Assignment

Future Technologies & Media (FTM)

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

October 26, 2026

Task

You need to introduce an emerging digital technology so that your audience gains a solid understanding of it.

Each student is assigned a technology, see Table 1. There is no topic proposal in this term.

In your presentation of approx. 8 minutes, cover

• what the technology is and how it works,
• its key characteristics (i.e., based on the characteristics discussed in the lecture notes),
• and its current state of development and maturity.

You can include grey literature¹, but you need to analyze at least three (3) scientific papers.

Assigned Technologies

Student ID	Assigned Technology
410335	Light-Field Displays
298791	Mid-Air Haptics
373533	Neuromorphic Computing
341501	Federated Learning
360948	Quantum Key Distribution
344669	Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)
410629	E-Textiles
369420	Batteryless IoT Devices

Table 1: Assignment of technologies to student IDs

Deliverables

You need to prepare and hold a presentation and to answer theory-based questions in a Q&A.

• Upload your presentation slides (.pptx and .pdf) via Moodle until the deadline
• Use following naming scheme: FTM_WT26_Surname-Name
• You will present the slides uploaded to Moodle (no late updates)
• For the deadline and the examination date, please see the schedule

The Q&A

After your presentation, I will ask you questions for approx. 8 minutes.

The questions check how well you have understood the lecture contents. They address the emergent nature of the technology you presented and its relation to the hypotheses discussed in the lecture notes.

You are expected to answer in a theory-based way: use the terminology and the concepts from the lecture notes, and argue from them rather than from intuition or from general technology news.

• Classify your technology against the five attributes of emerging technologies
• Argue which of the hypotheses your technology supports, and where that support is weak
• Relate your technology to a hypothesis it does not obviously fit
• Derive fields of application and social or ethical implications from the concepts discussed

All four hypotheses are examinable, not only the one your technology fits most obviously.

Example question: You argue that your technology enables immersive experiences. However, considering Milgram & Kishino’s virtuality continuum and the role of tactile stimuli discussed in the lecture notes, where exactly would you place it, and what sensory limitations prevent deeper immersion?

Preparing only your own technology is not sufficient. The questions move across the four hypotheses and back to the attributes of emergence, so work through all five units of the summer term 2026.

Grading

The presentation of the technology (approx. 8 min., 30%)
+ the Q&A (approx. 8 min., 70%)

The grade will be a combination of

• your presentation of the assigned technology (approx. 8 minutes, 30% of your grade)
• the Q&A after the presentation (approx. 8 minutes, 70% of your grade)

The weighting reflects what is examined. The presentation establishes a shared understanding of the technology; the Q&A establishes whether you can reason about it with the theory from the lecture.

Evaluation criteria

Your presentation must meet the requirements of good scientific practice (passing criteria).

An excellent presentation has the following characteristics:

Technology

• Clearly defines the assigned emerging technology (also based on the concepts discussed in the lecture notes)
• Accurately describes the technology’s key characteristics and its current state of development

Presentation

• Presentation is well-organized and easy to follow
• Conveys a solid understanding of the technology within the time given
• Speaks confidently and professionally

Scientific references

• Integrates research from at least three (3) scientific papers
• Accurately cites and references all sources (passing criteria)

Q&A

An excellent Q&A has the following characteristics:

• Correctly uses terminology and concepts from the lecture notes
• Accurately classifies the technology against the attributes of emerging technologies
• Argues the connection to the hypotheses, including where the connection is weak or contested
• Derives fields of application and social or ethical implications from the concepts discussed
• Extends beyond the presented material, demonstrating deeper understanding of the field

A note on grades

It is unlikely that every student will receive a very good grade, i.e. deliver an outstanding performance - see the meaning of grades. Instead, it is to be expected that the grades will spread across the spectrum.

Grade	Meaning
1: very good	A truly outstanding achievement that (not only) shows no deficiencies in the criteria mentioned, but also gives both the supervisor and external assessors an excellent impression.
2: good	Work that exceeds the average requirements/performance and is easily recognizable and presentable to the outside world as a “good performance”.
Note	2.5 is the average of passed assessments, i.e., an “average performance”
3: satisfactory	A performance that achieves the desired goal “to a satisfactory extent”; however, deficiencies can be identified here and there.
4: sufficient	A performance that “still adequately satisfies” the requirements, but deviates from the expectations placed on it in several ways.
5: not sufficient	A performance that does not meet several of the criteria mentioned.

Scientific literature

In your presentation, you need to consider at least three scientific papers.

• Select only papers that are peer-reviewed.
• Search in the field that actually studies your technology, see Table 2. Most of the assigned technologies are researched in engineering, computer science, physics or materials science, so the information systems journals will return little on the technology itself.
• In computer science and human-computer interaction, peer-reviewed conference papers rank alongside or above journals. CHI, UIST, SenSys and NeurIPS are full scientific sources, not preliminary ones.
• Start with a review or survey article, which gives you the state of the art in a single source. ACM Computing Surveys, Proceedings of the IEEE and the Annual Review series are good entry points.
• Use Web of Science, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore and the ACM Digital Library (through the HNU library proxy) to search for literature.
• Use the citation count as an indicator of significance², but correct for age: a 2025 paper cannot have accumulated the citations of a 2015 one, and your technologies are recent.

Field	Typical venues
Displays, graphics and optics	ACM Transactions on Graphics, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Optics Express
Human-computer interaction	ACM CHI, ACM UIST, ACM IMWUT, IEEE Transactions on Haptics
Computer architecture and hardware	Proceedings of the IEEE, Nature Electronics, IEEE Micro
Machine learning	NeurIPS, ICML, ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
Networked and embedded systems	ACM SenSys, ACM MobiCom, IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Quantum information	Nature Photonics, npj Quantum Information, Reviews of Modern Physics
Materials and textiles	Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, IEEE Sensors Journal
Adoption, governance and implications	AIS Senior Scholars’ List, A and B journals in VHB-JOURQUAL3

Table 2: Where to search, by field

Q&A

Literature

Fitzgerald, B., Dennis, A. R., An, J., Tsutsui, S., & Muchhala, R. C. (2019). Information systems research: Thinking outside the basket and beyond the journal. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 45(1), 7.

Footnotes

1. Grey literature includes usually not peer-reviewed material such as white papers, books, web-sources, etc.

2. For a more balanced discussion of quality indicators of papers see e.g., Fitzgerald et al. (2019)