Session Nine

Today’s session was on Emerging and Future Technologies. The class was all about thinking of the most impossible of technologies and possibilities. Our present must have been the future for many. And would they have been able to imagine such a world, filled with technologies that would have been surreal for them. Innovations one may have dreamt of and others laughed at him. I have realized that to make our future different and filled with more technologies; it is really up to us to do something about it.  

Many new innovations were discussed in class but two stood out for me. First was the use of plastic as a high tech innovation. Many electrical parts were being made of plastics. We discussed the idea of having technology embedded in our spectacles and even contact lens, where we can have a screen like that of a robot. We can have maps, information about restaurants etc. by just looking at the road or restaurant.

This brings me to the second innovation which was augmented reality. A very interesting idea, which is already starting to be used in many applications for phones. But of course there is no technology without a bad side to it. We still have to wait a while longer to hear the complaints coming in.

Another point raised by prof was the difference between sales and marketing. Sales happened when you push the product to the consumer and marketing is when you pull the consumer to the product. A very good example would be the tremendously popular, iPhone. If iPhone was sold based only on it features people may not be interested. They may find them unnecessary. But because Apple was able to market its product so well that those who did not need iPhone were also buying it. And after using it they are addicted to the features also. Reminds me of what prof mentioned about how there are technologies which we didn’t realize we needed until we used them.

But there have been many technologies that have come, failed and left. We revisited the market-driven or technology-driven concept again. And if one is new to the field of entrepreneurship, he or she should definitely aim for market driven technologies.

Presentations for the day were very wide ranged and extremely interesting. We had presentations on trans-humanization, future of aviation technology, the augmentation of robots’ presence and use and augmented reality.

I rate this session a 10/10.