Hello readers, today we shall be looking at technology trends that have taken center stage in the year 2018.
“The Computer Society’s predictions, based on a deep-dive analysis by a team of leading technology experts, identify top-trending technologies that hold extensive disruptive potential for 2018,” said Jean-Luc Gaudiot, IEEE Computer Society President. “The vast computing community depends on the Computer Society as the provider for relevant technology news and information, and our predictions directly align with our commitment to keeping our community well-informed and prepared for the changing technological landscape of the future.”
Consumers and enterprises have a lot of potentials to look forward to, as frontier technologies finally become affordable enough to service the mass markets.
a) Blockchain
The use of Bitcoin and the revitalization of peer-to-peer computing have been essential for the adoption of blockchain technology in a broader sense. We predict the increased expansion of companies delivering blockchain products and even IT heavyweights entering the market and consolidating the products.
b) Robotics
Even though robotics research has been performed for many decades, robotics adoption has not flourished. However, the past few years have seen the increased market availability of consumer robots, as well as more sophisticated military and industrial robots. We predict that this will trigger wider adoption of robotics in the medical space for caregiving and other healthcare uses. Combined with Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence, robotics will further advance in 2018. Robotics will also motivate further evolution of ethics.
c) Assisted reality and virtual reality (AR/VR)
Gaming and AR/VR gadgets have grown in adoption in the past year. We anticipate that this trend will grow with modern user interfaces such as 3D projections and movement detection. This will allow for associating individuals with metadata that can be viewed subject to privacy configurations, which will continue to drive international policies for cybersecurity and privacy.
d) Internet of things
BI Intelligence’s report on the “internet of things” notes that nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions in the next five years alone. This deluge of investment has turned this once science-fictional notion into reality. Already, many of us wake up in our “smart beds” to a Bluetooth-connected alarm clock that communicates with our wifi-enabled speakers. Soon all of our devices — microwaves, washing machines, and even bird feeders — will be connected to the web. With geospatial data from all of our devices, tech-savvy companies will be able to optimize and automate systems, eradicating inefficiencies caused by human error.
e) Cybersecurity and AI
Cybersecurity is becoming essential to everyday life and business, yet it is increasingly hard to manage. Exploits have become extremely sophisticated and it is hard for IT to keep up. Pure automation no longer suffices and AI is required to enhance data analytics and automated scripts. It is expected that humans will still be in the loop of taking actions; hence, the relationship to ethics. But AI itself is not immune to cyber attacks. We will need to make AI/DL techniques more robust in the presence of adversarial traffic in any application area.
Machine intelligence has the potential to fundamentally shift worker demand and displace millions of jobs. Where will everyone go when machines can do our work for us? This question, among others, will be important considerations in getting our rapt attention in 2018.
Let this post encourage a dialogue down in the Comments section below. All thoughts are welcome.
Until next time, goodbye from the Mark & Ryse team.
