#10

25 October 2011

Lesson 10

This session was on Technology Assessment, giving us a clearer idea of how we can better understand future trends as we are currently in times of exponential growth of new technologies.

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind" -Winston Churchill

I love how Prof shares quotes that are relevant to the topic of the day and I particularly like this quote from this session. Indeed it is what we can imagine or dare to dream of that will be the future for us all. In fact a video shown during class describes future in an innovative way:

F = Fast
U = Urban (moving into cities)
T = Tribal (not ethnic divisions, but people with common interests)
U = Universal (change is happening all over the world)
R = Radical (change)
E = Ethical (ethics in business)

As the above points out, radical change is happening fast, and it is happening all over the world. Indeed, change is the only constant in life. And it is necessary to be able to predict future trends and assess the road ahead.

I liked one of my classmate's presentation for this session, about using story telling to predict the future trends. It was an interesting perspective that the writer of the article took. I never once considered that it was indeed because of our need to tell a story that resulted in technologies that enable us to tell stories. One very clear example would be the social networking platform, Twitter, that allows one to update about "What's Happening" right now. Our constant need to share about something interesting/bad/happy/sad/angry that happened in our lives is a key driver for such social networking platforms. Thus, I feel that story telling is indeed a new and relevant perspective in predicting future trends. Of course, we should not limit ourselves to just this method.

Like what Prof said, through his example of a crushed ball of paper vs a clean sheet of paper, where the creases on the crushed paper are the constraints that we trap ourselves in. That would be limiting our view of the future and we should instead dare to dream beyond those creases and view the world as the blank sheet of paper. Anything is possible if we dare to dream it, after all "the empires of the future are the empires of the mind". I think this has been my main takeaway throughout the 10 sessions and what Prof has been conveying to us all; to dream big and to believe in the impossible. In fact, be the ones creating the impossible and take advantage of summit opportunities!

I rate this lesson a 7.5/10! This topic was rather technical and a little hard to understand fully.