300 years ago, industrial revolution combined invention of machinery and utilization of made use of new form of energy (steam, fossil and electricity) transformed agriculture based society to industrial society. Factory system drastically improved productivity in form of mechanical automation.
For the last 50 years, technology grew exponentially due to invention of computer. Computer enabled high speed computation which solved problems that human took too long to compute. Science and engineering drastically speed up by this computation automation. Artificial intelligent is pushing to next technology phase call predication or decision automation.
Technology is changing so fast. Young people are keen to learn early. Working people try to learn and apply to their work. Elderly learns to keep up the pace with the society. However not everyone is scientist or engineer, their interest or work may not relate technology at all. How can you get start ?
First understand what technology we are talking about. We focus on IT technology which creates the major impact.
IT technology = hardware + software + communication + data + infrastructure + security + domain knowledge (which is the area that you apply the technology)
- Hardware = PC, laptop, smart TV, mobile phone, game console, VR headset, camera (whatever has a processor/controller, input/output, memory and storage)
- Software technology = software usage, domain knowledge and programming
- Communication = how data exchange safely and efficiently (video, audio, data,..)
- Data = input, validate, process, output and consolidate
- Infrastructure = server and its services , storage, network devices and connectivity,
We can skip all the technical terms and focus to the domain (area that you are interested).
Technology for Golden Age
Let’s start with elderly who we should respect. They contributed to build our society foundation. However current technology did not exist in their era. I believe the following area they may interest.
Communication – Happy moment of life is meeting family and friends. Technology brings us close. My parents are 70+ and stay in different country. In the past, we usually made phone call. Email is somehow difficult for them. But they pickup Whatsapp pretty fast. They are happy to see grandchildren in video call or conferencing in skype. They may not be a content creator in facebook, but I posted major events to share to them. Recently zoom meeting is quite popular. I have some friends in their 60s, they use facebook quite actively.
Online shopping and payment – During pandemic period, elderly is advised to stay home. It is good to have family members to assist them. But in some case, they may need to order by their own. Conventional supermarket is now offering online service with good logistic support. And online food delivery is very popular. Independent elderly is good to learn this ordering method. The shortcoming of online shopping is additional delivery cost. Another technology being heavy promoted is cashless payment. In China Wechat and Alipay are almost default payment mode. In Singapore, Paylah and PayNow are getting popular which elderly are good to learn. They are other forms of mobile payment likes Apple Pay, Samsung Pay which link up with credit card or PayPal. But it may not suit for everyone.
Security – Once we connect to internet or mobile services, there are risk of spam. Security is not just installing virus scan software, it is more on security awareness education. General public should be educated on typical cases of the internet fault, spam call and fake news. Online gambling is also risky for general public.
Internet – My parent favorite pastime is watching TV. Internet for them is difficult because of the input method. They speak Chinese but don’t know how to type Chinese. Luckily, voice recognition is now available in both PC and mobile. This breaks the obstacle. However mostly I will create Internet shortcuts for their favorite website for easy access. Typically, Facebook, news and mini game websites.
Leisure and extension of interest – I always advise my parent to do some physical exercise. However due to health and pandemic situation, they mainly stay at home. Besides watching TV, they may play mini game or reading news. The challenge of reading news is their eyesight is not good, Text to Speech technology can solve some problem. I tried introducing VR technology using Google VR earth to travel to different places. Some of my older friends quite like it. But some will feel dizzy and uncomfortable. Some elderly like gardening, they can search in internet to plant different types of plant. Some like to play fishing games. Some like to play mahjong (provided no online gambling). Also need to aware that some games has in app purchase for virtual asset. Sometime some may waste a lot of money on it. There are quite a number of technologies can apply to make elderly life more enjoyable.
Technology for working class
In any company, most of us work with some sort of software or computerized hardware to support our job. And they are constantly upgraded. Business processes are converted from manual to higher level of automation. Few years back, automation, business intelligent, big data were common terms we hear. Now machine learning, AI, digitization, VR/AR, industrial 4.0 are getting popular.
What are them? Why I need them? What to learn and how to learn? Eventually how to apply?
A HR officer (office worker)
Take leave application as an example to learn how process evolve with technology.
- Fill in a hardcopy, send to supervisor or manager to approve.
- Computerize with electronic application and approve. But some leave need evidence to prove. Eg. Medical leave cert. And still must attach the hardcopy.
- Computerize using mobile app. You can apply at home and take phone on your evidence.
- Approval automation. What kind of leave can approval automatically? What kind of leave need approval? Base on what logic and data the application can properly review.
The technology related to this case is data analysis. May be the staff can learn about excel report, Power BI or Tableau
.To further extend the application, HR can get data from manpower requirement for operation, leave application during events like school holiday, Xmas for staff arrangement related to leave application.
This need the concept of digitization of a company which can make of use corporate wide data. Transformation from data to information and information to knowledge. Learning programming is not be the best choice in this case.
Artist
No matter you can photographer, dance, model builder. You may like to demonstrate your work to public. Learning about CMS (content management system) likes WordPress, Joomla or Wix to publish your work. In addition, you can add ecommerce option to sell your work. And learn how to do web hosting.
Workshop supervisor or manager
Factory automation is hot topic to improve productivity and agility. Usually it will involve external consultant or expert. However it is always good to learn about IOT technology, micro controller (Arduino, ESP), micro processor (Raspberry PI), sensors, actuator, Programmable logic controller, industrial grade interfaces and robotic. There are many components of this kind of project. Which part should be done in house and which part should be built by external partner?
Sometimes, we may be over fancy by robotic and MES (Manufacture execution system) and forget to put attention to fundamental fixture building, process standardization and production data review. Those determines the success rate of the project.
Learning C programming is needed for factory automation.
AI with computer vision will also further enhance some manufacturing process and quality control. Usually you will not reinvent the established AI network, it mostly using those networks to relearn images in your domain and fine tune.
Property seller
Under pandemic situation, lots of properties were sold through VR visit. Usually you can subcontract this job to vendor. However the 360 VR virtual tour creation is much simpler that you expect. It is balance among, time, quality and cost.
Education
Education is a human science to transfer knowledge through communication and interaction. Teaching media evolves from chalk and black broad to transparent sheet and projector and now PowerPoint with Computer screen. In pandemic situation, it even use internet webcast and virtual classroom. There is more technology in this area to explore. VR classroom also start currently.
In addition, communication is not only to student, it also interactive with parent. Many schools already use applications which link up with parent.
Mathematic teaching is now using modeling. In future, physic experiment can be conducted in virtual world.
There are lots of workload for teacher to create those teaching media. Teacher can teach student to create those media to reduce the workload as well as involving student in this learning process.
Gradually lots of teaching media and templates are build up in education community.