Khaleej Times

Data is the new magic wand

Hamad Obaid al mansOOri THOUGHT LEADER

- Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori is the Head of Digital Government and Director General, TRA

Technology will challenge the laws of physics as explained by Erik Ekudden, chief technology officer at Ericsson, Ekudden was referring to positive signs from a joint research project between his company and the King’s College Research Center related to transmitti­ng touch and feeling over the Internet.

It is a bizarre idea, closer to imaginatio­n than science, but experts quoted by Ekudden believe that it is possible, and it is just a matter of time until it becomes a reality. At some point in the foreseeabl­e future, we will be able to transmit our emotions online, and we will be able to activate the sense of touch in cyberspace. The secret of this lies in the combinatio­n of human and machine intelligen­ce, while leveraging the prospects of 5G.

The latest joint project report reflected that “we have to go beyond the traditiona­l laws of physics because even the speed of light itself will not be sufficient to enable such applicatio­ns”. Such words may be difficult to comprehend, but science today has another logic, a logic that requires efforts and deep thinking to understand and keep pace. Quantum computing supported by 5G refers to the simultaneo­us transmissi­on of data in almost no time.

Are these scientific expectatio­ns or supernatur­al fantasies? No matter how strange these future scenarios are, experts, including Aram Galstyan, research director for ISI’s Data Science and Machine Learning group and Research Associate Professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineerin­g’s Computer Science Department, believes that future expectatio­ns are not the product of magic or supernatur­al measures, they are science and knowledge above all. For those in charge of institutio­ns in general, the purpose of future foresight is not to raise eyebrows, but rather to provide inputs for actual and proactive planning.

Future expectatio­ns are many, and every day, research centers produce dozens of them. Some of these expectatio­ns happen with surprising accuracy, while others deviate from reality. But what really matters is that they are part of the necessary data for future planning, or so it should be.

Future expectatio­ns are many, and every day, research centres produce dozens of them. Some of these expectatio­ns happen with surprising accuracy, while others deviate from reality. But what really matters is that they are part of the necessary data for future planning, or so it should be.

Foresights in today’s world are the outcome of analysing massive amounts of both historical and objective data. From here, data was described as the gold of the current era, and the advantage of this gold is that it is available to everyone in the world, but the key in uncovering its real value is “analysis”.

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