Trends Identified
Organised Civil Society and Governance: Trends and Challenges
Advances in technology, wealth and income concentration, shifting demography, migration flows, under employment and climate change are transforming our societies. The (dis)empowered citizen, as introduced by the World Economic Forum 2016 Global Risks Report, describes the tensions between the growing cyber connectivity empowering citizens with more information and means of communications against the increasing feeling of exclusion from meaningful participation to decision-making among citizens and civil society.
2016
Shaping the future
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Cybersecurity technologies and processes are helping to combat unabated threats
Advances in technology reduce the risk of a bad actor penetrating systems, but the threat is still there, and is not going away. To this end, cybersecurity remains in the limelight, and with newer regulatory disclosure requirements, 2019 could be a tumultuous year. Over the past few years, several high-profile events caused by cyberattacks and geopolitical tensions have elevated the threat of cyber warfare. Significantly, public perspective has shifted from identity theft to general privacy and the misuse of personal information obtainable on social media. With increased public awareness, there is also concern about breach fatigue: people could become so accustomed to cybersecurity events that they lower their defense against them. Training, engaging and testing employees is the cornerstone of any cybersecurity strategy. This helps to breed a culture of security so people do not fall victim to phishing or violate policies by clicking on links embedded by hackers. From a technology perspective, employees are being empowered to operate securely without impacting their productivity. Newer authentication technologies such as YubiKey, one-touch single sign on and one-touch multifactor authentication are driving down the poor user experience associated with legacy security products. With YubiKey, the user inserts a USB device into a port and presses a button to send a code to the service that the user is authenticating. Some apps on iOS and Android offer a similar experience where the user receives prompts during the authentication process. The user clicks allow, and if that device is trusted, the authentication succeeds. Another notable trend is security feature development being moved toward the beginning of the development lifecycle instead of tacking it on at the end, known as “shift left”. This is being driven partially by the adoption of the development and operations (DevOps) model, in which there is an agile relationship between product development and IT operations. Another driver is the use of application containers and container automation, which provides isolated environments for running software services and the means to maintain security governance with fewer costly and time consuming manual reviews. Ultimately, the time to remediation for vulnerabilities is being reduced dramatically, making it easier for organizations to maintain a secure posture on their network perimeter.
2019
NASDAQ DECODES: TECH TRENDS 2019 -The technology trends that are driving the world of markets forward
Nasdaq
Technization of Healthcare
Advances in technology have enabled digital medicine and bioinformatics, advanced genomics, digital manufacturing, and nanotechnology, and the widespread development of genetically modified products.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Advances in Simulation
Advances in social science, behavioural science and mathematical modelling will combine, leading to more informed decision making. Advanced processing techniques and computational power will permit a more comprehensive level of modelling, potentially enabling more effective pattern recognition. This is likely to improve the identification, representation and explanation of systems and processes. As a result, simulation will become an increasingly powerful tool to aid policy and decision makers. Simulation will also blur the line between virtual and real environments.
2010
Global strategic trends - out to 2040
UK, Ministry of Defence
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
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
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
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
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
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