Session 9

This week's session was about future and emerging technologies.

The main point I got through this session was that when it comes to new and emerging technologies, we are only limited by our imagination. With our current development in the realm of new technologies and coupled with our innovation and creativity, the sky is our limit. Although that statement "the sky's the limit' may one day be used in the opposite sense of the original intent. This holds a massive truth in our current situation in the technological arena today. We have developed cures for multiple diseases that used to plague our humanity, we have transcended the depths of the oceans and explored what so many before us have only dreamed of doing. We have sent drones and satellites into space to observe distant worlds. The sky's the limit could one day mean the opposite, meaning we only dreamed of the sky; the day will inevitably come when we are able to travel to distant worlds and find alien cilivisations, where our wants for ever more energy can be fulfilled. Are not all these fueled originally from man's imagination? Men from our past have dreamed the things we are achieving and doing today at no blink of an eye, what more for future generations who look back?

Einstein, one of humanity's most ingenious specimens, through ONLY his thought experiments could come away with certain rules that formed the grounding for modern physics. It is then rightfully his that he should mention that 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world and all that there ever will be to know and understand.'

The lesson that we went through touched on some of the new technologies that were emerging, and these new technologies, we must constantly remind ourselves are just the tip of an iceberg. Many new technologies are constantly emerging, because the human race are a race that have the ability and the resources to make dreams reality. What we dream today, as what people dreamed in the past would be fulfilled in the future. Just like how it was man's dream to fly, and we have fulfilled it. Like how it was man's dream to communicate over long distances, we have fulfilled it via the creation of the internet, video conferencing. However there are of course certain dreams not yet fulfilled. How we cannot get transported over long distances instantly unlike our images that travel from across the world in a split of a second. How we cannot yet travel to other worlds without considerable risk and time.

It was of course a pleasure watching the new and merging technologies that prof introduced to us. Like the development of claytronics, where it is possible to change the shapes of real things into something else, a shape of a honda in to a ferrari was something we joked on. We dwelled into the topic of robotics where there was a clear message being driven across. As robotics become more advance, where they are starting to replace human limbs, and where they can help us in areas of repetitive jobs, they too have come to a phase where they could replace humans in their emotional attachments. What do I mean? The video also shown to us showed the "perfect woman" The brainchild of a japanese and a frenchman. It aims to create a robot advanced enough to provide emotional attachment for a man, in a facade of a woman. The message is then, will robotics have the potential enough to not draw a clear distinction between human and robot? The answer I believe again, is how much we are willing to let our imagination run. How much are we willing to risk for the creation of an object that could one day turn into an object of desire? Will then, there be problems arising from all these? If so, how?

All these questions are worth giving a thought for. The presentations too presented some developments and a peek into the new and future emerging technologies. Virtual reality was dwelled upon, and so was fibre optics. However, as radical as how our imagination puts us for the frontier of developing new technologies, the presentations I felt was abit lacking in creativity of this particular area, wherein a sense, it was not as revolutionary as one would want it to be. Indeed that was the only comment I had, because the presentations were thoroughly well thought and executed, but if one would be presenting on new and future tech, would one pick fibre optics as revolutionary when most undersea internet cables are already using fibre optics? Perhaps one again, could pick on something so insanely new and revolutionary that will being forth an age of new technological marvels.

Technology development is a tool to bring hope to our humanity. A tool to propel humanity into the future. If a person from the distant past saw what technology we are using today, wouldn't he think it was so magical and revolutionary? It is my hope that I can live to see the new future technologies that will awe me, that will save me from creative damnation. From prof's fav poet, "There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing." If we long it hard enough to have the passion to create something new, we will do it, and I do hope that it will be for the better for humanity.

And for the person from the past, a quote from Arthur C. Clarke "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The lesson was abit dry, but it was a thought provoking lesson. I really liked the "moments of truths" or "little enlightenments" that came to me during the course of the lesson! 8/10!