We are, indeed, a generation which has become highly dependent on technology. We live in an increasingly science and technology-driven world and, by necessity, make scientific and technological decisions every day. As scientific advances improve our lives, they also complicate how we live and react to the new technologies. Increasingly, human values come into conflict with scientific advancement as we deal with important issues such as nuclear power, environmental degradation, information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology etc.
Science and technology have undoubtedly benefited us but will it destroy our humanity? Not only is ‘humanity’ meant in biological mechanisms, but also other aspects to include culture, nature, individualism etc. Science fiction does suggest that technology may someday take over us, if only we keep a limit on it.
Today, our lives are indirectly being monitored via technology. When we post our details of personal information online, we are actually posting our whole identity. Yet, we do not know how safe our personal information is. If the information is saved, will it be accessed by the IT staff? Will he release the information if he is paid by a third party?
The concept of our technology today is like “Big Brother is always Watching over You” which emphasises how control surveillance might become in the future, and the consequences thereof. The citizens’ culture, opinions and individualism are being manipulated and destroyed by a combination of brainwashing and fear of punishment, all centred around the fixated notion of being continuously monitored by a camera. In such a situation when everything is recorded by the camera, even if we committed a wrong action, other people will be able to access and watch it on You Tube. This would drastically change our thoughts in that we would not be acting as we usually would, but being ever so conscious of the camera recording each and every movement we make.
A Global Electronic Library combines all the available knowledge on the planet -books, periodicals, newsletters, journals, newspapers, web pages, spoken word, and more – into a single, searchable resource available to everyone. In decades past, intelligence was largely determined by how much an individual could remember. Each person was expected to carry their own personal library in their heads, and a lack of ability in storing or retrieving information from those mental libraries would result in scholastic failure or, in too many cases, being labelled intellectually inferior.
In the near future, though, the rules will change. Intelligence will be much less about what you can store in your head and much more about your ability to quickly locate, organise and understand information gleaned from global information sources such as the Internet. A person who knows very little about a subject but can quickly find and organise relevant information on the subject will be far more productive than someone unfamiliar with information search and retrieval technologies, regardless of their mental capacity.
Another one of the most significant global trends arriving in the near future is a shift away from fossil fuels and towards hydrogen. The term, “hydrogen economy” refers to a global economy powered by hydrogen, not oil. The hydrogen economy is important for the advancement of humanity for several reasons.
Firstly, the oil economy is fraught with problems, for examples, pollution, global warming, control of resources and limited supply. Beyond the problems with the oil economy, there are additional reasons why a hydrogen economy offers unprecedented benefits to the quality of life of people everywhere. Hydrogen is available almost anywhere. It is in water and can be extracted with solar power. It is found in abundance at the bottom of the ocean in frozen gas hydrates. Also, hydrogen is in natural gas, petroleum, and the by-products of microbial activity. It is not limited to a few geographic regions of the planet, and that makes it a resource that automatically reduces geopolitical tension over the control of limited oil resources. Most importantly, hydrogen is clean and renewable, amongst others.
By shifting to a hydrogen economy, we will simultaneously solve a long list of problems tied to the oil economy (pollution, limited resources, global warming, etc.) while creating new opportunities with hydrogen (clean, renewable, plentiful energy).
Lastly, one of the greatest problems now facing humanity is the worrisome lack of quality education for each new generation. In industrialised nations, quality education is attainable by very few people, and public schools – especially in the United States – suffer from a chronic lack of funding and education reform. In non-industrialised nations, education is even worse: the vast majority of children have no access to education, illiteracy is rampant, and the outlook for better schools is dim.
Clearly, no civilisation can uplift itself unless a significant proportion of its individuals have access to quality education. The present educational environment on planet Earth is but a shadow of what it could be if aided by proper funding, political determination and new technologies.
An emerging technology promises to radically enhance both the quality and “bandwidth” of educational processes. To understand how this works, however, we must first examine what is wrong with the current educational process or the schools today. An emerging technology promises to make “educational immersion” available to ractically everyone. This technology is called augmented reality, and it works by overlaying seemingly real experiences on top of a person’s local environment.