Session 5

This session's topic was about ICT and world change, and prof mentioned this quote which was really interesting:

"The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology, but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human." - John Naisbitt

People used to define themselves by what they can or cannot do, but with greater applications of our knowledge taking place now, we are constantly pushing boundaries, and we are able to make use of our creations to do things that we never thought possible before.

We then discussed about how gaming technology can have medical benefits. For example, people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and those with phobias have been know to benefit from games that simulate real life. I also have a friend who did an internship with a company that was trying to develop games that would help to track the progress of stroke patients who were partially paralyzed by making use of the accuracy that computers have to measure the extent of movement that a patient has. Perhaps, computers will be the physiotherapists of the future, if they can accurately record the progress that the patients have made and make recommendations.

There was also discussion on Project Natal, which is an amazing technology that allows a virtual character to interact with people just as normal humans would. This opens up a world of possibilities for people who are unable to communicate well with other people, because they would be able to build up their confidence by playing with the virtual people. However, this technology is also dangerous because people who use it too often may get caught up in the virtual world and forget how to communicate with real people. They might completely disregard all the real friendships and interactions that can happen in the real world, and instead, be overly reliant on the virtual world.

One of the interesting presentation was done by Charis, about cloud computing. She thought that the term 'cloud computing' was misleading because it gave people the impression that the data stored in clouds are actually not stored in a physical place, and that a large amount of data centers and servers that are still required to store all these information. I agree with her that some people actually have the misconception that the information stored on clouds seem to go nowhere, some people do not know that the data is really physically stored somewhere. She is also right to say that the number of data centers needed to store information is huge, but actually, cloud computing really reduces the wastage of space on the servers. Companies used to buy their own servers to host their data, but more often than not, they only use a fraction of the memory space their servers offer. On the other hand, in cloud computing, companies such as Amazon will buy the servers, use the space that they need, and allow others to store information on their servers as well. A lot more servers are hence fully utilized, which reduces the wastage of resources and fewer data centers would be needed. Therefore, I think that while it is true that a large number of data centers are still needed when cloud computing is used, I believe that that number is still much lower than the traditional way of data storage.

Rating: 8.5/10
The applications of technology in our lives present exciting new possibilities