Just a few days back, I was traveling in the MRT when I saw this kid, about 3 years old, on a pram with a Samsung Galaxy II in his hand. As I observed, I was amazed to see how the kid was using the phone with so much ease, playing games. I know for a fact that today if I asked my grandmother to use the phone, although she's over 70, she won't be able to use it with such ease. When I was a kid, my toy used to be my barbie doll or my Lego blocks. Today's kids have an iPad or an Xbox as their toy. Technology has indeed become "child's play"! With the passing day, there are new and emerging technologies. It's exciting and scaring to see what the future holds.
An interesting thought here is why do we need these new technologies? Again, there are several factors. Firstly, the needs of society are increasing. For instance, people used to feel too hot, so the AC was invented. Then people started feeling too cold, so the heater was invented. Basically, humans want to make their life easier and simpler. In a sense, everyone wants to be spoon fed. Every individual wants all the possible luxuries. This leads to an increased demand which needs to be satisfied by increased supply, which is achieved by inventing new technologies. Moreover, people are increasingly wanting to make their imaginations a reality. This is what is driving the emergence of new technologies and inventions. Another important point Prof mentioned in class was, supply creating demand. Nobody was interested in the iPhone till Apple created it. The supply of the iPhone created a demand for it. Same withe the tablets that people use today.
Essentially:
Smart people + smart ideas + smart money + smart partnership = New and emerging technologies.
We saw interesting videos regarding these new technologies. The perfect woman, which my friend says is "a myth" (I beg to differ!). The perfect woman is actually a result of our efforts to make our imagination a reality. Every man wishes for a perfect woman, and there it is. Again, an interesting thing discussed in class was augmented reality. What is it? Well it's the world as seen virtually. And it looks exactly the same as that in reality. In the literal sense it's modified reality. The other day I saw the movie "The Prestige" which showed Nikola Tesla's model of wireless electricity. Although it is fiction, but it's interesting to see how long it will remain fiction. Just a few years ago, electric cars were fiction. Not anymore. In fact, wireless electricity is already making it's way to becoming reality.
The readings for this week were particularly interesting. One thing which came to my notice was how one article mentioned that robotics has not lived up to it's potential. This topic is very debatable according to me. While there are so many expectations pinned on to robotics, look at nanotechnology as well which has equal or more potential. However, in spite of my discussion with Prof in class, I thought over it a lot and yet I'm not convinced that robotics hasn't lived up to it's potential. I still believe that there was probably a very high expectation off robotics and that's why people are disappointed with it's progress.
The presentations in class this week were all very interesting and I could see in class how everyone was hooked on to every presentation. All in all, I feel that this week's topic was particularly interesting.
Overall, my rating of the class: 9.5/10 :)
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