Impact Of Future Technologies Research Articles

Technology Innovation and Disruption in Plastic Surgery: Intelligence Quotient, Emotional Quotient, and Technology Quotient.

This article is an introduction to the new PRS Tech Disruptor Series, the culmination of work originating from the Technology Innovation and Disruption Presidential Task Force. Our technology quotient is important to our success as individuals and as a specialty society. The goal of this new series is to address the broader concepts in technology as they relate to plastic surgery and thus enhance the technology quotient of readers and, in turn, of the specialty and specialty society. Critical topics related to technology, their current and future impact on plastic surgery, and the opportunities and barriers in research, education, and advocacy will be addressed. The intent is for readers to engage in dialogue and think outside the box about the current and future impact of technology.

The TL;DR Charter: Speculatively Demystifying Privacy Policy Documents and Terms Agreements

Privacy policy and term agreement documents are considered the gateway for software adoption and use. The documents provide a means for the provider to outline expectations of the software use, and also provide an often-separate document outlining how user data is collected, stored, and used--including if it is shared with other parties. A user agreeing with the terms, assumes that they have a full understanding the terms of the agreement and have provided consent. Often however, users do not read the documents because they are long and full of legalistic and inconsistent language, are regularly amended, and may not disclose all the details on what is done to the user data. Enforcing compliance and ensuring user consent have been persistent challenges to policy makers and privacy researchers. This design fiction puts forward an alternate reality and presents a policy-based approach to fording the consent gap with the TL;DR Charter: an agreement governing the parties involved by harnessing the power of formal governments, industry, and other stakeholders, and taking users expectation of privacy into account. The Charter allows us as researchers to examine the implications on trust, decision-making, consent, accountability and the impact of future technologies.

Nemesis in Mordor: The Possibility of Posthuman Savagery

Innovative computer games can sometimes serve as valid simulations of real sociocultural processes, exploring hypotheses about the possible impact of future technology on civilization. In February 2021, Warner Brothers was granted a patent for an artificial social intelligence system that it first used in Shadow of Mordor, a very popular computer game based on the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, but reversing his humanistic and precautionary values. The main theme of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was development of genuine friendship in a crusade to destroy a technology that gave its user superhuman powers at the cost of replacing sympathy with total selfishness. Shadow of Mordor and its successor Shadow of War promoted sadism and enslavement as tools for transcending human limitations, implicitly slandering transhumanism. This article surveys this troubling dynamic in four parts: (1) a conceptual introduction drawing upon a diverse literature about the human dimensions of current technological progress, (2) an overview of recent developments in the genre of Tolkien computer games, (3) a close examination of how the Nemesis multiagent system was designed, and (4) an initial assessment of public reactions to the Shadows expressed through videos and text comments on YouTube.

Funding for roads: Understanding the South African road funding framework

Background: A good quality road network holds numerous benefits to any country, but is dependent on sufficient and stable modes of funding and adequate financing. Funding for roads in South Africa is complex, controversial and faces different viewpoints. In this environment, it is difficult to implement any new form of road user charges, including the user-pay principle, or promote a sustainable road infrastructure policy framework.Objectives: This article examined the road funding framework in South Africa to fully understand its capability to fund the country’s road infrastructure network while quantifying and presenting the linkage between road-generated income, its distribution, allocation and the expenditure of these funds through a consolidated report and comparing the country’s income and expenditure on roads to international standards.Method: Numerous financial statements were assessed through a budget analysis to present the current road funding framework in South Africa in terms of the income generated from the road sector, its allocation, distribution and the expenditure of these funds. Local road funding trends were then compared with selected countries in terms of road-generated income, its allocation and expenditure.Results: South Africa’s current road funding framework collects a substantial amount from road users, but there is a mismatch between road-generated income collected and governmental road expenditure. Furthermore, South Africa’s road expenditure in not outside the norm compared to international countries.Conclusion: Investigation into the effectiveness of South Africa’s current road cost recovery methods is needed, and the impact of future technologies on its income-generating potential must be examined.

How Do Digital Technologies Drive Economic Growth?

This paper seeks to provide new empirical evidence that demonstrates the importance of digital technologies in promoting economic growth, drawing on the literature on advances in growth and leveraging a broader and more robust country‐level panel dataset. In particular, this paper estimates the long‐run economic impact of digital technologies using mobile phone penetration and internet usage as broad indicators. The empirical results suggest that, between 2004 and 2014, the diffusion of digital technologies significantly improved economic output in Australia and abroad, contributing to steady‐state gross domestic product per capita growth of approximately 5.8 per cent on average. These findings could serve as the starting‐point for predictions about the likely impact of future technologies, providing a better understanding for policy‐makers in prioritising initiatives that will continue to lift living standards in the coming years.

Editorial

When Ric Knowles, at the instigation of former UBC theatre student Helina Patience, proposed publishing an issue of CTR on sound design, it seemed that the task should be straightforward. Sound design, one would think, is similar enough to other design disciplines in the theatre that it ought to be a matter of describing the history and current state of the practice and of finding some examples of how it is currently being deployed. One might then speculate intelligently on matters like the future impact of technology or intercultural approaches to theatre and perhaps attempt to glimpse a near future, in which image projection, light and sound might merge to form an integrated scenographic syntax – which, as Robert Gardiner slyly proposed at a recent Performance Creation Canada conference, would make designers altogether superfluous.1

Emissions from international shipping: 2. Impact of future technologies on scenarios until 2050

In this study the today's fleet‐average emission factors of the most important ship exhausts are used to calculate emission scenarios for the future. To develop plausible future technology scenarios, first upcoming regulations and compliance with future regulations through technological improvements are discussed. We present geographically resolved emission inventory scenarios until 2050, based on a mid‐term prognosis for 2020 and a long‐term prognosis for 2050. The scenarios are based on some very strict assumptions on future ship traffic demands and technological improvements. The four future ship traffic demand scenarios are mainly determined by the economic growth, which follows the IPCC SRES storylines. The resulting fuel consumption is projected through extrapolations of historical trends in economic growth, total seaborne trade and number of ships, as well as the average installed power per ship. For the future technology scenarios we assume a diesel‐only fleet in 2020 resulting in fuel consumption between 382 and 409 million metric tons (Mt). For 2050 one technology scenario assumes that 25% of the fuel consumed by a diesel‐only fleet can be saved by applying future alternative propulsion plants, resulting in a fuel consumption that varies between 402 and 543 Mt. The other scenario is a business‐as‐usual scenario for a diesel‐only fleet even in 2050 and gives an estimate between 536 and 725 Mt. Dependent on how rapid technology improvements for diesel engines are introduced, possible technology reduction factors are applied to the today's fleet‐average emission factors of all important species to estimate future ship emissions. Combining the four traffic demand scenarios with the four technology scenarios, our results suggest emissions between 8.8 and 25.0 Tg (NO2) in 2020, and between 3.1 to 38.8 Tg (NO2) in 2050. The development of forecast scenarios for CO2, NOx, SOx, CO, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter is driven by the requirements for global model studies of the effects of these emissions on the chemical composition of the atmosphere and on climate. The developed scenarios are suitable for use as input for chemical transport models (CTMs) and coupled chemistry‐climate models (CCMs).

Failure Analysis Challenges

Abstract Semiconductor trends, as embodied in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), provide a guide for the challenges facing the failure analysis community. This process is a risk assessment of key features forecast for the impact of future technologies on failure analysis. The technical challenges fall primarily into two categories: failure site isolation and physical analysis. The failure site isolation challenges are largely driven by the device complexity and reduced accessibility of circuit nets. Additional challenges arise due to the increase in device operating speed and pin count. The challenges in physical analysis are driven primarily by smaller device feature sizes and by the host of new materials being introduced. In addition to the technical challenges, infrastructure changes are also likely to occur. The industry paths for addressing these challenges are discussed.

The impact of future technology on cancer care

Globally cancer will increase greatly over the next 20 years because of ageing populations. Minimally invasive surgery will reduce the need for routine organ resection. The application of sophisticated computer systems to radiotherapy planning will allow the precise shaping of beam delivery conforming exactly to the shape of the tumour. The most promising advances will come from the rapidly increasing understanding of the molecular genetics of cancer. This will have considerable impact on prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment and lead to a golden age of drug discovery. Individual cancer risk assessment will provide messages tailored for individual prevention and have far-reaching public health consequences. Increased consumerism in medicine will produce increasingly informed and assertive patients seeking out novel therapies, bypassing traditional referral pathways through global information networks. This will bring new ethical and moral dilemmas. The cancer future will be created by the interaction of four complex factors: technological success, society’s willingness to pay, future healthcare delivery systems and the financial mechanisms that underpin them.

Interactivity in 2000

ABSTRACTThis article describes the current and possible future impact of technology on the practice of advertising. Advertisers have traditionally divided media into two groups according to the way that the advertising message is disseminated. Broadcast media, such as TV and radio, are considered “passive” because the consumer passively receives the message and does not choose whether or not to view or to listen (other than by changing the channel). Print media, including magazines, newspapers, and outdoor billboards, are thought of as “active”, requiring a conscious decision on the part of consumers to look at the message. In the interactive arena, all advertising is potentially “active”. It will be up to the viewer/user to decide which messages he or she consumes, and at what level of detail. With Web-based applications, such as Geocast or Worldgate, the user could select the first screen of the ad, but then decide he isn’t really interested and not go any further. Technologies such as PVRs permit users to skip commercials altogether, whether or not they are relevant, personalized, or entertaining. The author provides a comprehensive list of such technologies and gives their implications for the future of advertising practice.

Exploring the Impact of Future Technologies on Skill Requirements and Team Structures

Exploring the Impact of Future Technologies on Skill Requirements and Team Structures

The future impact of technology in the Greek health sector

This article describes current and future prospects and threats of medical technology in the current Greek health system and the alternative strategies for optimal utilisation of new technologies. Using the Delphi method, we investigate developments and consequences of health technology and the likely impact of advances in communications, biotechnology, materials science and technical procedures, and we describe the context in which important choices must be made. Our results show that the Greek health system will be affected by international and domestic scientific and technological advances in the life and other basic sciences and by technologies that detect and control health risks by preventing, diagnosing, and curing illness. Also important are laser technology, blood banks, surgical techniques, and alternative therapies. Our findings support the promotion of health technology assessment in Greece.

Current and future impact of technology on physiology education.

There are at least three areas in which technology can impact education: teaching, learning, and assessment. Teaching, when viewed as communication of information, has been transformed by the technology revolution. Word processing, multimedia, distance learning, and access to the World Wide Web are some prominent examples. The impact of technology on learning, defined as knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study, has been less dramatic, in part because of our limited understanding of cognitive processes. Some forms of assessment, the collection of evidence of learning, have benefited from technology, such as item analysis of multiple-choice questions. To be effective, the focus on instruction must start with the learner and, from there, consider what should be done to enhance learning. An emphasis on what is technologically appropriate, rather than what is technologically possible, will improve the quality of both teaching and learning.

Capacity Expansion and Replacement in Growing Markets with Uncertain Technological Breakthroughs

The accelerated pace of technological change has led to rapid obsolescence of productive capacity in electronics and other industries. Managers must consider the impact of future technologies while making acquisition and replacement decisions in such environments. We consider a problem where a sequence of technological breakthroughs are anticipated but their magnitude and timing are uncertain. A firm, operating in such an environment, must decide how much capacity of the current technology to acquire to meet future demand growth. It must also determine whether to upgrade any of the older vintages. We formulate this problem and present some structural results. Using these results, we then develop a highly efficient regeneration point-based dynamic programming algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated through a computational study. The sensitivity of the first period decision to various parameters is also explored.

Pulmonary Artery Catheterization

In Response: We appreciate the opportunity to reply to the letter of Dr. Bernstein, which addresses several broader issues than we intended to discuss in our editorial. Acknowledging the complexity of these issues, we nonetheless wish to reiterate certain key concepts. First and most importantly, our editorial intention was to emphasize that the findings of the Study to Understand Prognoses and Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatment (SUPPORT) project [1] have limited generalizablity, which the authors of the study have subsequently acknowledged [2]. In fact, these authors have now stated [2] that they do not recommend applying their results to surgical patients or to other types of patients underrepresented in the SUPPORT study. Based on vast clinical experience, it is predictable that pulmonary artery catheterization (PAC) would have negligible impact on the outcome of a population primarily composed of patients with respiratory failure and multisystem organ failure, such as those in the SUPPORT study [1]. Unfortunately, there are inadequate scientific data to define whether PAC improves outcome in particular subsets of patients with cardiovascular disease when it is used to guide therapy in a prespecified fashion. Without testing the hypothesis in a well controlled trial of limited focus to evaluate outcome benefit in discrete subpopulations of patients, the question of PAC usefulness will remain unanswered. Such an approach is neither simplistic nor naive. Indeed, after carefully deliberating the implications of their study, the SUPPORT authors have also reached the conclusion [2] that only prospective, randomized, controlled trials will provide unbiased estimates of the effect of PAC on outcomes. The propriety of our editorial comments are further validated by the recent acknowledgment [3] of Bone (author of the editorial originally accompanying the SUPPORT publication [4]) that had the ASA practice guidelines on PAC [5] been followed explicitly in the SUPPORT study, the treated subgroup would have likely had improved outcomes. Additionally, he agrees [3] with the ASA practice guidelines [5], which outline the necessary research agenda for proper evaluation of the effects of PAC on outcome. Furthermore, neither we nor the ASA practice guidelines promote routine use of the PAC, as is asserted by Dr. Bernstein. In fact, we stressed in our commentary that the rational use of any high-cost technology requires application of disciplined logic, and that routine PAC during all surgical cases of a certain type (e.g., abdominal aortic surgery) is not prudent application of an expensive resource. Finally, it was never our intention to suggest that future technologies would not supplant PAC. Our editorial does not imply this, and we, indeed, embrace advances and improvements in the ability to clinically evaluate the cardiovascular system. Our silence on this in our commentary simply reflected our desire to focus on the issue at hand-proper interpretation of the SUPPORT study and the need to evaluate our current use of PAC-rather than to dilute the discussion with the assessment of alternative technologies. Although current bioimpedance devices may more accurately measure cardiac output than earlier versions of this technology, we strongly disagree that this technique will "for certain" supplant PAC. Such certainty is not possible, primarily because of the very dilemma we currently face with PAC. Just as we previously concluded that debate over the value of PAC (especially in the perioperative setting) will not be fruitful without additional data from properly controlled trials, this equally applies to alternative technologies that are being developed to evaluate cardiovascular status. Regardless of which technologies eventually emerge as potential replacements for PAC, physicians will eventually face similar dilemmas about the impact of future technologies on outcome, and the debate of those issues will also not be resolved without appropriately designed, well conducted, randomized trials evaluating relevant outcomes in appropriate patient populations. Kenneth J. Tuman, MD Department of Anesthesiology; Rush Medical College; Chicago, IL 60612 Michael F. Roizen, MD Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care; University of Chicago; Chicago, IL 60612

The Impact of Future Technology on Athletic Therapy

The Impact of Future Technology on Athletic Therapy

The Future Impact of Technology on Work and Education. Gerald Burke , Russell Rumberger

<i>The Future Impact of Technology on Work and Education</i>. Gerald Burke , Russell Rumberger

The impact of future technology on oncologic diagnosis: Oncologic imaging and diagnosis

Over the past few years, the discipline of medical imaging has entered an evolutionary period that reflects primarily the introduction of computers and digital technology into the imaging process. Clinical applications of this evolution realized to date (e.g., transmission computed tomography, ultrasound and quantitative nuclear medicine) are only indicative of future developments that promise to increase the contributions of medical imaging in a very substantial manner. This increase in the area of oncologic diagnosis is one of the more exciting possibilities existing in medicine today.