Technology Can Now Create, Sustain and Enhance Life
From nice-to-have to can’t-live-without.
Technology has quickly transformed from a convenience to a necessity in the space of a couple of decades.
Smartphones or mobiles in general were a novelty about 15–20 years ago — I remember owning my first phone (far from a smart one) back in 2007 when I went into a residential program at the age of 18.
Today, every 6–8 year old has their own phone — almost as a fundamental right and not really a luxury.
Television was probably the only “technological” source of entertainment for my generation growing up — the rest was all outdoor fun and games. Today, ranging from mobile phones, tablets, game stations, VR/AR and a range of modes of entertainment, there’s nothing about people’s leisure activities that isn’t digital.
The exponential advancements and the rapid adoption of technology has meant technology is now a core necessity in our lives. The things that technology can achieve are also mind-boggling. I’ll highlight some of these from the most insightful pieces written by some of the best minds on the tech-focused publication Technology Hits.
Defeating Death — Immortality Via A.I. — By Liam Sturt
We’ve quickly moved from a “futuristic sci-fi” scenario in the famous Netflix show Black Mirror’s episode Be Right Back to an actual chatbot developed by Microsoft that almost brings the dead back from their grave.
Whether this is a good thing to be able to bring back your loved ones in spirit, or a bad thing to bring unnatural elements to the eternal process of life and death is a debatable issue around ethics.
Liam, in his article says,
Microsoft has almost bridged the gap between life and death in a very twisted sense. Microsoft has filed a patent for a chatbot that can reincarnate your long-lost loved ones. This complex system would take information such as; images, voice recordings, and social media data to build a complex replication of the person in question. Using this information, the chatbot tries to create a theme that would be considered “specific” to the subject’s personality. As the machine learns more about the subject, it can emulate how they truly were/are.
Green Tech to Sustain Life and Save Environment — By Dr. Preeti Singh
At the rate we’re going, we’ll probably exhaust the limited resources Mother Earth has to offer in a few hundred years or a bit more. There’s also concerns that we may make earth unlivable for our future generations.
Climate change is an issue that is top of mind for all major countries of the world including US, China, India, and many others. It is an issue we must tackle now or we might be too late. Green tech is an important part of the “solution” beyond just mere control.
As Dr. Singh puts it,
Green technology is the use of technology and science to create products that are friendly to the environment. Their intention is to reduce the harmful effect by Finding safe and sustainable methods of working.
5G And Its Tremendous Potential — By Recep Suluker
It seems like only yesterday when 3G was a big deal, and of course 4G came in no time and is now the standard. Oh, of course my info is dated.
A lot of the world has already moved on to 5G already — with some countries farther ahead on the adoption than others. However 5G in itself can only do so much as you need infrastructure around “internet of things” that needs to be built to be able to take full use of 5G.
However, some industries could really take advantage of 5G far more than others and end up changing the complexion of the respective fields.
As Recep puts it,
The crazy thing is, thanks to 5G, many industries will come to different points. The first of these is medicine …. Thanks to 5G, which has a new generation wireless technology, doctors will be able to perform remote surgeries. Moreover, these data transfers will occur very quickly. For example, there is a delay of 30–50 milliseconds in the machines and data transfer in the operation that a doctor performs in 4G. In 5G, it’s only 1 millisecond. In surgeries where every moment is precious, doctors will be able to perform almost instant operations on 5G.
Just Like Humans, Don’t Trust Their Tech Either — By Zen Chan
As technology has reached new advancements, so have hackers and cyber security breaches.
With the endless debate of cyber security, data privacy, potential of cyber warfare, and other concerns, there is an increased need of architecture that absolutely trusts nothing. For the technical folks — that’s called “Zero Trust Architecture.”
I happen to be a computer engineer, but in my finance world, i am as good as a layman — so I’ll leave it for Zen to explain:
The Zero Trust security model is a strategy combined with system management that assumes breaches are inevitable or have already occurred. Zero Trust Security has been around for a while.
Similar to Cyber Resiliency, Zero Trust Security assume terrible things will happen, but the scope is to verify and monitor instead of resilient. It concentrates on the belief that an attacker may already “inside” (i.e., already compromised the defense and internal network). Therefore, we should not trust every local device and network connection implicitly.
Be A Creator Sitting at Home — By Pralabh Saxena
Technology is not just an enabler but also a great leveller — it is a platform that is equitable and is available to everyone.
In today’s world you can be a coder and a creator sitting at home — and learn the best of skills from the internet. You just need to be diligent and be able to absorb all that the world of internet has to offer.
Python is one of the leading languages that are currently used — and it is a powerful tool in any aspiring coder’s repertoire.
Pralabh puts together a great list of resources for you to tap into:
Python is mainly used for Data Science projects as it is enriched with many statistical libraries like Numpy, Pandas, and Sci-kit learn. Python is very easy to learn as its syntax is straightforward and simple.
If you are looking for some sources to start learning Python programming language or have some basic knowledge of Python and want to learn advanced topics, this article will be beneficial to you.
When Math Meets Technology, Design Happens — By Desiree Driesenaar
I am not going to pretend to claim that I fully understood the depths this piece has to offer. But I’ll say this that it is quite clear that when the mathematical principles of geometry meet the advancements of technology across a variety of different fields, the possibilities are endless.
As Desiree explains,
Designing the future will be more about patterns and flows than about fixed, static technologies. We already know a lot about fractals and combinatorial innovation, but the real moonshot jumps and quantum leaps will come when we will really start to innovate and design with patterns and flows.
Can Money Control Everything? — By Debesh Choudhury
I’ve always believed bitcoin and the whole cryptocurrency theme is all about democratizing money. Taking control of finance and money — or the traditional barter system away from the sole control of central banks and governments is what the amazing technology of Blockchain has enabled.
Yet, we’ve recently seen times when simple tweets by the uber-rich like Elon Musk have created spikes in bitcoin prices, indicating that atleast for a brief moment, the immense wealth and power of influence these billionaires have can even mess around with something as secure and fool-proof as blockchain.
As Debesh writes,
The Bitcoin protocol needs sufficient innovations to incorporate an inbuilt self-regulatory process. Remarks of tech influencers can impact crypto trading and bring volatile price hike-induced instabilities. Hard-core research investigations and experimentations have to be carried out before accepting cryptocurrency as a standard form of fintech instrument.
https://readmedium.com/do-bill-gates-and-elon-musk-control-bitcoin-price-ac2eccecf5ea
There’s so much in the world of technology that will fascinate and amaze you, and leave you in awe of the endless possibilities. No matter what your level of expertise and comfort with technology, there will always be something that you can still learn. So dive into these great stories and take one step closer to being that much more conversant on all these modern wonders!
And while you’re at it, if you have anything to add to the world’s knowledge pool, hit up the editors of the publication — see below Terry L. Cooper’s call for new writers, and join this great platform started by the visionary Dr Mehmet Yildiz
