MEDIA 6: Week 1,Errol Tyson

Week 1 | Megatrends: ‘The World is Changing’
Extracts from Klaus Schwab, 2016, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (World Economic Forum), pp.14-26, 47-50, 67-73, 91-104.

In the week 1 reading, Schwag examines the possible and emerging new megatrends, which include:

• Autonomous vehicles
• Advanced robotics
• 3D printing

These technological advances are divided into three categories: physical, digital and biological. Each of these are changing rapidly, but it is perhaps digital that will have the most outstanding effect in the years to come.

After listening to Astrid Scott’s lecture last Friday, it left me feeling a bit underwhelmed about the future of the technologies she spoke about. Many of the future designs seemed relatively unnecessary, such as mood reading bracelets, and news updates via a mirror in the morning.

I am definitely more interested in the technological advancements, but more so as they apply to things that have more of a positive impact, and use technology in a way to improve, rather than just to enable.

While these household items failed to gather much interest, the megatrends mentioned by Schwag started to get my mind racing about the possibilities of the future, and how day to day life will be affected by many of these new concepts. I am holding my breath a little for when 3D printing becomes used in hospitals and food on a commercial scale.

I wonder what the impact of these developments will have on my professional workflow and behaviours, and if this will shake up the pre, production and postproduction model. There is obviously so much that is up in the air at the moment, as it isn’t until after a technology has been rolled out that it can be deemed an actual success. Even good in theory, such as video calling, which never really took off, can be replaced by a more successful version of the same technology, which was Facetime. There weren’t many different significant factors in the function of video calling and Facetime, but they have had significantly different impacts. A strong amount of this is due to outside factors, such as the technological landscape and environment in which they were being released into.

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