convergence of communications, energy, and transportation

Today, multiple major waves seem to be arriving simultaneously — technologies like the cloud, AI, AR/ VR, not to mention more esoteric projects like supersonic planes and hyperloops. What’s more, rather than being concentrated narrowly in a personal computer industry that was essentially a niche market, today’s new technologies impact nearly every part of the economy, creating many new opportunities. This trend holds tremendous promise. Precision medicine will use computing power to revolutionize health care. Smart grids use software to dramatically improve power efficiency and enable the spread of renewable energy sources like solar roofs. And computational biology might allow us to improve life itself. Blitzscaling can help these advances spread and magnify their sorely needed impact.

The task of wealth generation for the nation has to be woven around national competencies. The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) task team has identified core areas that will spearhead our march towards becoming a knowledge society. The areas are: information technology, biotechnology, space technology, weather forecasting, disaster management, tele-medicine and tele-education, technologies utilizing traditional knowledge, service sector and infotainment which is the emerging area resulting from the convergence of information and entertainment.

Advances in hardware and network technologies have paved the way for the development of increasingly pervasive software-based that collaborate to provide essential services to society. Software in these systems is often required to (1) operate in distributed and embedded computing environments consisting of diverse devices (personal computers, specialized sensors and actuators), (2) communicate using a variety of interaction paradigms (e.g., SOAP messaging, media streaming), (3) dynamically adapt to changes in operating environments, and (4) behave in a dependable manner. Despite significant advances in programming languages and supporting integrated development environments (IDEs), developing these complex software systems using current code-centric technologies requires herculean effort.

Technology is a technique or complex of techniques employed to alter “materials” (human or nonhuman, mental or physical) in an anticipated manner.

It follows from this that man's most urgent and pre-emptive need is maximally to utilize cybernetic science and computer technology within a general systems framework, to build a meta-systemic reality which is now only dimly envisaged. Intelligent and purposeful application of rapidly developing telecommunications and teleprocessing technology should make possible a degree of worldwide value consensus heretofore unrealizable.

Every technology goes through three stages: first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final stage of smooth simplicity and efficient performance based on correct understanding of natural laws and proper design therefrom.

The trends in modem technology reveal most clearly the contrasting modes of development in thinking about the future. Technology offers an unprecedented confirmation of the possibilities of the utopia, often far exceeding the utopian fantasies in its concrete achievements. Through technology, Homo sapiens can transform ail things; at last man appears to be master of his own fate.

And finally, there is the mother of all technologies — artificial intelligence — where machines are actually developing the capacity to learn and to reason. These rapidly converging developments in time and space are resulting in that profound change — the most profound change ever in human history. And whatever overmatch we, the United States, enjoy militarily … the United States is challenged in every domain of warfare: space, cyber, maritime, air and land.

Good technology is a good explanation of how the world works, instantiated and automated.

Technology is stuff that doesn’t work yet.

I start from the premise that the underlying pres­sures toward integration and interdependence are growing stronger, not weaker. We cannot reverse or stop the advancing technology that brings us fast and cheap communication and transportation, or the spread of knowledge.

We know that ICT will be the cornerstone of tomorrow’s society. Therefore, it is the tool through which we can bridge gaps, create opportunities and inspire a new generation filled with hope and optimism

We use one stage of technology to create the next stage, which is why technology accelerates, why it grows in power.