Week 10 Emerging technologies

Executive summary

Today prof started with the quote “When we are able to grow the resources which we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability” – Gurinder. This session focuses on biotech corps and its numerous benefits such as feeding ore people using less land and leaving behind lesser carbon footprint. This is in tandem with the concept of a shift away from a linear modal of food production to one that is cyclical.

Interesting observations and ideas

The most interesting observation about today was Siemens Ecar. What is so interesting about the Ecar is that it functions solely on electricity and not on petrol or diesel. To me, the total electrification of the car will make enable us to make headway in two of our most important ventures in today’s time, namely gains on energy conservation and the expansion of the electrical and electronics industry.

Our car-based society is one which is highly inefficient. Due to the high emphasis on sole ownership of cars, cars are utilized less than 4% of their useful lifetime! This means that precious resources such as landscape is being wasted when the car is parked. Cars also consume large amounts of energy and it accounts for up to 40% of Americas total energy output! They are one of the major cause of air pollution and environmental degradation.

With these Ecars, the electrical and electronics industry will also have a massive upheaval. There will be increased jobs and greater RnD into the electrical and electronics sector. This will lead to greater conservation of natural resources as electrical energy do not depend on natural resources. Air pollution and the extent of environmental degradation will also be massively reduced!

Key Takeaways:

In one of the readings : Reading 4, the author talked about augmented reality. Augmentd reality is currently still underdeveloped and its full potential are still not able to be conceived at this point of time due to the lack of research and investment in it. However the reality is that the potential of augmented reality is one of Hollywood proportions. With just a small computer that one can carry on his or her body, the computer is able to recognize the environment that the user is in, analyse the data and finally transmit the most meaningful and useful data to the user.

This gives the user a more wholesome experience of the environment. Why do I say so. Remember when you were young, you were so curious about the environment and sometimes your parents were not able to provide you with a satisfactory answer to your inquisitive question about the environment. With this devise, one would be able to learn more and know more about the environment and things around them. This technology is applicable to people of any age group, be it teenager, adults or the elderly people. With this, education knows no boundaries as it can happen anytime and anywhere and we can finally say that learning never stops.

Ratings

I would rate today’s lesson 8 out of 10. Today we had quite a number of interesting presentations and they were really quit interesting