Trends Identified
3-D printing
Additive manufacturing techniques used to create three-dimensional objects based on digital models by layering or “printing” successive layers of materials. 3D printing relies on innovative “inks” including plastic, metal, and more recently, glass and wood.
2016
Tech breaktroughs megatrend
PWC
3D printing
Additive Since the invention of the laser in 1960, photonics technologies have been further developed and have emerged in applications like communications, lighting, displays, health, manufacturing bringing about major improvements and innovations. Photonics is now everywhere around us and in everyday products like DVD players and mobile phones. In 2005, the European Commission established the European Technology Platform in Photonics: "Photonics21". In 2009, the European Commission recognised Photonics as one of the Key Enabling Technologies and in 2013 it created the Public Private Partnership in Photonics. In Photonics21 the stakeholders develop a vision and a roadmap of photonics as a well-defined science leading to disruptive break- throughs in telecommunications, life sciences, manufacturing, lighting and displays, sensors and education.
2015
Preparing the Commission for future opportunities - Foresight network fiches 2030
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Hyper-hybrid Cloud
Adoption moves from cloud to clouds, and hybrid emerges as a dominant model As cloud offerings added vertical business capability offerings to the horizontal IT capacity services, the adoption question changed from “if” to “when” – and the answer is frequently “now.” Along the way, leading organisations moved from cautious exploration to the reality of multiple individual cloud offerings handling critical pieces of their business operations – and sourced from multiple public and private providers. In each instance, these offerings needed to be connected back to the core of the business, often through traditional data-driven on-premise integration solutions. Advance one step further, and the organisation is managing both exception and routine workflow across a growing range of disparate cloud offerings with point-to-point links to legacy systems and data. This shift from “cloud” to “clouds” provides new opportunities, but it also brings challenges beyond just integration – security, data integrity and reliability, and business rules management for business processes that depend on enterprise IT assets composed with one or more cloud services. Welcome to the world of hyper-hybrid cloud.
2012
Tech Trends 2012-Elevate IT for digital business
Deloitte
Advanced autonomous systems
Advanced autonomous systems are on the rise: Algorithmic trading with no human in the loop already accounts for around 50% of all stock-market trading, and some parts of the car manufacturing process have automation levels of above 90%. These systems will gain more capabilities in the future enabling their widespread use in many market domains. While these systems make a strong contribution to productivity and can perform jobs which are dull, dirty and dangerous for humans, there is a danger of them eliminating a large number of jobs in a relatively short time frame. In addition, they pose a challenge for established legal concepts such as liability.
2015
Preparing the Commission for future opportunities - Foresight network fiches 2030
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
New-wave nuclear power
Advanced fusion and fission reactors are edging closer to reality. New nuclear designs that have gained momentum in the past year are promising to make this power source safer and cheaper. Among them are generation IV fission reactors, an evolution of traditional designs; small modular reactors; and fusion reactors, a technology that has seemed eternally just out of reach. Developers of generation IV fission designs, such as Canada’s Terrestrial Energy and Washington-based TerraPower, have entered into R&D partnerships with utilities, aiming for grid supply (somewhat optimistically, maybe) by the 2020s. Small modular reactors typically produce in the tens of megawatts of power (for comparison, a traditional nuclear reactor produces around 1,000 MW). Companies like Oregon’s NuScale say the miniaturized reactors can save money and reduce environmental and financial risks. There has even been progress on fusion. Though no one expects delivery before 2030, companies like General Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinout, are making some headway. Many consider fusion a pipe dream, but because the reactors can’t melt down and don’t create long-lived, high-level waste, it should face much less public resistance than conventional nuclear. (Bill Gates is an investor in TerraPower and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.) —Leigh Phillips
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review
Connectivity of tomorrow
Advanced networking is the unsung hero of our digital future, offering a continuum of connectivity that can drive the development of new products and services or transform inefficient operating models. Increasingly, digital transformation through data and networking-dependent technologies such as cognitive, IoT, blockchain, and advanced analytics are fueling adoption of connectivity advances. Next-generation technologies and techniques such as 5G, low Earth orbit satellites, mesh networks, edge computing, and ultra-broadband solutions promise order-of-magnitude improvements that will support reliable, high-performance communication capabilities; software-defined networking and network function virtualization help companies manage evolving connectivity options. In the coming months, expect to see companies across sectors and geographies take advantage of advanced connectivity to configure and operate tomorrow’s enterprise networks.
2019
Tech trends 2019 - Beyond the digital frontier
Deloitte
Advanced Robotics – The Rise of the Super Machine
Advanced robots are featured in many science fiction films and are probably 10-15 years away from mainstream, with new materials, fuel cells, motors, algorithms, sensors and designs. They would feature many aspects of true AI, like working fully autonomously, sensing the environment, recognizing and solving problems and learning from their environment and from humans. Some of the advanced robots may have humanoid appearances but the majority will probably have special functions and look more like machines or will merge into the background. Most of the advanced robots will interact with humans using voice, gesture, face/emotional recognition and neurolinks. We expect many smart robots to work collaboratively with humans and the upcoming of transhumanism, i.e. the merging of man and machine into cyborgs. Applications for advanced robots would be extensive, going beyond the first wave of automation and optimization, into an economy operated in large parts by machines and/or human-machine units. We would either have solved the ethical questions by setting up robot laws or the questions that we see around contemporary machine learning and robotics would be even more pressing, such as the borders between humans and machines: do we allow robots to control humans, how can we guard us against robot mistakes, if we will allow smart robots to design and build themselves and how we would stay in control.
2018
Trend Report 2018 - Emerging Technology Trends
SAP
Despite their general optimism about the long-term impact of scientific advancement, many Americans are wary of some controversial changes that may be on the near-term horizon
Advancements such as teleportation or space colonization will likely require massive leaps in scientific knowledge and effort before they can become a reality, but the widespread adoption of other “futuristic” developments is potentially much nearer at hand. With the recent introduction of Google Glass and other wearable computing devices, for example, it may be only a matter of time before most people walk around being directly fed a constant stream of digital information about their surroundings. And the widespread use of personal and commercial drones may depend as heavily on regulatory decisions as on advances in engineering. Despite their general optimism about the long-term impact of technological change, Americans express significant reservations about some of these potentially short-term developments. We asked about four potential—and in many cases controversial—technological advancements that might become common in near future, and for each one a majority of Americans feel that it would be a change for the worse if those technologies become commonly used.
2014
US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years
Pew Research Center
Rise of the individual
Advances in global education, health and technology have helped empower individuals like never before, leading to increased demands for transparency and participation in government and public decision-making. These changes will continue, and are ushering in a new era in human history in which, by 2022, more people will be middle class than poor.
2014
Future State 2030: The global megatrends shaping governments
KPMG
Biotechnology and health tech
Advances in ICT have allowed an increasing integration of synthetic biology, systems biology and functional genomics into biotechnology. Through convergence of an ever-expanding range of “omics” technologies – genomics, proteomics (proteins), metabolomics (biochemical activity), etc. – computational biology explores the roles, relationships and actions of the various types of molecules that make up the cells of an organism (Emerging Technologies, 2014), allowing the functions of organisms to be better understood, from the molecular level to the system level, and advancing biotechnology applications. The cost of sequencing a complete human genome has fallen faster even than implied by Moore’s Law (section C.2) to around $1,000, and is expected to cost no more than a regular blood test by the early 2020s (Wadhwa with Salkever, 2017:123–124).
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD