Trends Identified

How people watch TV
Younger adults are using online streaming services as their go-to platform for watching television. About six-in-ten Americans ages 18 to 29 (61%) report that online streaming is the primary way they watch television, according to Center survey data from August
2017
Key trends shaping technology in 2017
Pew Research Center
No Such Thing as Hacker-proof
You’ve been breached, or you soon will be. Now what? Who can forget that great line from the movie Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come.” It’s an inspiring incentive of future rewards to be reaped for challenging work today. But in the realm of cyber-threat defense, it is also an unfortunate likelihood. If you build something of value, others will likely come to steal it. No matter how you secure your environment. No matter how many redundant walls or how many futile moats you have.
2013
Tech Trends 2013 Elements of postdigital
Deloitte
Be nice to the telepresence robot
You wouldn’t rest your feet on a colleague during a meeting. But what if your workmate was a robot controlled by a co-worker many kilometres away – would it still be rude? This is typical of the new etiquette questions that will be raised by remote-controlled telepresence robots, which allow you to transport your “self” anywhere in the world to take a look around. A roving version of you, these robots could alter the way we travel and interact with each other.
2011
Seven technologies to disrupt the next decade
NewScientist
Lost cities
You don’t need to look very hard in a place like Miami to see how cities are changing in the 21st Century – rising sea levels are gradually making some of them disappear. Fuelled by climate change, not only are floods becoming more common in the streets, but the changing weather patterns have also influenced building design. Aside from more seawalls, the city is requiring all new buildings be built with their first floor built higher. But that’s all a sticking plaster – if current trends continue, we may have to come to terms with losing whole swathes of cities, islands and low-lying regions such as Bangladesh. The economic impact to regions will be profound, and climate refugees could become the norm.
2017
10 grand challenges we’ll face by 2050
The BBC
Data supply chain: Putting information into circulation
Yes, data technologies are evolving rapidly, but most have been adopted in piecemeal fashion. As a result, enterprise data is vastly underutilized. Data ecosystems are complex and littered with data silos, limiting the value that organizations can get out of their own data by making it difficult to access. To truly unlock that value, companies must start treating data more as a supply chain, enabling it to flow easily and usefully through the entire organization—and eventually throughout each company’s ecosystem of partners too.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
Plasmonic Materials - Light-controlled nanomaterials are revolutionizing sensor technology
Writing in Scientific American in 2007, Harry A. Atwater of the California Institute of Technology predicted that a technology he called “plasmonics” could eventually lead to an array of applications, from highly sensitive biological detectors to invisibility cloaks. A decade later various plasmonic technologies are already a commercial reality, and others are transitioning from the laboratory to the market. These technologies all rely on controlling the interaction between an electromagnetic field and the free electrons in a metal (typically gold or silver) that account for the metal’s conductivity and optical properties. Free electrons on a metal’s surface oscillate collectively when hit by light, forming what is known as surface plasmon. When a piece of metal is large, the free electrons reflect the light that hits them, giving the material its shine. But when a metal measures just a few nanometers, its free electrons are confined in a very small space, limiting the frequency at which they can vibrate. The specific frequency of the oscillation depends on the size of the metal nanoparticle. In a phenomenon called resonance, the plasmon absorbs only the fraction of incoming light that oscillates at the same frequency as the plasmon itself does (reflecting the rest of the light). This surface plasmon resonance can be exploited to create nanoantennas, efficient solar cells and other useful devices.
2018
Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2018
Scientific American
Reshape: The post-crisis environment
Worst fears fail to materialise on regulations… yetRegulation is a perennial concern for CEOs. This year,how business leaders view regulatory issues has to be understood through the lens of ‘what might have been’at the start of 2009, when the uncertainty which hung over the financial system and by extension, the global economy,was so great. At that time, drastic measures to contain the crisis and preserve national economies were a realistic prospect. Massive bailouts ensued and with them,expectations of radical regulation to prevent another crisis.The alarmist scenarios of trade barriers and regulatory rewrites largely failed to materialise. Yet there remains asense that more regulatory change is inevitable. CEOs see little encouraging news on compliance costs. Regulatory burdens on corporations were not addressed during the downturn. In fact, in this year’s survey, more CEOs citeda lack of progress on cutting red tape than a year ago,67% to 57%. Only 2% of CEOs based in the US said the government has reduced regulations (see figure 2.1).Some governments are listening, at least when it comes to taxes. Our annual measure of the comparative ease of paying taxes in 183 countries found that 45 economies had reduced the tax burden on SMEs, or made it easier for them to pay taxes, in the year through 1 June 2009.4Yet, few CEOs believe that trend will continue.
2010
13th Annual global CEO Survey
PWC
The rich are aging, the poor are not.
Working-age populations are shrinking in wealthy countries, China, and Russia but growing in developing, poorer countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia, increasing economic, employment, urbanization, and welfare pressures and spurring migration. Training and continuing education will be crucial in developed and developing countries alike.
2017
Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress
USA, US National Intelligence Council
Work
Work itself is changing, with new jobs coming on-stream that didn’t exist ten years ago, as a direct consequence of urbanisation, increasing life expectancy, new technologies, globalisation and climate change. To maintain our workforce we will increasingly hire women, the aged and disabled people and probably have three generations of employees in our firms for the first time in any numbers. The diversity of our workforce and the roles we will ask them to perform, in massively changing circumstances, will put even greater stress on them than they experience today. The direct costs related to stress at work are now estimated to be as high as four percent of EU GDP.
2012
The future
Steria
Empowered Women
Women are making significant inroads into top leadership positions across the public and private sectors, as well as emerging as an important economic sub-group in developing countries who can serve as an engine for growth.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte