4th Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwag

My response to the studio’s first reading…

 

• One of my thoughts would be, with technology coming out and advancing at such a fast rate, how quickly to trends, designs or fashions go out of date? Once you have enough money and have set up your life style using certain advanced technology, is it out of date in half a year? A year? Like the phone’s that keep updating and you have an old one before your contract runs out because a year after you bought it a new model came out. So suddenly you have an old phone even though at the time you bought it, you were ‘en trend’.
• Also who will eventually manage all the safety and privacy information. If technology inevitably has to all link up for it to work, then it can only eventually be one person or place who has power to say what is or isn’t safe? Will this be the responsibility of he government forever or will they sell this responsibility because they can’t keep up with the growing demands for new safety legislation?

 

The Internet of Things IOT: Simply it can be described as a relationship between things (products, services, places) and people.

 

• Even though companies are gathering more data and information about people, people are getting more convenience, transparency in their products…There are benefits and cons for the consumer as well.

 

• Also applications that encourage transparency and trust between supplier and consumer like uber and air b&b, the trust is already there because no money exchanges hands, the transaction is safe and secure and agreed to before both parties commit. Also their star or online rating and reputation is based on how well they act towards each other, from both ends not just the supplier.

 

• Really interesting question in the biological domain. Questions about what it means to be human, what data and information about our bodies an health can or should be shared with others, what rights and responsibilities to we have when it comes to changing the very genetic code of future generations? With the change in technology, I think about products moving further away from control by the government and more into the private realm. Privately owned companies having a say in what happens to the technology and how its distributed and who has access to the data collected? How can data be kept separate? Once it’s collected isn’t it a free for all? Public data used is no longer belonging to the individual.

 

• The question “how can we ensure such advances continue to be made and directed to the best possible outcomes”? How can the research and developments stay focused to benefit everybody not just the people who own the products?