TWC Lesson 10

Brief Summary

The lesson started out with a brief summary of what we went through in our past lessons. Afterwards we watched a very interesting video of a man showing the 20 upcoming technologies. We were then brought through the various methods of technology assessment and forecasting.

Interesting observations

By using gaming as a method of foresight by stimulating the scenarios to derive the possible implications of the technology. In my opinion, I believe gaming really does has a lot of potential which are not utilized fully. I have read and posted an article to the Facebook page regarding how gaming helped solve the biological configurations of the AID virus recently, and it was a really good example of how gaming can be utilized to solve real live problems. I believe gaming works well for problem solving as it adds a level of fun to the problem solving, and this provides great motivation for users to want to solve and work on the problem.  I have personally known many friends that could stay on their computers for almost 16 hours a day, only stopping to eat. If we could somehow retain the fun aspects in gaming and integrate the problem into the game itself, I believe it would be a great problem solving tool. Furthermore, the gamers population normally doesn’t get paid to play the game, hence the labor cost could be considered almost negligible. If we could somehow integrate upcoming technology that needs to be assessed into a game, we would probably be able 

to come up with the implications that follow that technology.  

There is also a need for nations to prioritize and carefully choose what sorts of industry/research it should venture into. One aspect of technology assessment is of whether the technology is worth venturing upon, and countries should invest greatly into such technology assessment efforts as they would determine the direction of where the country is heading. There is a global shift towards cleaner sources of energy like solar and nuclear, and people are moving away from the usage of fossil fuels as energy. In this case I believe countries like Nigeria should move away from their reliance on the trade of petroleum and diversify their economies. I have learnt in a Leadership&Team building course that the ruler of Dubai recognized that solely relying on the sale of fossil fuels would not benefit his city in the long run, and he came up with a series of plans like the opening of free trade zones to attract major companies into his city. These were due to good foresight and the good technology assessment of petroleum as a declining industry.

There was something interesting that I have often observe, that the type of movies screened in those times actually kind of shows what the near future contains for us. For example, the recent movies such as Resident Evil, The Island or even Jurassic Park showcases some of the issues that may arise due to cloning. Movies like Alien vs Predator and The Avengers has actually showcased mankind’s curiosity about outer space, of the recent hype into venturing into outer space.  Although most of the scenarios are plain science fiction, 

there are many aspects of the movies that actually seem pretty plausible.

Key takeaways.

Technology assessment and forecasting is a vital process for any organization. It is vital as it helps predict what sort of issues could arise from the implementation of the said technology, and whether the technology would benefit mankind as a whole. In my opinion, I believe that technological forecasting would be of greater important than technological assessment as there are less sunk cost when you identify the issue early, hence the idea can be scrapped more easily. As compared to if millions have already been spent on a project and a major issue is found, organizations will be more reluctant to scrap the project but might instead try to cover up for the issue.

Issues for discussion

I realized there were not really any in-depth discussion of some key technology assessment and forecasting methods. I understood what the topic was about but didn’t really understand how they actually carried out the forecasting and assessment. Perhaps we could have discussed upon one prominent case study of a particular forecasting/assessment case.

Personal Rating

I give this class a 7/10. The information given was relevant but perhaps some specific cases could help clarify some doubts.