i m 2nd yr engg. student (e&tc).cud u suggest me a topic of latest tech.for which i can give presentation.thx?

Answer 1

Try this out: Technological forecasting

Technological forecasting is aimed at predicting future technological capabilities, attributes, and parameters. It is not an attempt to predict how things will be done. Nor is technological forecasting oriented toward profitability. That is, a technological capability or attribute can be forecast to be available at some time in the future, although society may not necessarily want or need the capability.

Consider the process of technological innovation. Many factors influence the progress and direction of technology. For example, science, organizational policy, organization structure, chance, need, and funding all play major roles in determining what technologies are likely to be available to us in the future.

Governmental decisions to support some technologies and not others have a significant impact on technological innovation. For instance, the decision to support the space program had major impacts on miniaturization in the electronics industry, on the use of new materials and styles in the garment industry, and even on the look of television commercials. The federal government's decision not to support the SST affected the technology of air transport in the United States. if technological forecasting predicts that a certain capability is technologically within our reach in the near future, and if the government chooses to support research in this area, it is much more likely that the technology will be developed-for example, new approaches to the generation of electric power. if the government decides to finance implementation of the desired innovation, there will probably be a near-term impact on profits and the speed of diffusion of the new technology.

Another characteristic of technological forecasting is uncertainty about the rate of change of technological capabilities. Many capabilities tend to grow exponentially until they reach some natural limit: for example, aircraft speed, computer memory size and memory access speed, horsepower per liter of internal combustion engines, among many others. This is because new technology builds on older technology, and synergism results from the combination. When one technology impinges on another, the synergy often results in an unexpected and sudden increase in capability. For instance, the development of microcomputers depended on the combined technologies of electronic computer circuitry, miniaturization of electronic circuits, efficient computer programming, and development of information storage devices, Such synergies are difficult to forecast. In the early 1950s, noted science fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote a short story set five hundred years in the future. One artifact featured in this story of the future was a small, hand-held device that could perform complex mathematical calculations when its buttons were properly pushed.

The fact that a new capability is developed does not automatically mean that it will be put to use. The files of the Patent Bureau are jammed with useless inventions. The lack of application potential does not, of course, mean that the capability or scientific finding is worthless. There are many examples of important technological advances that rest on seemingly nonapplicable earlier discoveries. A case in point is Albert Einstein's work on special and general relativity. it depended on earlier work of the mathematician Hendrik Lorentz, work that had no apparent application to physics when it was originally published.

Although varying greatly from industry to industry, the embodiment of a scientific discovery, an innovation, has traditionally lagged the discovery itself, the invention, by five to seven years [30, 39]. More recently, competitive pressures in worldwide markets have tended to shorten these lags, but they are still significant. Once the innovation is developed, its adoption is also not instantaneous, often taking between 10 and 20 years to reach the point of market saturation. The lag between invention and innovation, and the time required for adoption to be completed are useful for the technological forecaster and the project manager. The fact that invention is a precursor to innovation allows the forecaster to consider the possible nature of innovations before they occur. The time consuming process of adoption gives the project manager some ability to assess the innovation before actually adopting it. (For a detailed discussion and examples of the adoption process, see [30].)

Historically, technological forecasting was based on the guesses of the most recognized and prestigious expert in the area. This is no longer appropriate because technological progress has become dependent on the interaction of several, often diverse, technologies. A single individual rarely has the requisite level of expertise in all relevant areas. Also, the management and funding of the several technologies have a significant impact on the degree and speed of technological change.

The government has played an increasingly important role in technological forecasting. One of the earliest attempts at technological forecasting was the 1937 report Technological Trends and National Policy, Including the Social IMplications Of New Inventions [44], which predicted that plastics, television, synthetic rubber, and a mechanical cotton picker were likely to become widely used and have significant social impacts.



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