Trends Identified

Wearables - On-body computing devices are ready for business

Wearable computing has many forms, such as glasses, watches, smart badges, and bracelets. The potential is tremendous: hands-free, headsup technology to reshape how work gets done, how decisions are made, and how you engage with employees, customers, and partners. Wearables introduce technology to previously prohibitive scenarios where safety, logistics, or even etiquette constrained the usage of laptops and smartphones. While consumer wearables are in the spotlight today, we expect business to drive acceptance and transformative use cases.

2014

Tech trends 2014 - Inspiring Disruption

Deloitte

Weather Wars

Weather manipulation tools— such as cloud seeding to induce or suppress rain—are not new, but deploying them at scale is becoming easier and more affordable. As the impacts of climate-related changes in weather patterns intensify, the incentives to turn to technological fixes will increase in affected areas. Think of governments trying to manage simultaneous declines in rainfall and increases in water demand. Aside from the potential environmental consequences, at a time of increasing geopolitical tensions even well-intentioned weather manipulation might be viewed as hostile. Perceptions would be paramount: a neighbouring state might see largescale cloud-seeding as theft of rain or the reason for a drought. Cloud-seeding planes might be viewed as dual-use tools for espionage. Hostile uses are prohibited, but cannot be ruled out—for example, weather manipulation tools could be used to disrupt a neighbour’s agriculture or military planning. And if states decided unilaterally to use more radical geo-engineering technologies it could trigger dramatic climatic disruptions. As technologies evolve and deployment increases, increased transparency—about who is using what, and why—would help limit destabilizing ambiguity. So too would active discussion and collaboration on environmental vulnerabilities, both bilaterally between bordering states and on wider regional and global multilateral platforms.

2019

The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition

World Economic Forum (WEF)

Design for humans

What if technology adapted to people? The new frontier of digital experiences is technology designed specifically for individual human behavior. Business leaders recognize that as technology shrinks the gap between effective human and machine cooperation, accounting for unique human behavior expands not only the quality of experience, but also the effectiveness of technology solutions. This shift is transforming traditional personalized relationships into something much more valuable: partnerships.

2017

Technology vision 2017, amplify you

Accenture

Monetary Populism

What if the protectionist wave expanded to engulf the central banks at the heart of the global financial system? Against a backdrop of geo-economic escalation, calls could rise to “take back control” of independent monetary policy and to use it as a weapon in tit-for-tat confrontations between the world’s economies. Prudent and coordinated central bank policies might be attacked by populist politicians as a globalist affront to national democracy. A direct political challenge to the independence of major central banks would unsettle financial markets. Investors might question the solidity of the global financial system’s institutional foundations. As unease deepened, markets might start to tremble, currencies to swing. Uncertainty would spread to the real economy. Polarization would hamper domestic political response, with mounting problems blamed on enemies within and without. Internationally, there might be no actors with the legitimacy to force a coordinated de-escalation. The risk of a populist attack on the world’s financial architecture could be mitigated by deepened efforts to maximize the popular legitimacy of central bank independence. This could be done by bringing the public in—perhaps through formal consultative assemblies— to decisions on independence, accountability and stability. The greater the public understanding of and support for monetary policy mandates and tools, the less vulnerable they will be in times of crisis.

2019

The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition

World Economic Forum (WEF)

By the 2030s, we'll be ready to move humans toward the Red Planet

What’s more, once we get there, we’ll probably discover evidence of alien life, writes Ellen Stofan, Chief Scientist at NASA. Big science will help us to answer big questions about life on earth, as well as opening up practical applications for space technology.

2016

Eight predictions for 2030

World Economic Forum (WEF)

A majority of Americans envision a future made better by advancements in technology

When asked for their general views on technology’s long-term impact on life in the future, technological optimists outnumber pessimists by two-to-one. Six in ten Americans (59%) feel that technological advancements will lead to a future in which people’s lives are mostly better, while 30% believe that life will be mostly worse.

2014

US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years

Pew Research Center

Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'

When experts talk about the coming food security crisis, the date they fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we will need to be producing 50% more food than we are now. By the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically. The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both. Developed countries such as the UK are likely, for the most part, to have attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and reducing our reliance on imports. In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb- and fat-heavy diet, while those with money scarf the protein. The developing world, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap by embracing the promise of biotechnology which the middle classes in the developed world will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject. In truth, any of the imported grain that we do consume will come from genetically modified crops. As climate change lays waste to the productive fields of southern Europe and north Africa, more water-efficient strains of corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north, Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens up the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production. The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that huge number of people. It's just that some people in the west may find the methods used to do so unappetising.

2011

20 predictions for the next 25 years

The Guardian

Super consumer

When humans are augmented by AI, who gains the most — consumers or brands? We expect the evolution and interplay of AI, machine learning, ever-present sensors, smart devices and new computing interfaces to take consumer empowerment to a whole new level — giving rise to tomorrow’s super consumer. A little like the fictional superheroes of comic books, super consumers can be defined as those who embrace new technologies, such as AI, VR, wearables and robotics, to create smarter and more powerful extensions of themselves. Whether working, playing, eating, shopping, learning or pursuing healthier lifestyles, tomorrow’s super consumers will be augmented by technology (see Human augmentation) in the service of achieving more informed and rich experiences across these different categories of living.

2018

What’s after what’s next? The upside of disruption Megatrends shaping 2018 and beyond

EY

Manufacturing may be more local and efficient

When it comes to light manufacturing, synthetic biology and 3D printing have similar characteristics: they both support the local production of a “product” from a digital file using simple low-cost equipment; they enable very low-cost replica on of a small or large quantity; and they allow the user to easily experiment and customize the product. Currently, 3D printing uses close to 30 different materials with growing complexity (e.g., Boeing prints 22 000 different airline parts). Soon this will include clothes, many consumer goods and electronic gadgets, to name a few. Synthetic biology will likely produce liquids, solids and industrial chemicals for pharmaceuticals, medicine, paper
and building supplies and other goods yet to be imagined, in small or large quantities, and may produce raw materials on-site for local manufacturing plants.

2013

Metascan 3 emerging technologies

Canada, Policy Horizons Canada

Transparently Immersive Experiences

When it comes to transparently immersive experiences, technology is introducing transparency between people, businesses and things. As technology evolves to be more adaptive, contextual and fluid, it will become more human-centric. Besides AR, companies should look to digital workspaces, connected homes, virtual reality and 4D printing in this realm.

2017

Top Trends in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017

Gartner