2018 - Top 10 Transformative Technology Trends
1. Augmented Lifestyle with AI, Intelligent Apps and Analytics
As AI, Intelligent apps and Analytics are getting more embedded into our lifestyle we are beginning to create technology that has started augmenting human lifestyle. We will see designers integrating and augmenting our everyday activities such as seeing (facial recognition), reading (semantic and sentiment analysis), listening/speaking (conversational interfaces e.g. Alexa, Siri) and emotions (affective computing).
2. Rise of Intelligent Things with Smart IoT
It has been predicted that we will have 75 billion connected devices by 2020! These devices will not only be connected, but will be cooperating as part of an intelligent eco-system. These smart devices will be constantly gathering data, connecting and sharing in intelligent ways to solve the desired goals of underlying systems. As AI and Intelligent things proliferate, expect to see a swarm of intelligent agents collaborating and replicating interactions in the real world.
3. Cloud Shifts to the Edge
With the proliferation of IoT/IoE and intelligent apps/agents, we will see the need for distributed computing with respect to analytics and decision-making. Therefore edge computing IoT will spawn a new infrastructure market. The dependency of IoT infrastructure for near real-time solutions will require us to overcome connectivity, latency and bandwidth constraints. Greater functionality at the end points will require the adoption of scalable and failsafe distributed network and storage architecture.
4. Quantum Computing and Surge in Computing Power
The emergence of quantum computing will enable significant transformation of computing power. The massive scale of compute power will enable problem solving such as unsupervised machine learning at a scale, which is unthinkable with our current computers. IBM recently announced a 50 qubit prototype quantum computer chip, we should see a 100-200+ qubit system in 2018.
5. Distributed Trust Systems and Proliferation of Blockchain
Blockchain is a distributed, peer to peer ledger of records that is decentralized and therefore has an extremely secure architecture. The records in a blockchain are called blocks and connected to the previous block, hence the “chain”. The whole chain is self-managed, and no one person or organization has control or access to the entire chain. This makes the architecture highly secure and transparent. The inherent distributed, secure and scalable nature of blockchain architecture will see adoption in financial, insurance, healthcare, government and networking/IoT.
6. Event Driven & Context Aware Platforms
With data being integrated across multiple data streams, devices and network, the next challenge and opportunity is for insights from the data that can be available in a timely and contextual manner. Businesses will become more and more dependent on the ability to sense and exploit events so that they can make contextual business decisions. Therefore niche platforms that enable businesses to configure, detect, analyze and execute on events will be essential. Event sources, real-time situational and context aware system will be the requirement of enterprise IT strategy.
7. Immersive, Augmented and Communal experiences
Virtual reality today is a isolating experience. The head mounted displays and smart phone interfaces are primarily geared towards an individual experience. In the future we will see AR/VR will allow users to play, work, learn and explore virtual worlds and alternate realities.
8. Friendly interaction with Consumers
Consumers will demand technology that will fit their lifestyle seamlessly at home, at work, at play and on the road. The technology should not only enable them to interact seamlessly but should also enable them to express their best self. The way we interact with technology will change with consumers moving towards voice search and screen less interaction. We will see rapid innovation in conversational interfaces, social bots, and more emphatic designed interfaces.
9. Personalized Health and Integration of Direct to Consumer Genetics
Genomics holds the key to meeting many of the global healthcare challenges in the years ahead. As advances in sequencing technology have made individual genome sequencing economically viable. Direct to consumer genomics will usher in a new era of personalized health solutions that will lead to better awareness of genetic predispositions to health and disease. Gene editing tools, new data streams from wearable/IoT, pharmacogenomics, and consumer-driven genomics will move us towards the goal of improving population health.
10. The Dawn of Consciousness Hacking and Bio-Field Sciences
Consciousness Hacking is a global community exploring technology as a catalyst for psychological, emotional and spiritual flourishing. It's an inside-out perspective on how technology can serve us by changing our relationship to the world, rather than the world itself. Technologies such as HRV, EEG, ECG, GSR will be leveraged to better understand the Body-Mind and connectedness of communities. Research emerging from Photo-biomodulation, binaural beats, photic stimulation/brain entrainment will open new avenues for consumers to explore their wellbeing. Advances in technologies such as electro photon imaging in health diagnostics, will also be leveraged to understand energy medicine and also quantify and measure practices such as Reiki and Pranic healing.