Study Notes: Emerging Technologies & The Second Machine Age

Introduction to Emerging Technologies and Innovation

  • Lessons cover:
    • Introduction to Emerging Technologies and Innovation
    • Defining emerging technologies
    • Framework for the operationalization of emergence
    • Prominent impact
  • Learning outcomes: Understand and expound the impact of the technology in the future

Technology as the Backbone of the Economy

  • Technology is no longer just a sector of the economy; it’s the backbone of the economy.

What is Emerging Technologies?

  • A term generally used to describe a new technology, but can also refer to continuing development of an existing technology.
  • Meaning varies across domains (media, business, science, education).
  • Common focus: technologies that are currently developing or expected to be available within the next five to ten years.
  • Usually reserved for technologies that are creating, or are expected to create, significant social or economic effects.

Concept of Emergence

  • The word “emerge” or “emergent” means:
    • The process of coming into being, or of becoming important and prominent (Oxford American Dictionary).
    • To rise up or come forth, to become evident, to come into existence (American Heritage Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus).

Emerging Technologies: Legal and Social Implications (cont.)

  • Emerging digital technologies have generated new opportunities while creating new legal challenges.
  • Key legal areas: copyrights, trademarks, patents, royalties, licensing.
  • Example: development of new digital communication technologies and media has given rise to novel issues related to digital reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works.

Five Key Attributes of Emerging Technologies

  • Radical novelty
  • Relatively fast growth (rapid development)
  • Coherence (internal logical interconnection)
  • Prominent impact (economic and social significance)
  • Uncertainty and ambiguity (incompleteness and unpredictability)

Radical Novelty

  • May be discontinuous innovations derived from radical innovations.
  • Can appear in method or function of the technology.
  • Emergence builds on different basic principles to achieve a new or changed purpose.
  • Novelty is contextual to the domain where the technology arises.

Fast Growth

  • Technology may grow rapidly compared with others in the same domain.

Coherence

  • Refers to internal characteristics such as sticking together, being united, logical interconnection, and congruity within a tech group.

Prominent Impact

  • Exerts significantly enhanced economic influence or changes the basis of competition.

Uncertainty and Ambiguity

  • The technology is not finished; non-linear and multi-factor nature of emergence gives it some autonomy, making prediction difficult.

Identifying and Responding to Emerging Technologies

  • Key activities:
    • Identifying emerging technologies
    • Anticipating the impact of emerging technologies (iterative risk assessment)
    • Achieving inherently safer designs
  • Concept from the 2nd machine age: emerging machine skills; lessons to act as technologies emerge.

The Matrix Approach and Surveillance Gaps

  • A matrix approach (as used in competitive technology intelligence) helps translate general opportunities/concerns into specific surveillance areas.
  • Responding to identification and surveillance gaps requires structured surveillance and prioritization.

Unintended Consequences and Iterative Risk Assessment

  • Emerging technologies often have unintended consequences (example: wireless tech increases weekly working hours; 24/7 connected workforce).
  • Iterative risk assessment is needed to manage these consequences.
  • Focus areas in iterative risk assessment include:
    • Extended/unusual work hours
    • Systems safety design
    • Engineering control technology
    • Life cycle assessment
    • Socioeconomic benefits of new and emerging technologies

Anticipating the Impact of Emerging Technologies — The Need for Iterative Risk Assessment

  • Purpose: anticipate risks and benefits, not just react to them.
  • Key elements include safety-oriented design and proactive analysis of how a technology affects workers and society.

Specific Areas in Iterative Risk Assessment

  • Extended/unusual work hours: assess physiological and psychosocial impacts; propose interventions.
  • Systems safety design: promote inherently safer products and processes; integrate safety considerations in design.
  • Engineering control technology: evaluate material toxicity; apply controls to reduce exposures.
  • Life cycle assessment: examine emissions and disposal issues; consider environmental impacts; protect researchers/workers during R&D.
  • Socioeconomic benefits: analyze productivity gains and broader societal benefits.

Socioeconomic Benefits and Prospective Analysis

  • Socioeconomic analysis ranges from productivity gains in processes to the creation of a sustainable economy via new technologies.
  • Prospective analysis is needed to continually assess risk/benefit as knowledge evolves.

Prospective Analysis and Risk Assessment Framework

  • Prospective analysis is used to reduce risk to workers by iterating on current knowledge and findings.
  • It includes potential benefits, exposure scenarios, and hazard mitigation based on ongoing research.

Risk Assessment: Core Concepts

  • Risk assessment involves:
    • Hazard identification
    • Risk identification (identifying factors that could cause harm)
    • Determining ways to eliminate hazards or control risk when elimination isn’t possible
  • Spiral development method: reduces risk by identifying problems early and delivering knowledge incrementally.

Benefit Identification

  • Aims to reveal opportunities for deploying an emerging or expanding technology to prevent occupational safety and health problems.

Five-Step Process for Prospective Analysis

1) Hazard & Benefit Identification
2) Exposure or Contact Assessment
3) Dose (Contact) Response Assessment
4) Risk and Benefit Characterization
5) Prospective Assessment

Step 1: Hazard & Benefit Identification

  • Identify aspects of a new technology that may have adverse effects on worker safety and health based on current knowledge/data.
  • Prospective considerations may include various potential risks and benefits (not exhaustively listed here).

Step 2: Exposure or Contact Assessment

  • Evaluate the probability of workers’ exposure to or contact with a new technology.
  • Exposure pertains to biological, chemical, and physical agents; contact pertains to mechanical systems and equipment used in manufacturing.

Step 3: Dose (Contact) Response Assessment

  • Determine the nature and magnitude of adverse or beneficial effects potentially associated with the technology.

Step 4: Risk and Benefit Characterization

  • Separate significant from trivial risks using information from prior steps.
  • Characterize a technology with current information, including estimation and its uncertainties, probability, frequency, and severity of known/potential adverse effects.

Step 5: Prospective Assessment

  • Extrapolate beyond what is known to forecast future risks and benefits.
  • Answer 'what if' and 'how could' questions; consider forward-looking scenarios.

Hazard Identification and Surveillance Gaps

  • Hazard identification evaluates adverse health effects of substances or technologies in animals or humans, related to potential worker safety risks.
  • It forecasts hazardous outcomes that could become emerging technologies.

Factors in Prospective Analysis Process

  • Key considerations include:
    • Critical needs
    • Analytical techniques
    • Cost-benefit analysis
  • The analysis should inform iterative risk assessment and guide research priorities.

Research Needs and Methods

  • Research needs identified while iteratively analyzing emerging tech; critical needs feed research agendas.
  • Tools needed for hazard/advantage analysis include:
    • Evaluation criteria
    • Methods
    • Techniques
  • Cost and benefit analysis: two approaches
    • Conventional approach: monetary estimates of benefits
    • Qualitative approach: valuing benefits that are not easily monetized

Inherently Safer Designs

  • Inherently safer technologies aim to significantly reduce or eliminate hazards at the source, not just manage them.
  • Elimination of hazards is an intrinsic feature of the design, making the design less vulnerable to failure.
  • Example: simplifying production processes or redesigning chemical synthesis to reduce hazards.

Two Principles of Inherent Safety

  • Simplication (Simplification): simplify processes to reduce hazard potential.
  • Substitution: replace hazardous materials or processes with safer ones (e.g., replacing white phosphorus in matches with a safer alternative).

Additional Inherent Safety Methods

  • Intensification (Minimization): use minimal amounts of hazardous materials to prevent catastrophic releases; however, this can increase handling/delivery frequency and transport risk.

How to Achieve Inherently Safer Designs

  • Focus on elimination or significant reduction of hazards through design choices rather than relying solely on controls.
  • Safety considerations should be integrated into the research and development process from the start.

Integrated Approaches to Research and Development

  • Need for an integrated research model that combines safety and health with innovation.
  • Goals include: protecting researchers/workers during R&D and addressing potential exposure routes to workers and the community.
  • Economic and health benefits to society should be included in the analysis.

Partnerships and Stakeholders in Iterative Risk Assessment

  • Iterative risk assessment benefits from partnerships among:
    • Government
    • Industry
    • Labor unions
    • Insurance providers
    • NGOs
  • Sharing data, information, risks, and benefits identified through prospective analysis improves safety outcomes.

Research Opportunities and Responsibilities

  • Emphasis on links with priority areas (e.g., National Occupational Research Agenda, NORA): Organization of Work; Special Populations; Social & Economic Consequences; Control Technology and PPE.
  • Government-funded research programs can impact emerging technologies (example: DOST & CHED).
  • Call for coordinated efforts among government, industry, and academia to advance inherently safer designs for benign technologies.
  • New information (e.g., toxicological data) can trigger updated prospective analyses.
  • There is a gap in recognizing adverse consequences in early stages; the Precautionary Principle could guide analysis.

The Second Machine Age: Overview

  • The Second Machine Age examines human progress and technological development as the defining period of our era.
  • The first machine age was driven by the steam engine, enabling machines to perform human labor and boosting production but displacing some physical laborers.
  • The second machine age advances intellect via algorithms and robotics, reshaping work beyond mechanical labor.

Exponential Growth

  • How it differs: framed via the chessboard analogy—gradual accumulation of grains grows exponentially across squares.
  • The founder’s request for rice on a chessboard illustrates exponential growth: from small to enormous totals as squares increase.
  • The technology sector is in the second half of the chessboard, reflecting rapid scaling.
  • Moore’s Law: the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every 1 to 2 years: ext{chip count}
    ightarrow 2 imes ext{previous count} ext{ every } 1 ext{–}2 ext{ years}.

Data, Data, Data

  • The Second Machine Age will produce massive data; analysis of this data enables new insights.
  • Examples: Google digitizing over 20 million books; English word count increased by over 70% between 1950 and 2000.
  • Transition from efficiency of physical work to data-driven efficiency across tasks.

Implications for GDP and Productivity

  • Phase 3: Implications question whether GDP is the best productivity metric.
  • GDP focuses on monetary value, whereas free assets (e.g., Wikipedia) boost productivity but are not included in GDP measures.
  • Example: saving 15 minutes per Google search per employee per year can translate to about 500 ext{ per employee per year} in productivity value.

Winner-Takes-All Dynamics and Network Effects

  • Exponential growth combined with network effects creates environments where top performers capture a large share of value.
  • In a global economy with unprecedented visibility, local value can be absorbed by global top performers.

Creativity, Ideation, and Recombination

  • The safest path in the future will favor those who leverage creativity and connect disparate knowledge.
  • Machines excel at data analysis but struggle with ideation and truly novel synthesis.
  • Ray Kurzweil’s notion of merging biological brains with digital brains supports outsourcing logic to machines while preserving human ideation.
  • Quote from the book summary: there’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education; conversely, never a worse time to be a worker with ordinary skills.

Recombination of Technologies

  • Creativity often arises from recombining existing technologies.
  • Example: autonomous vehicles emerge from combining sensors, data analysis, and real-time learning with traditional vehicles.

Digital Divide

  • Digital divide: the gap between those with access to digital technologies and those without.
  • Defined as the gap in access to computers and the internet, which can lead to social disparities due to unequal benefits.

Guide Questions: Reflections on the Digital Divide

  • What is the digital divide, who is most affected (globally and in the USA), and how does it affect students in schools?
  • Consider how teachers can bridge the divide and avoid inequities in classroom settings.
  • Watch: The Digital Divide (May 2008) and What is the Digital Divide (Five Days on the Digital Dirt Road) and read Distance Education and the Digital Divide: An Academic Perspective (Block, 2010).
  • Discussion prompts for group discussion: share experiences of how schools/teachers ensured digital equity or unintentionally exacerbated inequities; propose actions you can take as an IT professional to promote equity in your context.

Presentation Notes: Icons and Formatting

  • Slide design notes: SlidesCarnival icons are editable shapes; can resize, recolor without quality loss.
  • Emojis can be used as icons and resized; examples provided for accessible formatting.

Summary of Key Formulas and Quantitative Concepts

  • Moore’s Law (approximate):

    • N(t+

    ) = 2 imes N(t) ext{ every } 1 ext{ to } 2 ext{ years}

    • This captures the rapid scaling of computational capacity.

  • Chessboard grain analogy for exponential growth:

    • Total grains on an 8x8 board with doubling each square:
    • S = 2^{64} - 1
    • Illustration of how small early gains translate into enormous totals.

  • GDP vs productivity example from Google search time savings:

    • If one employee saves about 15 minutes per year due to better information access, the productivity value approximates ext{ extdollar}500 ext{ per employee per year}, illustrating how non-monetary productivity gains aren’t always captured in GDP.

Notes on structure and approach:

  • The notes above capture major and minor points across the transcript, organizing them into logical sections with detailed bullet points.
  • Mathematical expressions are provided in LaTeX syntax and enclosed in double dollar signs, per the formatting rules.
  • The content links theoretical concepts to practical implications, including safety design, risk assessment, corporate and governmental collaboration, and broader societal effects like the digital divide.