"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" said Arthur C. Clarke.
I feel that this was particularly interesting quote because it analyses the shift in advancement of technology not through the tangible advances but through the perception of what we believe is possible.
For example, we can now have smart homes where everything in your house is automated and suited to your preference without you having to lift a finger. This does indeed seem somewhat like magic. Similarly, now with the Web 3.0 and the Siri voice function of the iPhone and other voice controlled applications of smart devices, we can talk to our devices and they will know exactly what we want. This is definitely magical.
Interesting Observations and Ideas
This week, Prof talked about the idea of Web 3.0. Web 3.0 gives the idea of having a completely automated system of being. I particularly like this idea because in the future it would be cool to have everything done for you without you having to do anything yourself. This could be beneficial for the old and the disabled as they would not be as mobile and hence the web 3.0 could facilitate their daily needs.
Daniel raised the idea of a DOS attack. Having never heard of such an attack before, I went to research on it. This denial of service attack is particularly relevant to the destruction of the current internet which Daniel brought up. The idea of the internet being completely destroyed and this large amounts of data being completely lost is truly hard to imagine but it is something that we need to consider in light of our increased reliance on the internet. Particularly, we need to think about what we would do if there was one day the Internet was destroyed and if we should come up with a second Internet and how we would go about doing it.
Prof also talked about knowledge management and I raised the idea of business analytics in a firm called Qlikview where they have a principle known as the Green Grey and White. Green is the colour of your question and white is the colour of the information that answers your question. Grey on the other hand, is the colour of the questions that you did not ask but that the computer expects that you are likely to ask. This is what I think is the future of business analytics and it will become an important field in the coming days.
Key Takeaway Points
Two key takeaway point that were raised in class that I would be looking into include
1. How ICT can bridge the education and poverty gap such as through avenues of virtual reality
2. The idea of Crowd sourcing
I also suggested the idea that now there is increasing privacy and protection on information that is stored on the web as it is under a secured site which is locked by a password rather than being saved on a laptop which would cause the information to be made vulnerable in the event that the hardware was lost. However, prof suggested that while this was possible occurrence, there was a high likelihood of the information being just as threatened due to cyber criminals becoming better at hacking passwords rather than having to obtain the whole device.
This I felt put the spotlight on human behaviour, as no matter how much you try and prevent crime from happening and even as our technology develops to increase the level of privacy and safeguard our information, the criminals are working just as fast to develop ways to overcome these measures. Hence looking back at Alistair's question from the previous lesson as to whether technology is more beneficial than harmful, it really depends on how humans choose to use their technology and manage it such that it will be used for good.
Issues for discussion
1. Negative implications of Web 3.0 and how to deal with it.
I think that an issue that could have been further discussed was on how to deal with the negative implications that extends from Web 3.0. The negative implications include having a lack of privacy as the computer has knowledge of all your actions and there are hence accessible records that could be used for undesirable means. There is also the possibility of the complete destruction of the system.
If we were one day to move into Web 3.0, we have the potential to become so reliant on the automated system that in the event of the failure of the system, many of our processes which we have decided to automate on Web 3.0 would no longer work, leading to the breakdown of many operations in our society. This would be disastrous especially if Web 3.0 controls healthcare services such as dispensing medicine. It is true that all these process having once been done manually could be done manually again should a breakdown occur but if a proper emergency plan had not been set in place, to move from automated operation to manual operation could prove to be quite a challenge.
Hence, I feel that it is necessary to come up with a contingency plan should such a breakdown of the Web 3.0 occur in the future such that we will not have our lives all come to a sudden standstill.
2. The good and bad of social media
Another issue that I think could be further discussed would be that of whether social media is beneficial or harmful to our society and how it should be managed.
A harm that was raised in class which particularly resonated with me was that of social media being able to mine your personal information and they do so with your consent. This is achieved through putting a clause in their Terms and Conditions which people accept as they want to use social media such as Facebook and not accepting will prevent them from using it.
Prof also suggested that only about 14 percent of people trust advertisements from companies but peer-to-peer recommendation convinces about 90 percent of people. This means that on social media when one is recommended something in an advertisement that says these people who are your friend have 'liked' this product, you should like this product as well, a large number of people would be inclined to try that product when in fact it may not be that their friends actually found the product but instead happened to try it and this data was mined by the social media and used to advertise the product to their friends.
I feel that this should be managed and social media should not be able to obtain information about every single webpage that we have visited on their website and spread exaggerated ideas of the value of the products just from the number of visits to that webpage. Social media should only be allowed to promote the value of products that people actually demonstrate interest in such as purchasing it off the website and there should be certain limits to privacy which may be hard to determine.
Responses to the presentations
I felt that Olanda's presentation on how augmented reality can be used to facilitate the blogshop business was rather interesting and enjoying shopping myself, I can see this as a viable way forward for all types of retail outlets especially furniture shops such as IKEA who have already gone in such a direction.
Personal ratings for the session
I enjoyed this week's session because it talked about communication technology not just in the context of the proliferation of social media and handphones but about how we communicate the technology to the people around us as well as factors that improve the effectiveness of communication technology such as knowledge management.
Also, communication technology was analysed from several different contexts such as its effect on poverty, education and the digital divide which I felt gave more insight into the workings of communication technology when we looked at its direct impact on world issues.
I would give this session a rating of 8/10.
I am intrigued by the next lesson of the biobusiness revolution and how technology has affected healthcare as this is an aspect where technology is developing very quickly not just in terms of healthcare directly but also in the administrative processes surrounding healthcare and I am excited to discuss this with my classmates.
Looking forward to the next lesson!
Cheers,
Amanda Tan
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