Group Presentations 2
Thoughts about some of the presentations:
1) Ebooks – How have they affected us?
Electronic books or e-books in short are books composed in digital format for display on a computer screen or handheld device. Again, technology has redefined the way we read our books. Thick printed books would soon become a thing of the past. In the near future, on the MRTs or buses, we would see people carrying an ipad or electronic book instead of the conventional books that we see now. I find the invention of e-books beneficial to consumers as they longer need to carry around the thick books. All they need is a digital device, which is definitely lighter than a book. Thus, the invention of e-books would bring about greater convenience to avid readers!
However, as faced by all the things that are available online, e-books raise the danger of online privacy. The ease of sharing and gaining information online would bring about intellectual property right issues which I find a big concern. Thus, the government should take steps to introduce regulations such as laws to protect the rights of the authors before they implement the use of e-books across the country.
Despite the setbacks, e-books would be a useful tool for students in the future. Given the prevalent use of computers in our daily lives, there would be a phase where students no longer carry textbooks to school. All they need would be their laptops. And in their laptops would be these e-books!
2) Technology and Weather Control
Imagine a year without rain! This might sound impossible to you now, but it will no longer be in the future because of the use of weather modification techniques. Weather control employs the use of technology to alter the weather. For example, cloudseeding can be used to create more rain, or to prevent rain. The 2008 Beijing Olympics used it for the latter, in order to have a perfect ceremony without moods being dampen by the weather. I believe that the former use of cloud seeding would bring benefits to the world globally, especially to farmers in the agricultural industry.
If there is no rain, crops cannot be harvested. However, if the farmers had control over the rain, the crop yield could be maximised as they can generate just the right amount of rain needed through employing weather control technologies. In this way, crop harvests would increase exponentially as they are no longer being threatened by weather conditions. Hence, farmers would benefit from the larger amount of profits they would yield and hopefully, these would help them break out of the vicious cycle of poverty as well. One of the obstacles they might face would be the high costs of using this technology. Nevertheless, I believe that this problem can be overecome as more research is being done about this technology to discover new methods to lower the costs of this technology.
3) 3D technology
It is really amazing how the flim industry has evolved through the use of technology from 2D to 3D. Animation flims these days usually make use of this 3D technology to make the flim more interesting as the characters in the flim would feel more real as well as closer to us. I found the 3D applications in interior designing an interesting one. In the past, interior designers present their layouts to the clients in the form of paper where everything is 2D. However, through the use of this application, interior designers would be able to showcase their idea to their clients more effectively as 3D designs would enable the clients to better comprehend the concept the interior designer is introducing. This application can be further used in augmented reality. As covered in previous seminars, augmented reality is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. Hence the use of 3D technology in augmented reality will add life to the virtual image as it becomes and feels more real to our naked eyes!
Overall, I would rate the session 8.5/100 as it was a rather insightful one.
This post also marks the end of my TWC lessons. My keytakeaway for this course can be summarised in the quote that Prof Gurinder introduced to us in the first lesson, "Technology is easy. People are hard." Looking back, I enjoyed TWC lessons as they never failed to amaze with the new state of the art technology that exists today. Albeit the controversies and negative impact of certain technologies, I feel that it all delves down to Man. If Man used this technology effectively and not abuse it, all these negative repercussions would not have occured. Like if Man had controlled their use of natural resources, we would remain sustainable in the long run. However, they did not. They consumed more than what they were supposed to with increased access to these resources due to technology. Hence, they are left with the problem of insustainablity. Therefore, technology is neutral. People are the ones who determine which side they lean on.
