Sustaining @ The Society

Introduction

The structure, values and operation of our society are changing alongside the advanced developments in science and technology.

The Internet and global communication networks have eliminated geographical boundaries and promote global economic, cultural and social activities. The latest version of the Internet protocol (IP), IPv6 can provide enough IP addresses to allow everyday objects to be connected to the Internet. This forms the Internet of Things, which facilitates the building of smart homes and smart cities. Last year, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government announced the "Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong", which involves a commitment to adding new science and technology into daily life, transportation, energy and waste management, investment in science and technology, and government operations, to make Hong Kong a world-class smart city. Furthermore, the development of artificial neural networks and deep-learning algorithms has enabled arti cial intelligence (AI) to learn, analyse data and solve problems. They can even process and analyse the big data and make forecasts.

As global citizens in this fast-changing society, we need a strong foundation of scientific knowledge and a scientific culture to manage the changes and strike a balance between the technological benefits and potential risks, such as personal data privacy, cyber security and AI replacing labour forces, and so forth. Therefore, science education and communication become indispensable to the sustainable development of our society.

The programmes in the “Sustaining @ Society” series introduce some of the ways in which science and technology contribute to the building of smart cities. There are also interesting science education programmes which help develop a science culture in Hong Kong.

Click here to view "Sustaining @ The Society" programmes