Week 10

Summary
Our lesson today delved into exciting future technologies. Interesting technologies on the future horizon like Claytronics and Plastic Electronics. The notion of plastic electronics replacing silicon chips raise many exciting future possibilities such as flexible mobile gadgets, e-newspapers. Of the emerging technologies, human-like robotics, a field in which Japan is an unmistakable leader in, yet is still quite rudimentary, whereas Biotechnologies and Nanotechnologies are already being widely used. Even Surveillance Technologies are breaking out today, such as iris scanning technologies already present today and, in terms of the mass consumer market, Apple's recent iPhone 5S that has a fingerprint recognition technology function.

Undoubtedly, one of the key takeaway points that inspired me was from George Bernard Shaw where I realised that innovators who really change the world get their ideas from opening up their minds to things that are not yet present.

Artificial Intelligence
I felt that one of the interesting discussions we had during the class was that of robots of Artificial Intelligence surpassing human intelligence, one of the facets of the Technological Singularity, which I have read about. Nevertheless, one of the things I felt I could take away from this is that the ramifications of such developments are really unknown as we are venturing into a very grey area, and there would definitely be strong views being voiced by parts of society such as politicians, religions, large companies and consumers.

Jetpacks
Chandan gave a presentation about Jetpacks that was of great interest to me and I personally hope to see an adoption of such jetpack technology, perhaps in the recreational arena, or even expanded for commuter use.

Teleportation
Professor Shahi mentioned briefly about teleportation and having read some thought experiments about it in Julian Baggini's philosophy book "The Pig that Wants to Be Eaten", I wished that more time was given on the subject.

Essentially, in the thought experiment, teleportational technology has become advanced enough to beam people from one place to another place, but involves deconstructing the person atom by atom and beaming the information to another place to be re-constructed. Therefore, while it instantly transports the user to another place, it raises the question of whether the person using the device is destroyed and replaced by a clone in the destination place? Is the person (or clone) emerging at the destination still the same person with the experiences from the past or a new person? Such philosophical questions are difficult to answer but would prove as challenges when this technology is adopted far in the future.

Overall
I would rate the session as an overall 8. I was glad that we managed to discuss about emerging technologies that I did not know about before the course, such as Claytronics.