New Technology 2016

New York City Manhattan Times Square panorama aerial view at night with office building skyscrapers skyline illuminated by Hudson River.

My course, New Technology started last week at Reykjavik University. The course is now broadcast live with hangouts, and all videos posted both to YouTube (automatically after hangout) and audioslides are in my New Technology Channel at Vimeo.

The objective of this course is to look at innovations and technology trends, learn from history, and using theories of innovations to study lessons and try to see patterns so we can evaluate new technology currently emerging and interpret the impact.

In the course we look at how to keep up to date on technology trends. In particular we will look at communications, wireless devices, mobile phones and the TV, home appliances, the Internet and other consumer devices. The course will discuss what future trends will emerge, which standards and companies will be successful, and the effects that the technology will have on society.

The world is constantly changing and reinventing itself. One of the driving factors of change is technology and the rate of this change seems to be increasing. Companies that have solid business models suddenly find themselves struggling as consumer behavior changes. Suddenly good management practices are not be enough. If fact, most companies fail because they resist changes and don’t adapt quickly enough to technological disruptions. Technology is what drives businesses, provides growth and new opportunities.

But do we really understand how technology changes and how it impacts businesses and people? Why do we find technology so unpredictable and difficult to understand? Why do businesses fail to take opportunities of new technologies and loose their market to newcomers?

Take as an example phone giant Nokia that dominated the phone market, taking 57% of the profits 2007. Only five years later the profits are gone and now Apple, a company that didn’t even make phones until 2007, generates 66% of the profits. How could this happen?

As it turns out there are lots of studies and theories of technology on how technology evolves over time. In fact some things follows a remarkably predictable path of evolution while other developments are highly unpredictable. By understanding these we can start to evaluate technology and even predict how technology will evolve and how it will disrupt our lives.

Introduction

Here is the first video from Lecture L01 Introduction:

And here is part 2:

Slides: