TWC Week 10

In this lesson, we look into the possible technologies we might use in the future. The exponential growth in new technologies is expected to change the world significantly. John F. Kennedy mentions that “For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who chose to see the past and present will certainly miss the future”. Take an example on the development of clean energy. Much resources and researches are done in the past because people foresee the problem of limited natural resources, and clean energy regeneration can help meet the increasing demands of energy in the future.

Interesting Observations and Ideas

It is crucial to decide which technology to invest and build onto as it will act as a ‘tool’ to drive future issues. Similarly to having a good foresight and predict the necessary platforms to tackle rising problems, making a wrong choice could result in the waste of resources, time, and efforts, creating something that cannot help drive the future economy.

Nanotechnology is a good field of research as it is beneficial in many ways for the future. Nanotechnology deals with the restructuring of material properties at a microscopic level; resulting in different material properties and characteristics from the same component. The emergence of these materials can be used to develop structures that are much stronger and tougher, perhaps sustain complex or more power equipment that will be developed in the future. The use of such technology can be found in aircrafts, the light weight honey comb structure designed from the use of nanotechnology has help aircrafts to be tougher, enabling them to take suppressive turbulences and wind stress.

Another interesting issue apart from what is being mentioned earlier is having a strategic foresight. A similar concept to having a good foresight to spot and start researching on relevant technologies that can help drive the future, having a Strategic foresight will benefit companies to achieve their goals more effectively. Organizations are usually influenced by constraints, like financial and resources limitation, and from there make their way to attain to goals. However, that might not be the best approach. Organizations should back-cast and picture what they want to achieve and list down the aspects they should attain, prior to the goals. This method would enable them to achieve what organizations really want and put themselves in exact positions that they perceived as most desirable.
Strategic foresight commonly goes in tandem with a series of impact analysis analogies. SWOT analysis and risk assessment analysis will play a part in helping organization access their strength and weakness. From there, organizations are able to focus on their weakness and fuel in necessary actions to make their goals attainable. This greatly influences organization’s decision to exploit or research on a particular technology. For example, if organization A intents to develop a whole new generation of hand-phone, but scraped the idea as it is too costly upon their already limited funds, might do something else. Hence, the implementation of strategic foresight is one of the major influences that determine the technologies we will have in the future.

Key Take Away Points

We have to sketch out what we want to achieve in the future. If that is what we really want, and which such technologies could potentially help us lead better lives, we should start doing these researches now!
Issues for Further Discussion
Have we been heading to the right direction? One example could be the development of iphone. Is it really necessary? Could such technology, where everything is done on a touch screen basis, help us perform our task better in the future?

Personal Ratings for Session

I would rate 7 out of ten for this session. It is really interesting as it set us thinking on what technology should we go into that would benefit and help tackle future problems (limited resources, space constraints, global warming etc).