A Forecast from Technology's Promise by William E. Halal

E-Commerce - Global Access

Technology’s Promise draws on the work of TechCast Project at George Washington University. The TechCast “A Virtual Think Tank Tracking the Technology Revolution” forecasting system has been developed by Professor William E. Halal from pooling the knowledge of 100 experts around the world covering the entire span of technological innovation.

The forecast for E-Commerce – Global Access is a challenge to bring modern communication to poor nations. Globalization is rapidly changing Information Technology (IT) because the experts think 30% of the world’s population will have access to most media by 2016. Can you imagine before the recent global IT boom, only two-thirds of the world’s poor had never made a phone call not a liability or a burden any more a huge new market now, why is this? The poor is now a market for cheaper goods. For example, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, MIT, AMD, Intel and more are among the already prominent entrepreneurs providing PCs for $100 to jump start the poor nations. C.K. Prahalad stressed the point in “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” a profit to be made from selling to the poor a global market for e-commerce. Stay tune for more updates targeting which poor nations are in the IT market and trade details. 

 "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Albert Einstein

References

1. Halal, W. E. (2008). Technology's promise: expert knowledge on the transformation of business and society: Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Prahalad, C. K. (2009). The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid: Eradicating poverty through profits: Wharton.

Update: 2009 Paul Moller's talk on TED.com

This video is from TED Ideas worth spreading


Inventor Paul Moller talks about the future of personal air travel for Skycar and GPS U.S., there's a Russian GPS, and there's a new GPS system going to Europe, called Galileo. Continue to watch my blog for more updates on Paul Moller and his Skycar. Thank you.

Future Innovation Super Fast Travel

An Innovation Still Being Realized

According to Harriet Tubman "Every great dream begins with a dreamer". We are still trying to accomplish this idea and still waiting on this to happen fast flying car:

So, why has this innovation not been successful thus far? Is this a question to be answered by a researcher at RAND Corporation using DELPHI. DELPHI is used to gather key questions from panels of experts and participants who are not all in the same location geographically.

Technologist William Halal revealed an innovation idea normal time period for a prediction is 10 to 15 years to be realized from Technology’s Promise. Coming from an expert would you believe in the next twenty years we would all be flying around that depends on some economic implications this prediction for the future maybe possible.

To expand upon the possibilities The FUTURIST a magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future Sept-October 2008 Vol. 42, No. 5 interviews Paul Moller. Paul Moller has spent the last 40 years trying to bring a flying car to market and his latest prototype the M400 Skycar. This forecast still maybe unlikely to occur or may happen after 2020.

FUTURIST: In terms of selling flying cars, I guess the thing I'm trying to get a handle on, why is it so very, very hard?

Moller: I could spend a few years on that one. There are three components that make or break this technology: engines, electronics, and materials. For the engine, the most critical element is power. Once you reduce the diameter of the propulsion system, you go from a helicopter, to a fan system, you're moving less air. The problem is, the less air you move, the more power it takes to generate a certain kind of thrust. We've spent about $35 million over a period of 40 years developing the power plant for this project. 

  References

1. Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (2006). How people harness their collective wisdom and power to construct the future in co-laboratories of democracy: Information Age Publishing.
2. Halal, W. E. (2008). Technology's promise: expert knowledge on the transformation of business and society: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Cool Web 2.0 Tool

www.voki.com allows you to create personalized speaking avatars and use them on your blog, profile, and in email messages

Click the play button to the left for my personalized message. I created and customized my own character using text to speech English/Southern voice.

Get a Voki now!

SDP Case Study

Master Plan for a New Product -

The Workings of SDP

The Architecture of the Structured Design Process (SDP) is composed of 31 components constructs grouped into seven modules. SDP is a designing process of participative democracy and dialogue. SDP is a specialized process aimed at problem-solving through collaborative team work.

Let’s analyze one of the case studies in the Christakis book introducing a new product and how SDP is used for module E called Four Stages of Interactive Inquiry (Years 1989-1995). The case is about context for drug development.

The SDP activities cover four stages:

1. Design challenge - What should we do?
Since it takes an average of 12 to 15 years for drugs to move from discovery to pharmacy shelves the Pharmaceutical companies and Food & Drug Administration (FDA) want to reduce the time to develop and commercialize new drugs in the meantime keeping high standards for product safety and efficacy. The team decides to use Front-End Work development and focus on one triggering question throughout the project.

2. How can we implement this design?
An interdisciplinary project team will be formed made-up of five to fifteen members representing the development and commercialization process. First goal is to create a Front-End Master Plan collaboratively.

3. Choosing the preferred alternative and why?
Front-End Work provides collaboration among all key members. Each team member is knowledgeable of his or her job function with respect to all areas. Front-End Work its speed and quality is recognized as critical success factors for the development of a new product. Using the conventional approach members seem to work more independently.

4. Planning for action - When will we do what we can do?
A collaborative action plan was used. A consensus action scenario was followed in the master plan representing collective judgments of temporal sequencing of options.

Reference

Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (2006). How people harness their collective wisdom and power to construct the future in co-laboratories of democracy: Information Age Publishing.

Nanodevices

THE FUTURIST magazine's listed the Top Ten Forecasts for 2009 and beyond.

Nanodevices one of ten forecasts from THE FUTURIST were highlighted.

Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030. Technology, Technology can you believe this? By the late 2010s, ubiquitous, unseen nanodevices will provide seamless communication and surveillance among all people everywhere. Humans will have nanoimplants, facilitating interaction in an omnipresent network. Everyone will have a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. Since nano storage capacity is almost limitless, all conversation and activity will be recorded and recoverable. -Gene Stephens, "Cybercrime in the Year 2025," July-Aug 2008, p. 34

What is Nano?

Hundreds of nanowires—tiny forms of carbon molecules only five to ten atoms wide—make up the world’s smallest ultraviolet laser, which was created by researchers in the early 21st century. A number of important breakthroughs have already occurred in nanotechnology. Scientists are currently experimenting with two approaches to making structures or devices at the scale of 1 to 100 nm. These methods are called the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach. Nanotechnology is in the beginning and early period of existence no one can predict with accuracy over the next several decades.

Horizon Report 2009

Horizon Report 2009 the New Media Consortium Emerging Technologies Initiative
From the Horizon Report 2009:
One interesting technology to watch The Personal Web. This technology has a solid user base and institutions should find ways to support this knowledge. Personal web represent a collection of technologies simple tools and applications that are used to manage ways one uses the Internet for example:

• Podcasts
• Widgets 
• Microblogging Twitter 
• Collaborative Environments 
• Social Networking - Facebook 
• Blogs

One key trend to watch is visualization tools that are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive. The forecast for this technology next seven to ten years will evolve in a big way in its teaching and learning. Much has been said about Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn by Lynell Burmark. Per Horizon Report 2009 visual literacy has become an increasingly important skill in decoding, encoding, and determining credibility and authenticity of data. I’m hoping this technology could assist the blind and visually impaired users in interpreting graphics.

Cool New Web 2.0 Tool

ProofHQ
100% web based proofing. No software to download

Being director of the media ministry at my church ProofHQ is an excellent web tool to get feedback and approval on media design work.

Two features:
1. Online proofing software tool

2. Helps manage review, proof, and approve documents including graphic design.

This tool definitely supports strategic discussions by improving collaboration so work is finished faster and with fewer errors by sharing with the team. No more forwarding emails and sending attachments because e-mails fail for design review. Team members can discuss in one area and compare different versions of the same design. You no longer have to worry if the receiver has the same software application for review.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

This video is from TED Ideas worth spreading



Chimamanda Adichie is a female storyteller from Nigeria. From an early age she started reading British and American children's books at four then writing at seven. The characters in her writings were exactly same ones from the stories she read about because this was all she knew. Chimamanda spoke of the danger in a single story that shows people as one thing, only one thing, over and over, so that this is what they become a perception in your mind. Also, she talked about her American roommate and the perception of the single story she had formed about Africa. Her roommate was stunned to see that Africans were human equals just like the roommate.

Two points from the video are:
1. A single story creates stereotype and may be untrue, consequently robbing people of their dignity because of being the only story.

2. It is very important to engage in all the stories about that person and that place before forming a conclusion.