Week 11

This week’s topic was on “Technology Assessment and Forecasting”. I personally felt it was an interesting topic because it was information we can use in our individual report, in which future consideration is an important section to focus on.

The video that took my breath away was “Top 3 inventions of the world!” Teleportation, nanotelephone, google earth and salt water fuel looks far-fetched but they show the possibilities the future holds for us. Teleportation may seem like a cool idea but it might be invasive. Why? This is because teleportation is a process of deconstruction of your body and reconstruction at another location. Some might feel that it is unethical as it is as though we might be playing the role of God. The most important thing is to be F.R.U.G.A.L  in whatever we do. We have to be “Fast, Urban, Tribal, Universal, Radical and Ethical” in our future decisions.

There is always a need to find out how much to allocate resources and where to allocate them. In the process, we have to take into account the risk assessment of doing so. Similar to what Yan Gen mentioned in his presentation – technological assessment in a social context – there is a need to evaluate the social impacts as well as the social and biophysical changes in any technology.

Tying in what Siew Lin mentioned about properly assessing risks, we should be all extrapolators (future can be extrapolated from past trends), patterns analysts (future is a cyclical pattern due to the needs and wants of humans), goal analysts (future is determined by a set of beliefs and values of trend setters), counter punchers (sequence of unpredictable events) and intuitors (complex mixtures of events and trends). Being solely one will just not do as every role is inextricably tied.

I will give this lesson an overall grade of 8/10 as it was rather dry. Can't wait to see the other web-based reports next week!