New and Emerging Technology

Today’s lesson was on new & emerging technology. I really enjoyed this week’s lesson as I felt that it really stretched our imaginations on the future types of technology that we’ll have. We cannot control what lies ahead of us and hence, it allows room for our imagination to run wild. With the rapid advancement of technology, I firmly believe that the future technology will be much more magnificent. Quoting from what Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. Knowledge is what everyone knows and hence, it’s the same across everywhere. People all get the same information and there’s nothing special about anything. However, imagination on the other hand is different. It is based on how an individual thinks and rarely do people think alike.  And this makes it different from the rest. It is more important as it allows us to differentiate things and people. Hence, with this imagination, it leads to more innovative inventions being introduced and we can expect a great difference in the area of technology as compared to now.

This leads me to one really interesting thing that I got out of reading 4 and that is augmented reality. It states that augmented reality holds both tremendous creative potential and truly horrifying potential for abuse.  The reading links augmented reality to education. It gave an example of having a tiny computer worn on the wrist or around the waist, would recognize the geometry and the content user’s immediate environment and overlay that environment with meaningful images and sounds for specific purposes. It went on to talk about augmented technology immersing individuals in experiential learning environments. I found this really interesting and really look forward to such a technology. This would greatly help us in learning and allow us to learn in a faster way, as we’re able to experience what we are learning. Also, I feel that it is easier for us to learn new things when we experience it. This is because; we are able to remember better the things that we have done before. This also brings us away from the mundane school lessons that we now have and it’ll also bring more fun towards learning.

I find this week’s presentation much different from the usual presentation topics since we’re talking about emerging technology and hence the topics discussed were really fresh.  I find the presentation on driverless car really interesting; the fact that we won’t have anyone being our chauffer picking us up or the fact that we’ll be in a taxi without a driver. It’s really amazing how technology can get. However, I don’t think I’ll have the full 100% confidence to sit in a driverless car. Like what was brought up in class, it’s really dangerous to have cars with drivers and without drivers on the road. 

Then again, just like how there are 2 sides of a coin, I think that driverless car has its advantage too. For instance, it saves us all the trouble standing under the hot sun, spending a long time hiring a taxi and also, there may be cases whereby the driver will not be certain of the directions of certain places. Hence, with the driverless car, we need not afraid that the driver will not be familiar with the place that we want to go.

Another fact that I found rally amazing was from the presentation on nuclear fusion. The fact that our computer battery can actually provide us with so much energy really strikes me. We were told that that the computer battery that we use, which makes use of lithium, mixed together with water can actually provide us with electricity that can last us for 3 years. Hence, I don’t see any harm for us not encouraging nuclear fusion. Never knew a small computer battery that we all own, can do so much wonders. Imagine how much electricity we can generate given the fact that almost everyone owns a laptop.

We were also introduced to a new quote, “In terms of the development and application of new and emerging technologies, we are limited only by our imagination- and, all too often, the lack of there of”. I agree with this statement as nothing is impossible and impossible is nothing. It only depends on our own imagination and how we let it run. 

Class rating: 9/10