Session 10 discussions

We started off the class by discussing about the future of plastics, or more specifically, plastic chips. Currently, silicon chips are the standard in manufacturing computer chipa and circuitry mainboards. However, these silicon chips can be bulky, heavy and opaque. With plastic chips, computer chips can be further shrunk in size, allowing for smaller electronic gadgets. By making chips lighter, they allow for lighter gadgets to be manufactured, and this is in tune with the shift from PCs to mobile devices. With transparent plastic chips, aesthetically pleasing transparent gadgets, for example a transparent phone, can be manufactured. Moreover, plastic can also substitute glass as a material for use. Instead of hard, easy-to-crack screens made of glass, there will be flexible screens made from plastic. This will eliminate the frustration that many of us face when our iPhone screen cracks!

The class then talked about how innovation is driven by unmet market opportunities and needs (market driven research and development) → summit opportunities. This is true because unmet market opportunities have already defined the problem that society faces and

Supply can sometimes create demand – when people don’t realize they need it until they experience it e.g. iPhone.

Prof mentioned Albert Einstein’s quote, which said that people with imagination are more important than people with knowledge. Whereas people with knowledge are limited to what they have learnt and already know, people with imagination are not limited by any artificial boundaries. This can be drawn to the ‘Rising star and falling star’ model of dominance, where the people with imagination will be categorized under the rising star model. This is because those with imagination will be able to think out of the box and envision the future, whereas those who are bounded by their existing knowledge and do not put in the extra effort to seek new knowledge may find themselves lagging behind on the technology curve and remain stagnant.

The class viewed a video on the perfect woman, a product of two nerdy scientists from Japan and France. The video showed a robot shaped and modeled just like a real woman, though the motions are still very robotic and stiff. However, the scientists mentioned during the interview that their robot was able to interact with humans normally and were even able to answer questions that were not cued. This led me to the question: just exactly what is the boundary between humans and robots? With the existence of robots and computers that are already smarter than humans, such as the Deep Blue computer that defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a chess match and overwhelmingly defeated its opponents in a Jeopardy game, humans are no longer the sole sentinel beings on earth. With computers that can run algorithms faster than humans and better than humans, there arises a need to supervise these smart robots and make sure that they do not threaten the existence of humans. Their capabilities can be harnessed for the good of mankind, for example to help us do 3D modeling of buildings. However, when similar robots are engineered to kill humans, for example drones used by the military to carry out strikes against enemy forces, ethical questions arise and there has to be debates and careful thought put into the question as to whether they should be allowed.

How about the consequences of substituting labour with robots? In this age of pessimism and financial chaos, where unemployment is high, there really is no mood for talk on substituting more labour with machines, where the need for jobs is high. Despite talks on raising productivity by switching to automated supply chains and using more machines in service industries, the accompanying problem is always more people displaced by these machines and subsequently becoming unemployed. I believe that the need for productivity is crucial because it is the underlying reason for economic growth. However, productivity has to be carefully balanced with an expansion of jobs, whether by creating new industries or focusing more on non-substitutable jobs, such as the tourism industry or the teaching industry.

With China and India fast rising out of poverty and into the middle class, there will be an exponential growth in demand for power. That rise in demand for power will cause a similar rise in demand for copper, because copper is used for wiring. Therefore, wireless transmission of power will be a very attractive prospect if it can be made commercially viable. Not only will a huge amount of copper be saved and be used for other purposes, unsightly transmission towers will be a thing of the past, and there will be a greater ease in using and recharging electronic devices. Imagine a world where we can charge our phones simply by placing them on the table without any wires and connections, and by simply selecting a few options in the phone, the phone starts charging up by itself. This view of the future has already left me salivating and lusting for more.