Technology and World Change Week 11

For the lesson today, it talks about how we should prepare about in the future by forecasting it. At the same time, we were also exposed to the different methods in forecasting and assessing the technology in the future. As mentioned in class, forecasting and technology assessment is essential to gain an understanding of what kinds of changes that a new innovation might bring in tot eh country and the society overall. But it also states that with the limited resources we have on hand right now, it is quite impossible to assess every single technology and ensure that it bring in only advantage to the society and human kind.

Therefore, I actually agree with the method of forecasting what the future holds and work backwards to see if we can use it to solve the issue for today. As much as I would agree that forecasting will be important to us in many ways, but I would like to argue that forecasting is not always useful as it might prevent us from implementing and introducing a technology that would actually benefit us in the future. Although it serve as safety check for us to see if the technology is suitable to all, but at the same time it might deem something that is not beneficial now not valuable and thus eliminating the possibility of introducing them.

But I must agree that having the openness to the future technology definitely help us in having the ability to accept whatever technology that is being introduced in the near future. Imagine you are not a tech- savvy person and definitely not a person who is open to touch – screen technology. This will in turn limit them to only a certain amount of gadgets, especially mobile phone now as most of them encompasses touch- screen and internet capability. This will cause a disadvantage among their peers and eventually they will be lagging behind. Thus forecasting in this case is actually inevitable and essential for one to be prepared for the introduction of such new technologies.

I will like to rate the lesson 7/10 as the content is quite dry although it is very informative.