. Many a times, we think that we know it all, but when asked to explain, we will hide behind all the jargons and technical terms and not give a proper explanation. Only when we are able to explain in simple language can we claim to fully understand something.

Group Projects Presentation

This session of TWC will be one where we will start to present our group projects through an interactive website. Earlier, Prof mentioned that there was a distinct difference between presenting information through a report and website. I cannot agree more with this. Compared to our individual report, we had to incorporate a lot more interactive elements such as videos and pictures as this would capture the viewer’s attention much better than plain text.

1.      Futuristic Buildings

My group’s presentation was the first and we stepped up to present our findings and research to the class. Throughout our research, we showed the class the way we think that buildings will evolve and progress through 5 elements: Sustainability, Susceptibility, Speed, Spaces, and Smashing designs. We learnt a lot through the research process. For eg, how Taipei 101 counters earthquakes and buildings through a huge internal pendulum .

2.      Clean Energy

Group 2 shared about clean energy and the many forms of it. Although their presentation was rather content heavy, I liked their incorporation of case studies into the website, especially the China and Masdar City case study.

3.      Nanotechnology

Group 3 shared about nanotechnology and I found their website highly simple and sleek to navigate around. Information is also presented in an easy to read manner. Through their presentation, I’ve learnt about Nano energy, (eg. fuel cells and solar cells) and it’s potential. One worry I have would be the social implications of nanotechnology. Like a lot of new technology, this has the potential to exacerbate the gap between developed and developing countries, thereby bringing more inequality to the world.

Personal Rating

Today’s lesson was pretty refreshing from the normal classes and I felt that all groups did their research thoroughly. Would rate the class 9/10.