Session 9 - Emerging Technologies

This week we were exposed to a bunch of emerging technologies which are more emerged than emerging really. We were thrown into the deep end of this brave new world when Prof showed us the video on Claytronics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcaqzOUv2Ao). He also showed us videos on plastic electronics, augmented reality and on AI. In fact the AI video was on the creation of a 'perfect woman', who has been designed for a projected market of millions of lonely men. All of these fantastic ideas drew me to a rather frightening and humbling realization.

I have realised through the breadth of this course that my generation is at the cusp of an immensely important time in the history of human kind. Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that there haven't been people who didn't have immense responsibilities on them. But a certain mix of circumstances have linked our future actions much more inextricably with that of the earth and the entire human race. These circumstances are -

1. The rise of triple convergence and globalisation (From the World is Flat, a highly recommended read)

2. An impeding non renewable energy crisis, shown by the fact that peak oil and peak coal may have been reached.

3. A shift in global power after almost 500 years from West to the East.

4. The near exponentioal rate of growth of science and technology which is leading to a singularity.

5. The Internet which is now bringing people together at an ever increasing rate.

Of course there are other factor that are contributing to this situation, but my basic idea remains the same.

It is up to us now to handle this situation the best we can. We can allow ourselves to ride on this wave of emerging technology and let it carry us where it will. Or we can manage innovation and lead it in the way that is the most beneficial for mankind.

And lead it we shall. The efforts of my fellow students in this class have convinced me that we are going in the right direction. And I hope that the time to come will be a good one.

One emerging technology that I want to talk about is synthetic biology. I came across this while researching my presentation. It's basically making new life by using tools developed and discovered while doing traditional genetic engineering. I won't tell you too much about it because I'm trying to understand it myself, but i'll say that this is something that might make biology the science of this century. Check out this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niQ0kkgPxJk&feature=related. Andrew Hessel who is a professor at Singularity University talks about synthetic biology.

I'd rate this session a 9.

Session 8

This session we got into one of the most important topics that have been discussed in this class, energy. Our civilisation, our entire way of being is dependent almost entirely on the quality and quantity of energy that we use. Wars have been fought, countries torn apart, governments overthrown all for the need of energy.

The first thing that really caught my eye was the fact that we were once completely dependent on renewable energy aka wood. It it interesting to note that our energy needs have sky rocketed in the past 200 years. The last 200 years have also been the golden age of technology and to a lesser extent science. Rapid strides in scientific knowledge and technical know-how has exponentially increased our energy needs. An ever growing population hasn't exactly helped.

However science has also provided us more efficient ways of using energy, preventing a Malthusian end to our existence. However scientists postulate that we have reached the peak of the non renewable energy usage. Basically its all downhill from here.

However one of the key points I have taken away from this class can be applied here. A leader looks at adversity and see opportunity and that is what is happening. Opportunities exist in the production of transport, solar cells etc which use clean energy. An example is Shai Agassi, a man who quit a highly lucrative career at SAP AG, to start a company called Better Place which innovates in alternative energies for transport and electric cars. I'll post his blog and TED speech on the FB page.

Another interesting idea was the development of a prize for innovation in clean energies. Two prizes like this exist, the Zayed Future Energy Prize (http://www.zayedfutureenergyprize.com/) and the MIT Clean Energy Prize(http://mitcep.com/)

I would rate this session a 9.

Session 7

This week we talked more about Bio-Business. We were talked mainly about agriculture and issues such as world hunger, food security and biotechnology. The prof also reiterated his point about the classification of opportunities. He talked about the summit, valley and cloud opportunities. It came to mind that we are looking at the summit of one of the greatest opportunities in agribiology and agriculture. In the next 20-25 years we will have to increase our food production substantially to care of burgeoning population needs. However we have the capability now to feed 10 billion people but to due to poor change management we haven't been able to take advantage of it.

In keeping with this point, the paper that really caught my eye was Ending World Hunger by Norman Borlaug. The point he made ties up with that of disruptive innovation in week 6. People don't accept change because it would require them spending money, time and energy in understanding the implications and requirements of the new technology. And that brings us to where we always been at, the fact that change management and change leadership are almost as integral as the development of the technology that causes that change. In the future we must look to people to push disruptive innovation until it becomes the market norm.

Also there was this debate about vegetarian vs non vegetarian food. And also the prof also told us about food that is made from faeces. He talked about how they can make vegetarian food taste and look like non veg and how it can be genetically engineered to give the same nutrients present in non veg food such as proteins etc. Again I think the acceptance of food such as this depends on the marketing and the development of the product, which takes us back to the idea of change management.

Food security was also of the major points that was discussed in the class. I think that the definition of food security needs to be amended. We need to think about food security in terms of self sufficiency. The world is becoming an increasingly urban place and we need to think about food in terms of being self sufficient, even in urban areas. And the technologies that we talked about in class such as microbe manufacturing etc.

The key take aways in this class would be the ideas about world hunger and the green revolution as given by norman borlaug, the wonderful presentations the ideas on food security. I did not know that the world food situation was so volatile and will try to contribute at a personal level as much as possible.

I rate the session a 8/10.