This week, my group did a presentation on “Epidemic Management”. This week, Prof Shahi brought another person who came and shed some light on the topic that we are presenting. The concept of our website was simple which allows user to navigate from point to point according to different time line and help user to grasp a better understand of the limitation faced during the era. Next presentation was on “Crowds Platform” where it makes use of cloud technology as a platform and tap on the minds of different people located across different geographically location. The website was intuitive and filled with bright colour. I like their background logo, which speaks of their “Crowds Platform”. “Crowds Platform” is about people posting the issues or business ideas online, people around the world are able to give their perspectives and providing funding. This allows people who have limited capital to be able to start up their business reshape their business model. I felt that it was an interesting business model where it encourages and might even spur up more potential business entrepreneurs to take up the challenge and start up their very own business. With the different comments from different cultural background, they gain a better understanding on what the world wants thus giving them these business entrepreneurs the confidences they very much needed. The final group of this week presented on “Wild Green Urbanization Project”. In today world, well developed countries often label environment as the” concrete jungle”. High-rise building everywhere and more often than not, these countries consumed energy much more that they is allocated. Thus, there is a need for better planning, improving the building to save more energy, maximising the land space. It has an interesting concept and perhaps in the near future, government agencies may look at this proposal had better integrate into their plan on how they make it a reality. Overall, this past 13 weeks, I have gained much insight on the implication of technology and how it not only changes our everyday lives but also how it became a multiplier for production. In addition, we learn how to analyse the different technology and predict how it might change the world. Though this course, each time I see an emerging technology or what people claimed it to be, I would pay attention to it and think of the different application of it. In the past, I often believe what companies always claimed that this is the next “big Change” that will occurs, but now I became sceptical as I might have expected much more as I was able to see the different application behind it. How it not only improve the quality of lives but also what harms it does to the environment. We only have one Earth. If we do not use technology to help make it a “better” world and leave it to the next generation, will it be too late then? If we claimed that we are living in an advance world, why are we doing more “harm” to the earth compare to the past? Are we really maximising the true potential of the available technology that we have? There seems to be many questions we could ask in this class but not all could really be answer. At times, the answer could really be a sad truth that we might be turning a blind eye at. Overall, I would give 10 out of 10 for this class as I learnt much more things and the different opinions. Something a textbook will not be able to cover!
This week presentations there were 4 group doing their presentation. What really caught my attention was designer baby. As I was thinking of the different possibility of genetic modification of DNA, sound interesting. We are able to modify the gene for the kids to allow them to be faster, smarter and stronger body. Although it may seems that we might have cross the realm of God where we are able to alter what we want for the next generation but there are still a lot of implications and limitation. Although the team mention a point, the society might not be receptive to this idea. Moreover, it is also costly. Though this may create another society divide where the rich get richer and the income distribution will be wider if this plan was to be approval and widely adopted. Another issues that may arises is that the next generation of kids will no longer have a fair playing field as normal kids will then have to compete with these “modified” kids and perhaps these kids might even be ostracised. From the medical perspective, it may look good. As the future generation might not have to worry about the illness faced in this current generation, as their immunity system is much stronger and even better yet, they will not have to inherit the “flaws” of their parents such as heart diseases. Overall, I felt the group did a fair job in covering the topic they were presenting. Next was the Nano Medicine. It was an interesting concept where medicine tackles the virus at “cell” range. The content of the layout of their website though seems a little gloomy but it fits the Halloween theme, as that was what they were aiming for. The third group presented on space tourism. Throughout history, man has always dreamt about travelling to space but making it as a tourism hub. Well that was an fascinating idea. Although the cost of travelling to space may seems like only for the really “RICH” people but perhaps in the future where technology advances hopefully this will drives the cost down which allows common folk to travel to space. Well, that is something worth looking forward to. Finally the last group of the day presented on plastic vortex, which is about environment awareness. During the presentation, I like the idea where it seems like we are being taken on a trip of discovery where we “travelled” to different parts of the world and see the mess we have created. The issue that the team was facing was clearly put across where it is not as simple as just clearing plastic trash. We have to balance out clearing the trash in the most efficient way concurrently not destroy the ecosystem of the sea. This week, I felt that I have gain much insight of the world current issue and more importantly, it has provided me a greater insight of where the medical industry is heading. I can’t wait for next week lesson as my group will be sharing on the epidemic management.
Today topic was on assessing technology and its success rate. Assessing these technology is an important factor for the future based on what other technologies. Therefore, today, it is about analysing the technology and its effects. Interestingly, it is closely related to the my previous post regarding the foresight. When assessing technology especially in this current world we are living in, technology evolves at an exponential rate. Every six months, the computer industry will introduce to the market a new product that is faster, lighter laptop. Thus, in today world, companies are spending huge amount of capital in research and development in order to push technology to its limits.
However, although the technology may be advanced, the method of assessment should also pay attention on the society perception of it. These technology should seeks to achieve more benefits that its predecessors. If they cause a negative impact to society and the environment, the product will not be very receptive by the general public. Today, there is a rising trend in companies looking to invest in green technology.
In some way, technology itself is neutral, it all depends on how we develop and implement them so that we are able to bring forth its capabilities to benefit humanity. It depends on what the inventor had in mind, the world that he or she was hoping to see and work towards it. Just like one of the reading this week, we must have dream a world we hope to achieve and scientist would then work towards it with the current technology that is available. Evaluating these technologies would give us a direction that we are moving into sustainability rather than evolutionary technology.
As we come to an end of the course lesson, I felt that today lesson was a summary of what we have learnt thus far. Now equipped with the skill, broader our perception on the technology and its implication it has. To cut a long story short, I would rate today lesson 9/10.
Today topic was on emerging and future technologies. It was rather interesting topic as we slowly explore the realms of what technology would be like in the near future. Prof Shahi shows us video of plastic logic. Although it seems like to be at its infant stage, but we can expect great thing from it. Though this video shows how it is being use in the medical industry however, I believe that we should be able to apply this technology to other industry. The next video was on reality argument. Although it seems that this type of software has been around for a while, however the software was not stable and at times unable to return the any result. Still, it is something that we can look forward to.
Above was the interpretation of the future. Thought there were other video showing us different aspect of it. It was rather interesting. However, in all these emerging technology, what is required of them is foresight. Foresight is the abaility to anticipate and predict what is to come in the near future. They have to provide solution for issues that the world is currently facing. With foresight, the next step is how to implement what they see; execution. However, the change is always faced with strong resistant, thus these leader who wish for change to happen have to instil a need in people. Fostering a desire in people that these is a need to change, progress and move on. Like earlier on the presentation in class was on the topic where will AI take over the world? Giving computer a “conscience” perhaps these AI will deem human as parasite of the world and thus get rid of us? Well, it was really an interesting thought there and at time a scary world if AI would be there to control us.
Overall, today lesson was interesting and I saw many interesting innovation that I some I thought might be impossible. I will give this week lesson 8/10.
This week lesson was on energy consumption. Prof Shahi shared with the class a video on country where its government encourages it people to invest in solar energy. From the video, there was this farmer who did not have enough capital to invest in the energy so he went to the bank and borrow. What was really surprising was that the bank approval even though it was a huge amount of it. So after that, that farmer set up the solar panel across his land. After that, he would sell all the energy generated from the solar panel back to government and the government would charge them lesser for the energy that they had consumed. That country was Germany.
Interestingly, there was news of them shutting down their nuclear power plants by 2022 as they slowly move to recyclable energy. Today one of the readings was on the consumption by the world. Interestingly, Singapore has also consumed much more energy compare to other country of its size. Now why was that? Is it because the more we advance in technology the more we will consume? From the article, I also noted that developing countries also consume a lot of those non-recyclable energy. Perhaps, going green requires a lot of capital as these countries could not afford it. If that is true, then Singapore should perhaps move towards recyclable energy and not consume more than what is required of us.
There was this slide where Prof Shahi shared with the class the possible solutions the government could do with the pro and con. Looking at the slides, I felt that the possible ways where the government could look at is through education. Teaches the next generation to important of energy saving and why should we invest in recyclable energy. For the current generation, the government should use incentive to entice its people to invest in going green. Though it may seems to be a huge investment by individual government but I felt that it would be worthwhile as we slowly shift away from using not replenish able energy. This week class presentation was also shows us very interesting ways on how to save energy and also recycle them.
Overall, I would rate this week lesson 7/10.
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Individual Topical Review Report
Executive Summary
The aim of this paper is to examine how the invention of Internet has bought about the rise of computer and how Tablet Personal Computer (PC) in particular, will bring about the change in the way people work and their behaviour. This paper draws attention to the fact that though computer has been around since 1936, it was not until late 1990s where more consumers begin to adopt the use of computer. Couple with the impact of the introduction of Internet made available, it has shape the way how consumer shop, change in the business model of the company to follow the trend. In the past, consumer has to accept whatever the corporations offers them but in the present day, the trend seems to be reverse as consumer are empowered and they have more option to choose from. It is recommended that company begin to look at the new prospective on how the new uprising product could have an impact to their business model and remodel their business model to suit the upcoming trend.
Introduction
We often heard the saying that we are living in fast pace world. Change happens at a rapid pace. Change can happen in every aspect of our life and these changes constantly pose us a question: To change or not to change. A decision we have to make. There is close to impossible for anyone to be a fence sitter. We have to make the decision. Either we rise up, be the change, and mould the future; or we sit back, disregard the change, and let it pass by us and soon we will soon phase out from society. We will inspect closely at how the birth of the Internet has bought about the rise of computer usage in society and affected people behaviour in their daily life. We will also look at how these computers has played a huge part in our daily life so much so that we as consumer will feel awkward living without it. These computers have shaped society in their workplace and change the way society does things. Next, we will inspect how the next innovation Tablet Personal Computer, which is the new up and rising revolution that will change society behaviour and how firm can, has a part in it; be the frontier of the change or phase out? In the first part of this paper, we will look at how the Internet brought about the change in the way people communicate and their behaviour. The consumer in today world is very different compare to the people 30 years ago. For now, let us focus on the historical background of the computer and the Internet.
Part 1: The Historical Perspective
Computer has come a long way since it was first invented at the beginning of World War II. The first computer can be trace back to the year 1936, where it started out as a mechanical calculator called the Z1. It was invented by a construction engineer name Konrad Zuse. Though it was unprecedented technology back then, he failed to persuade the German government to continue to invest in this technology and they put a halt his research. Luckily that did not stop him as he managed to smuggle out some of the technologies and he continued to assemble the next computer Switzerland. Still, computer has not me commercialised until 1951 where Dr. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly managed to build a computer with an amazing capability of predicating the presidential race result. This in turn led to rise in a firm invested heavily in this technology as they saw the potential of what it could bring and soon became the world largest computer company known till dated. International Business Machine (IBM). Conversely, the idea of the transmitting information across the network did not occur till 1969. ARPAnet, the ancestor of the Internet was developed where the military use it to safeguard the flow of information between the computers located across different military facilities. ARPAnet also spring forth other innovation such as E-mail, telnet. Soon, more non-military personnel user starts to access more frequently to the network, the military decided that the network no longer safe to transmit information across the network and created their own personal network. University and other researcher started connecting computer together and form a new network called Local Area Network (LAN). Soon, the people wanted to link up more and more computer from different area this technology quickly branch out to what the world has today, the Internet.
Meanwhile in 1980, though many companies have starting building faster computer to handle more complex software, however their primary targeted was the commercial world. All these will soon change as IBM’s representatives met up with Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft. They began discussing about the plan on designing and building computer for home user personal need. IBM recognises that there was a growing trend in the consumer where people wanted computer for their own personal usages. Thus, they decided to go ahead with the plan to build their own product line of personal computer incorporating Microsoft Operating System. IBM took the first step into the new niche market, started the new trend. Soon after four months into the launch of their new computer codename Acorn, Time Magazine named the computer, “man of the year”. From there on, more and more companies started to play the catch up game and build more computers for personal usage or more commonly known as Desktop PC.
Although in the 1980s, PC was introduce to the society, there was not many of family owns computer. Statistics from the Statistics U.S. Department of Labor has shown that in the 1990, there were only 15% of household who owns a computer. One of the observations was that back then; most of the people felt that they do not require computer at their home, as it does not really affect their daily life. Moreover, those household who owns these computers are belong to the higher educated category and the usage of the computers was due to work related. Interestedly though, there were not many household owns these personal computer but the statistic data indicates there is still a rising figure of household are purchasing these desktop computer as the year progress. So then how did these computers play a huge role in our daily life as mention earlier? To understand the impact of the computer, we have to take a closer look at the consumer’s behaviour pattern. More importantly, we have to observe how it has made vast different in our everyday life.
The consumer’s behaviour pattern
So then, what causes the change in the consumer’s behaviour? Most business that would might tell us that it is consumerism. So then, what is consumerism? What is at the heart of consumerism? Firstly, it is all about the consumer and answering their wants or needs. The company invested in their research and develop in product they thought it is going to be the next big thing and if they wish to successfully sell their products, they need influence foster a greater sense of desire to appeal to the consumer to purchases their product in greater quantity. Thus, most business has invested in some aspect or another to market their product in order to appeal their product to the consumer, hoping that the consumer will consider making a purchase for their product. In today world, high perceptive company such as Apple recognised the important of marketing. They managed to change the consumer’s want to a need. Before their official launch of the IPhone, people all around world starting queuing at the store in hope of getting their hands on the phone. Their product such as MacBook Air where their technology may not be the most sophisticated as compare to their competitor but Apple managed to chasm so many consumers into buying the MacBook Air with its impressive graphic operating system. As a direct result of that, Apple managed to yields millions of dollars of revenue each month. A question one may ask is what does technology have to do with this? Well if the company recognise the important of marketing, uses the technology that is currently available, reach out to the consumer, and market their product, the company would be able to find they stand a higher chance of selling their product to the consumers. That being said, consumer’s behaviour has also changed compare to the past and understanding the differences will help the company in choosing the right technology to advertise to the consumer.
Back in the old days, how the consumers go around obtaining their daily necessity? How did consumer know what is the latest product and what is good for them? It is safe to assume that a large number of populations in the past did not have Internet access 30 years ago, as it was at its early stages. Most Internet Services Provider also places their focus on the commercial need for the Internet. In the 1980s, how then, did my parent’s generation aware of the latest product or innovation? They did not have access to Internet and so most companies would not consider advertising their product on the Internet like today. Well there was the good old letterbox, which continues to exist until today. According to my parents, most of the advertisement was done through the television, newspaper, radio, flyers and other physical printed hard copies handed to them or spammed in their letterbox. If they are interested in that particular product, they have to either call the company to find out more about the product or take a trip down to the store and find out more regarding the product. Back then, even mobile phone was not a common item that people carry with them.
For students, researchers or readers, to gather information or just picking up books to read, they have to go to the library and search for it physically for the book they required. If they are unable to find it, they have to search for the bookstore phone number in the phone book and make a call to enquire whether the bookstore have the book they required. After gathering all there information, they have to either place an order or make their way down to the store to purchases the book. Compare to the present day, consumer is very different in term of shopping or gather information. It is obvious that the behaviour of consumer has change since then.
The Present day (Current Situation)
In the world we are living today, consumers are able access to a very power innovation called the Internet. The Internet has given consumer a platform to exchange information across different countries and a wider range of selection and choices of product. It also allows us to communicate and do online transaction. Company such as Google allows the consumer to search across billions of information on the Internet and return the result based on what the consumer needs. Most business firms realised the power of Internet and adjust their business model to match the changing behaviour of consumer.
An example of a business managed to use the Internet and change the behaviour of the consumer. They made used of the Internet and become of the one of the largest corporation online. They are Amazon.com. Amazon.com founder, Jeff Benzo founded his business in 1994 and it went online in 1995. Benzo realised that consumer back then was facing an issues. People are experiencing difficult time trying to find books they want. He saw an opportunity; using the Internet as the platform and the rising trend of household purchasing desktop. Benzo’s solution was simple, an online bookstore catalogue. Consumer would be able to view the different books across the world and purchase it all in a matter of a few simple click of a mouse. It was new domain in the book industry, he thought through his business model logically. Given the characteristics of the product and the organisation of the supply chain, a store without a physical store and warehouse, his business model seems to be the right formula, which spells success. As history continues, tell of Amazon.com success story. However, Amazon.com did not just stop at just selling books but went on selling other products. Amazon.com has reshaped the consumer’s behaviour, changing it from physically going down to the bookstore to find the book they want to switch on their computer and searching it on the online bookstore. Thus, it also sparks off the trend of blog shopping and many companies setting up websites selling their product online. Nonetheless, all these were made possible thanks to the computer, which enables it.
From this example, we can see how business changes the trend in shopping. Compare to the past, it would be time consuming to look though the phone book to find the bookstore, calling them to enquire about the book or even making a trip down to the bookstore. Many of the companies would not even consider advertise online to market their product. Amazon.com changes not only the consumers’ behaviour but also how change the game flow for the book industries. These companies saw how Amazon.com managed to reach out to a large market audience and how soon they too follow the trend.
The consumer’s behaviour pattern
Currently, people are connected via Facebook, twitter and other online social media. These changes were direct results of the current desktop selling at an affordable price. Computer manufacturer are assembling computer with a higher speed Computer Process Unit (CPU), integrating complex technologic part together and embedded inside each desktop. These computer manufacturers usually compete at prices to attract the consumer. This resulted in the rising trend of consumer and firms purchasing these desktop. An article from the entrepreneur cited that one of the 10 Social Trends in society of the year 2011 is that people are connected via social media, which I mention earlier. People go online and blog their everyday life experience on Facebook or WordPress, record and upload a video in YouTube. For some other users, they use Facebook to sell product and even organise events online. In 1990s, people have either to buy the newspaper or watch the news broadcast on the television in order to get in touch with the latest happening around the world. However, these media company realised more reader are accessing the Internet to read news, they started selling newspaper online, which allows user to subscribe to either daily or weekly news. User can also watch the news through their computer. Nowadays, it is no longer an issue to be connected to the Internet as there are hot spot or wireless access made available in most shopping centres. In today Morden world, people having a desktop could mean be cut off from society. Thus, it is very common for household to own at least a desktop. Companies also realised the rising trends of consumer shopping online and they starts to offers services such as E-payment where consumer are able to make their payment online or make transfers. This in turn spurs more people to shop online and more people hosting online shops thus creating an even ground for smaller business to compete with the large enterprise.
Virtually, all the office in today world, more often than not, we will see a desktop sitting on the desk. It is virtually impossible for an office not to have a desktop as most business communicates via the Internet. Businesses are slowly shifting from all the manual written hard copies to softcopies as it reduces cost of printing. The softcopy documents are being sent to their client or circulate within the company. Thus, desktop play a significant role in any business. As today world are also moving towards globalisation, more and more people are always on the move, travelling to different countries to work and meeting their client. The needs of a device that grant them mobility arises as desktop are unable to meet the new demand. To answer to the new demand, the computer manufacturer managed to innovate a new device called laptop. These working adult who requires mobility would purchase a laptop. With the invention of the laptop, they would be meeting their client without carrying all the heavy documents or bring their work back home if they need rush out their work. Although the laptop has the capability of a desktop and able to answer the issue of mobility, the drawback of it is that it has a short battery life and its weight. An average laptop battery life is about 3 to 4 hours before it requires the user to charge it again. For the user, finding a power point might prove to be quite a hassle as power point might be easily accessible.
Most school today have computer labs that allow their students to use the computer for education purposes. The school uses online learning tools to aid students with different learning curve. Most teacher or educator might not be able to set aside their time to every individual student and thus, posting the lesson notes online, the students are able to access these learning materials and better facilitate their learning. It also improves the productive as it allows the students on their free time to learn at their own pace. It also allows students not feel discourage when they fail online as more often than not, the material online allows them to re-do it again. For some student, failing answer in class might prove to be more daunting as compare to failing it online. This helps to build the student’s confidence. Moreover, study has shown that learning online producing and providing distance-learning courses consumes an average of 90% less energy and produces 85% fewer CO2 emissions per student than conventional face-to-face courses. This also changes the behaviour of students and teachers as they now direct their questions and doubts online the teacher would be able to handle more question more effectively. Students in tertiary level, often purchases a laptop to facilitate their learning during lesson such as downloading the lesson and making notes.
As more people are purchasing computer, being connected to the Internet, we can see that the computer has already revolutionised the way people communicated and how business market their product. The consumer today holds more power and say in a product as they have wider selection of choices. It also changes the way students learn in school. No longer is the need for teacher to meet every individual student but answer all his or her questions online via the E-Learning platform. Business has to reshape their business model to manage with the change in trends in their consumer. These changes were milder compare to 1990s where the Internet and computers were not common in the market. Nevertheless, it is a significantly shift from the corporation focus to the consumer focus. No longer has the consumer has to accept whatever the corporation gives them instead it is the other way around. The innovation of computer has bought about the empowerment to the consumer. This is a new playing field for these corporations. The new condition – society trend, the corporation has to accept these conditions.
Part 2: Looking Ahead
So then what can we expect in the future? We have to focus once again on consumerism where to focus seems to always point to one thing. What do consumer wants? Currently, consumer do not use desktop computer for a few simple reason. One of the reasons is that consumer mobility. Instead of carrying all those heavy books and documents, we would simply carry our laptop, which has electronic books and our documents. We want to be able to communicate with each other through E-mail or social media wherever we are. All of these features are embedded in the laptop, which is able to fulfil the consumer’s request. However, laptop has been in the market for a while now. Some of the laptops are even capable of replacing desktop. Conversely, two issues still linger in the mind of the consumer: the weight and the battery life of the laptop. Consumer are currently looking for a device that is light, portable, powerful, longer lasting battery life and the ease of use. The solution to the address the consumer’s wants, the Tablet PC.
Feature of Tablet PC
The Tablet PC is somewhat similar to a laptop as it still allows users to browse the Web, read books, send E-mail, watch movies, and play games. The different is that the Tablet PC offers much more portability than laptops do. It is smaller and more compact that a laptop. This means that the Tablet PC takes up lesser space in luggage, backpacks and hands. Another features is that it is able to address the issue of battery life as it offers longer battery life compare to the laptop. Tablet PC is lighter than laptops or desktop because they have no separate hard drive unit. It is light, tablets does not strain our arms as much as laptops does. Because Tablet PC is much lighter, these Tablet PCs are more manoeuvrable. The Tablet PC also has much faster boot-up sequencing. Concisely, the user will be able to power up the tablet almost in no time. No longer will user find it a hassle to shut down or booting up the Tablet PC. One interesting observation is since the moment we learn how to read, we have always to look down when reading and writing. Linking back to the computer design, the purpose of a monitor is a flat space you look down. However, there is an imperfection in the classic screen, the keyboard and mouse grouping is that we have to focus on three places, ahead for the screen, down for the keyboard, and the right side to find the mouse. With the new design of computer, which is the Tablet PC, we will not need to experience this issue again. We look down on a single surface, and the stylus is our mouse. The classic computer or laptop, we have no idea where to focus, whether it is better to look ahead or down when we work. However, I believe that looking down feels more natural. Moreover, we do not really require such a big screen. The Tablet PC screen size is about the size of a paper. If you need to view it up close, just lift it up and give it a squint. The Tablet PC’s screen is not touch sensitive. It only responds to the EMR (Electromagnetic Resonance) stylus. This means that user is able to rest your hand on the screen itself. Thus, it does not require the palm-rest space found on most laptops. Just last year, Apple INC launches its first Tablet PC product line called iPad. So then, is Tablet PC the next stage for computer?
The consumer’s behaviour pattern
In June 2009, Singapore government announced they will start installing fibre optic cable across the country and the expected completion date would in 2012. Fibre optic offers speed up to 1000 Mbps, which are 100 times faster the average current network speed and less receptive to electromagnetic interference. So how is this innovation significant? Taking into consideration of the first two questions that I have posted earlier, I believe that the Tablet PC will once again shape the behaviour pattern of society with the aid of fibre optic. Amazon.com, eBay and other online shops all have one thing in common. Without the Internet empowering them, we know that none of these companies would exist. Social Media such as Facebook too would not have existed if we were unable to connect to the Internet. Currently, we have wireless technology, which enables laptop mobility and allows it to stay connected to the Internet or other network. However, the network might not be enough to cope with the increasing number of computers joining the network. Thus, with the introduction of fibre optical, it is able to support more users to enter the network and allowing higher transfer rate of data. This will significant reduce the time taken to transfer data and it open up new door for more heavy intensive software to run across the network.
How then will Tablet PC change the behaviour of society? Well, as mention earlier in this paper if we look at the current working place, it is very common for people to travel to different places to work. When they enter their workplace, the employee will require some time to adjust their computer setting before they can start working. This result in loss in efficient and incur cost for the company. The employee in the workplace is also bounded in their cubicles. Thus, companies in the future will no longer be bounded in the “pigeon-holding” cubicles, as they will remove these wall partitions to better facilities the discussion. Desktop will be replaced by the Tablet PC as it occupy lesser work space and also employee are able to bring these Tablet PC with them if a need arises for them to meet the client or working at home. Video conferring where user uses a web-camera to communicate will be more common as the optic fibre is able to support more functions. Employee coming from different country would be able to start work almost immediately as there is no need to configure the desktop PC. When meeting client or having a company meeting, it will not be a requirement to have a hard copy of the document as both the employee and employer or client would be able to view the documents through Tablet PC. This is reduces the environment cost as the society constantly advocates going green. If the documents required any signature, all they need to do is to use the stylus and sign the Table PC.
Since, the Tablet PC is much lighter and has a longer battery life; people would be more likely to carry it with them most of the time. Other business industries such as the food industry have to consider changing some of their business process. In the near future, restaurants and other service outlets would no longer require a need to print the menu. Instead, they would use the Tablet PC to replace the conservative printed menu. Using the Tablet PC allows the company to amend the menu easily compare printed menu. For the consumer, instead of carrying all different credit cards with them, they would be able to settle the bill with just a few taps on their Tablet PC. Consumer will be more connect on the Internet more than ever as the Tablet PC is compact and small, couple with the fibre optic technology, smartphone might soon be a thing of a pass as the Tablet is much more capable and offer so much more than a smartphone. The Tablet PC can also be used as a remote control when switching on. Consumer will no longer have to figure out what which remote control to use and thus reduce significantly the waste producing each remote for each different electronic device in their home. The Tablet PC also might increases the people who are connected via the Social Media. Currently, the people are spending a lot of time on these Social Media using their laptop or desktop but since Tablet PC is light there is a high chance that that they will carry with them and always checking into these social media websites. Thus, business might consider using these social media to publicise their product and addressing issues from the consumer in a faster manner.
From the education aspect, student will no longer need to carry their entire heavy textbook or pencil case to school. The student will be able to access their coursework material Tablet PC. During exam, the teacher will no longer need to worry of printing and giving out exam script. The Tablet PC will be sufficient for the student to take the exam. This reduces the issues of teacher unable to read the student’s handwriting and able to mark the script quickly and software by then will be make available to make the exam script. Students will also uses these Tablet PC to facilitator their discussion during lesson and share it with different class across their level in a faster manner. This will hence increase the student learning productivity as knowledge is shared across the board.
Conclusion
This paper has explored how the invention of Internet has bought about the rise in usage of computer how Tablet Personal Computer (PC) in particular, will bring about the change in the way people behaviour. We look at how Amazon.com uses the Internet and the rising trends in the usage of computer and became one the biggest corporations in the world. This paper identify has identify Tablet PC as the next up and rising innovation and will once change how business interacts, the learning process of students. Business could use the paper references and think thought the implication of the innovation and the effects of it. Business firm will have to make a choice then, to lead the change or ignore the change.
References
Mary Bellis. (n.d.). The History of Computer. Retrieved September 30, 2011, from http://inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm
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This week, we continue to look at the Bio-business Revolution in the aspect of agriculture, environment life sciences and industries.
Prof Shahi starts with a quote, “when we are able to grow the resource we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability.”
What Bio-business mean to me perhaps is about maximising the yield and minimise the damage done to the environment. Prof Sharhi shows us an interesting video where human are describe as “virus”. We are “virus” to the planet Earth. Throughout history, we always destroy the natural environment before it could replenish itself. Thus, Bio-business was perhaps introduced to helps us address the need to reduce the environment cost and producing more in order to meet our demand.
There was this article title: How to feed the world in 2050. It was an interesting article as it shows how the world population will grow and hit 9.1 billion, which is about 34% increase. It not only talks about how the demand of the food will rise but the paper also attempts to address the issue. One of the points mention in the article was Food Security. This was also mention in our lesson where it is a condition where all people have access to safe and nutritious food to meet their need. Interestingly today, most of the presentation topic also happens to be about how to increase the natural resource. Currently we have technology, which enable us to produce more than enough to meet our meet that we see many countries are exporting the goods they produce. The world always tells us that we have the “cutting edge” technology but why do we still have so much pollution happening around us? One of the presenters told us that many industries have made many environment products, which are true to a large extend. However, in order to recycle these products the recycling companies have to have that particular machinery to treat it in order to recyclable. These machineries are rather costly and many of these companies might not be able to afford it. So now, we ask ourselves it the product still “recyclable”?
As I reminisce about past 6 weeks and going through the lesson once again, the word “technology” always has a huge effect on us and it constantly changes our daily life. Even now, when new product comes into the market, I find myself asking the question will this revolutionise the industry or just an evolution. Looking at the product and the technology, I also thought about the different possibility on how it might change and even improve our daily life. It has shaped my mind and I it has make me excited about new and rising technology and innovation will be introduce daily.
Overall, I would rate today lesson 8/10 as I learn a lot this week on how the different industries use technology to reduce the environment cost.
Week 6 – The BioBusiness Revolution 1: Healthcare and the Biomedical Sciences: Past, Present, Future
This week, we are looking at the future of medical technology. if you ask me, it seems that the future of medical technology look great.
The bio-business revolution has various significant effects on today’s society and the world, including developing and developed countries. As mention in the lesson, it constitutes 25 percentage of the global GDP. As our societies progress, the fight against infectious diseases becomes more and more effective with each new variation of medical advancement. However, there are limitations to our medical technology as of now. Even with best practices and capabilities, it would takes at best 2-4 weeks to isolate and definitively identify the infectious agent causing a new outbreak of disease. In today world, we have to combat with different types of virus, diseases and illness and there are always new kinds of disease, viruses each year. Looking back at history, we simple illness such as fever have killed many people, thus as we progress, medical technology advances, it brings hope to people as we are able to make vaccines and antibiotics to cope with it.
In Singapore, we are able to afford state-of-the-art equipment and resources, tracking the spread and control of disease outbreaks, molecular epidemiological tracking of the genomic transformation of infectious agents, etc… However, if we look at the world, we still find people dying due to the lack of primary health care. The thought of people dying due to unable to access drug makes one wonder why would drug be that costly. It is a basic need to have primary healthcare and drug should be something that is not costly. Prof Shahi mentioned that producing drug usually cost very little however, due to the patent right given to the companies, they charge high prices for it. Their justification? The probability of successfully developing a drug is very slim and the expenditure of it cost a lot. Thus, they have to “recover” the cost. Interesting, we look at the top 10 most profitable company, we find these companies in the list. The questions remains should the government do something about it? Well, even if they could, remove these patent right, these company will invest in innovating new drug as there are very little incentives for it. It might lead to lower innovation of new drug. It is quite a tacky question to address but perhaps we could only look forward and believe in the near future, technology not only speeds up the process but also pushes the cost down.
I came across an interesting article recently. Apparently, humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas. Apparently Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London is credited with starting this information. More interesting facts regarding DNA. A parent and child share 99.5% of the same DNA. We share 40-50% of our DNA with cabbages. Humans share 98% of their DNA with chimpanzees. Every human on earth shares 99% of their DNA with every other human. Identical twins share the exact same DNA meaning their DNA is 100% identical. We share 60% of our DNA with a fruit fly. It rather freaky but technology also helps us understand ourselves better and thus, medical team always find ways to strengthen our body. Product such as protein shakes, vitamin pills. They also find ways to “extend” our life span. Thus, Prof Shahi share an interesting thought with the class, how many of us wish to life forever? Sound like a good thing but for me I would rather not. For me, limited life span constantly reminds me to treasure people and things around me. It reminds me to live every day as if today is the “last day”. Perhaps for me, there is no tomorrow.
Overall, I would rate the lesson 7 out of 10. I am looking to next week BioBusiness Revolution: Agriculture.
Title: Technology and Disaster Management
Background/Introduction:
Occurrence of natural disasters comes in many common forms: flooding, volcanic eruption, landslides so on and so forth. These disasters cause financial impact, environmental damage, and loss of human lives. The magnitude of the loss depends on how humanity manages the disaster. To minimize loss, human ingenuity has brought us differing innovations to help predict, make faster damage assessment and manage natural disasters more effectively. Among all forms of natural disaster, the unpredictability of epidemics is one that has changed the world. Thus, our group will examine how current technology establishment has allowed us to look into epidemic management.
Objective of this report:
We hope to identify possible political, social and economic issues/implication over disease outbreaks, by looking into the trend of epidemic outbreaks. In the process, address how human attitude and aptitude has changed with each generation of epidemic outbreaks.
Historical Perspective:
1. Definition of Epidemic:
An epidemic is an outbreak often associated with disease outbreak is the occurrence of cases of disease in excess of what would normally be expected in a defined community, geographical area or season. An outbreak may occur in a restricted geographical area, or may extend over several countries. It may last for a few days or weeks, or for several years.
2. History of past outbreak
- Small pox and Plague (Black Death)
3. What was the cause of these outbreaks?
- Small pox: Virus (infect humans only)
Plague: Bacterium (infect both animals and humans)
4. Mode of transmission
- Small pox: Direct contact with infected fluids -> Occasionally by air
Plague: Direct/indirect with infected fluids/ flea bites.
5. How was the outbreak managed back then?
- Government promotes good hygiene and controls pest in the cities.
6. What are the key performance indicators for measuring successful management of these Epidemic diseases?
- GIS indicator
7. What was the technology was in place, which copes with the outbreak?
- If antibiotics are given in the early stage, plague and smallpox can be coped.
- Vaccinations prevents the spread of epidemics
- Inoculation prevents the spread of small pox
8. What was the limitation of the technology back then?
- There are vaccines against plague, but there are none commercially available (only given to a few selected people)
- Strains of bacteria are found to be antibiotic resistant
- Undesirable side effects of vaccination
Current Situation
1. Changes in Epidemic management system
- Eg. Gathering of Intelligence on epidemic outbreak has been more efficient with WHO taking up a directing role and central role at the international level.
2. What are the recent outbreaks:
- eg. H1N1, SARS, E. coli, etc. Focusing on a particular outbreak to assess changing trend, such as the medium of spread of disease.
- The use of technology to gather intelligence, copes, and subdues epidemic outbreaks.
3. The type of model currently in place to engage epidemic diseases.
- GAR
4. Limitations of current system and technology
- Technology limitations. (Time required to produce vaccine.)
- Current safety mechanisms hindering epidemic management.
- Government interventions
5. Changes in human attitude in dealing with epidemic
- Spread of fear usually spreads faster than the epidemic itself
- Human ourselves start to become the weakest link when it comes to epidemic management.
- The case of overreacting and being overly cautious. E.g. The case of H1N1
- How socially irresponsible individuals resulted in internal chaos by making unwarranted claims possible line of approach: Statistics on google searches when epidemic outbreaks (claims of cure. ) → Spread of anthrax
- How epidemic experts cope with epidemic outbreak, psychologically
- A leap of faith when it comes to dealing with epidemics
Future Considerations
Our team believes that current technology is not fully utilised and has multiple limitations. Thus, we attempt to foresee how current technology and address the impeding issues of epidemic management (*Bio security, Quarantine, ICT, Harnessing bacteria/virus strains for data analysis)
With the introduction of Internet, the world are using social media to interact, how would then epidemic management model change? An article that mention Twitter as a medium to ware future epidemic, it could also be a media platform to spread fear.
Prof Shahi started the lesson with an interesting video of Microsoft Xbox 360 kinetic. What was interesting was how they used the technology that capture human motion and come out with a program that is able to interact with human. I was amazed not by the technology but the program that is able to interact with human. The class was then led into a discussion where they thought of the pro and con of this technology. One of the points that highlighted was that there might be a possible scenario where people might be so caught up with this virtual reality that they might be withdrawn from society. However, I thought of the other end of the spectrum where this program could have benefit people who are withdraw from society and use it as a form of therapy. This could help them to reconnect back to society. It can also help people who are depressed and in need of someone to talk to. It is really an interesting innovation.
During the latter half of the lesson, Prof Shahi shared with us the about media and how technology has changed the way it disseminated information. In the past, I always felt that it was a one way communication where the we could only read the news or watch the television but as time progresses, people started to read the news off the net and more importantly, we are doing business, socialising through the net. We have more “power” than before. The power of choice was given to us, we are able to choose what and where we are getting our information. Thus, the media industry will have to find ways to attract the people. In today world, we are also facing threats from the cyberspace. Eric Schmidt, once said,” We have an opportunity for everyone in the world to have access to all the world’s information. This has never before been possible. Why is ubiquitous information so profound? It’s a tremendous equalizer. Information is power.” Considering this point, one of the presenters also mentions that the issue of privacy is overrated. However, is privacy really overrated? What kind of information are we giving up? Credit card information is being transmitted through the net. Our personal particular, password, if someone with malicious intent wants to find out these information can we really do anything about it? On the side note, Parliament recently reported that a new law would be passed regarding protecting consumer’s personal data. Below is an abstract from the report,
“So businesses everywhere (are) collecting data. The question is what do they do with the data and how do they use it. So the protection of (an) individual’s privacy and their data is important and this is the time to do it. In fact, many other countries have data protection laws in place already, it’s a good time to put (the law) into place.”
Thus, coming back on the issue being overrated, it might not be the case since the Parliament is passing the law in respect to consumer’s personal data. It just goes to show how much Singapore emphasizes on privacy. Therefore, I guess the law finally managed to catch up with technology. To end off, Prof Shahi shown an interesting observation he made. As much as we claim that we have advance in technology, did we manage to maximise the true potential of technology? Many technologies we have today can be used in so many different ways. From improving lives to enhancing life. We often hear that technology being refer as the multiplier. However, this does not seems to be the case when Prof Shahi presented to us that the production gain is only five times. I was taken aback and I started to thinking of the world where we managed to fully utilised the potential of technology. What kind of world will it be then?
I would rate today session 7 out of 10 as I have gain a different perspective of technology.
brianlitwc 