Emerging and Future Technologies

The possibilities of future technologies are really endless. “If you can imagine it, you can make it happen” was the bottomline of the lesson. Often, when we watch a movie based on the future, we would laugh at how ridiculous some of the technologies are. They may seem unrealistic to us now, but with years of research, who is to say they won’t become a reality in future.

What I found really interesting was the concept of augmented reality, which enhances our current perception of reality. Now, when we walk in malls, all we see are rows and rows of shops. If we wanted to find out more about a shop, we would have to physically walk into it and speak to a sales assistant. In future, we can get all the information we need and more by simply snapping a photo of the shop with our camera smartphones, and every single detail would be displayed on the palms of our hands. Augmented reality is a fast developing technology and there are currently applications for our smartphones which can do some basic stuff, such as translations of different languages. Researchers are even thinking of combining such technology with our spectacles or even contact lenses, but I feel this is still far off into the future. This is one future technology I am really looking forward to as I feel this would be one of the revolutionary changes that will completely alter the way we view things around us.

One of the most talked about topic of the past few weeks is the release of the iPhone 4S and Siri. The latest iPhone 4S boasts a new concept of a built in personal assistant which can actually communicate with us. Siri is currently quite new, and is now only able to perform very basic functions, such as perform searches, add reminders and answer certain questions. It is still in development, and is one to look out for. The possibilities are endless, and in future we may even have full conversations with our smart phones. However, one of the possible downsides of such technologies is whether they would reduce the number of human interactions we have in future. If artificial intelligence becomes more human like, this may reduce the need for human to human interactions. For example, if we had a burning question, we could simply ask our smartphones for the answer, rather than ask an actual human being, who may not even have the answer to our questions.

Therefore, even if the future looks exciting, we must remember to maintain a balance, and not rely too heavily on technology. I would rate the lesson a 9/10, as the topic was really interesting. Unfortunately, there is too much that could have been covered but too little time to do so.