Trends Identified
Machine learning
“Machine learning has the potential to be one of the biggest disruptors over the next decade,” says DeLaney.
2017
5 big disruptive trends investors should watch
Morgan Stanley
Hotels will take away your alarm clock.
“It used to be a real treat to go to a hotel because they had things you didn’t have at home," says Marriott International’s global chief development officer, Anthony Capuano. "We have everything at home today!” And we expect those things to work at the hotel too, whether that’s connecting our own devices to the TV screen or continuing a Netflix show where we left it back home. Meanwhile, the technologies we no longer use that hotels have stubbornly held onto are finally disappearing. Bye bye alarm clocks and landline phones!
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
Single-Cell DNA Sequencing
“In our body we have millions of normal cells and then we have the ones that aren’t normal,” Kocher says. “And if you don’t sequence the abnormal ones, you don’t know about the problems. So this notion of being able to do single cells versus just the average of when they break up all the cells in the blood, is an important nuance. That’s going to become an important clinical tool in the future. Today we’re just testing average DNA sequences, so you miss stuff.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Financial options will catch up to the modern worker
“If we want to provide the opportunity for people in the future to live financially healthy lives, the industry will need to rethink financial services that were designed for individuals that work a single job for his or her lifetime,” says Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal. “Emerging technologies as well as socio-demographic changes are going to cause a shift in financial service needs and demands.” We can already see this trickle starting in the industry. The new “UltraFICO” credit score will be rolling out early next year. “It will take into account your banking behavior: Are you able to pay all of your bills? Are you making sure that you don’t go negative in that account?” Jill Schlesinger of CBS News explains. By changing the way loan providers think about credit, it opens a door for a younger generation shying away from credit cards and debt.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
All products have become services
“I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes,” writes Danish MP Ida Auken. Shopping is a distant memory in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy and borrow what they need on demand. It sounds utopian, until she mentions that her every move is tracked and outside the city live swathes of discontents, the ultimate depiction of a society split in two.
2016
Eight predictions for 2030
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Fuel cell vehicles
“Fuel cell” vehicles have been long promised, as they potentially offer several major advantages over electric and hydrocarbon-powered vehicles. However, the technology has only now begun to reach the stage where automotive companies are planning to launch them for consumers. Initial prices are likely to be in the range of $70,000, but should come down significantly as volumes increase within the next couple of years. Unlike batteries, which must be charged from an external source, fuel cells generate electricity directly, using fuels such as hydrogen or natural gas. In practice, fuel cells and batteries are combined, with the fuel cell generating electricity and the batteries storing this energy until demanded by the motors that drive the vehicle. Fuel cell vehicles are therefore hybrids, and will likely also deploy regenerative braking – a key capability for maximizing efficiency and range. Unlike battery-powered electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles behave as any conventionally fuelled vehicle. With a long cruising range – up to 650 km per tank (the fuel is usually compressed hydrogen gas) – a hydrogen fuel refill only takes about three minutes. Hydrogen is clean-burning, producing only water vapour as waste, so fuel cell vehicles burning hydrogen will be zero-emission, an important factor given the need to reduce air pollution. There are a number of ways to produce hydrogen without generating carbon emissions. Most obviously, renewable sources of electricity from wind and solar sources can be used to electrolyse water – though the overall energy efficiency of this process is likely to be quite low. Hydrogen can also be split from water in high-temperature nuclear reactors or generated from fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas, with the resulting CO2 captured and sequestered rather than released into the atmosphere. As well as the production of cheap hydrogen on a large scale, a significant challenge is the lack of a hydrogen distribution infrastructure that would be needed to parallel and eventually replace petrol and diesel filling stations. Long distance transport of hydrogen, even in a compressed state, is not considered economically feasible today. However, innovative hydrogen storage techniques, such as organic liquid carriers that do not require high-pressure storage, will soon lower the cost of long-distance transport and ease the risks associated with gas storage and inadvertent release. Mass-market fuel cell vehicles are an attractive prospect, because they will offer the range and fuelling convenience of today’s diesel and petrol-powered vehicles while providing the benefits of sustainability in personal transportation. Achieving these benefits will, however, require the reliable and economical production of hydrogen from entirely low-carbon sources, and its distribution to a growing fleet of vehicles (expected to number in the many millions within a decade).
2015
Top 10 emerging technologies of 2015
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Open-source warfare grows
“Do-it-yourself” surveillance and weapon systems will likely become more common, enabling new kinds of crimes and conflict. For example, the Switchblade Drone is lethal at short distances and fits in a small backpack. New developments in sensors, robotics and nanotechnology could lead to the more widespread use of remote sensors in surveillance, intelligence and warfare. Miniature unmanned aerial, surface and aquatic vehicles and devices – controlled either remotely or autonomously – are expected to become more prevalent. These will be smaller, cheaper and more widely available than today. Open-source knowledge may lead to widely distributed cyber-warfare capabilities. In addition, do-it-yourself enthusiasts may use synthetic biology to produce and release harmful substances into the environment – either accidentally or on purpose. In all these cases, technology originally created to enhance security may become the threat. In response, pre-programmed nanodevices and robots will likely create security networks and sensing surfaces that could identify threats such as nano-enabled weapons, viruses and poisons.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
“Disruptive” technologies
“Disruptive” technologies in development, the spread
of which will bring substantial changes in production, employment, well-being, governability, and human relations.
2016
Why and how latin america should think about the future
theDialogue
Operating Systems And Analytics For Buildings
“As there’s more data available from sensors in buildings, they will provide analytics that could ‘say, turn off your HVAC 20 minutes earlier,’ and that could be a huge savings. Anything that moves in a building, a hinge, an elevator, a desk, will have a sensor in it…No joke, it’s a trillion-dollar capital opportunity.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
The office will empty out.
"With cities filling up and housing prices rising, employers will have to pay more for employees to afford an urban life. Some businesses will open an office in a smaller town; more will embrace employees’ working from home. The whole point of an office weakened years ago with the disastrous open floor-plan, a warren of people wearing headphones and messaging their brains out, together in name only. More recently, the movement to give working parents more flexibility has made managers hesitant to grade on attendance. And now, Slack, Github, Jira and other tools for virtual teams are being co-opted by workers of all stripes."A gradual process will, in 2019, reach a tipping point: The office will empty out. Working from home will change the most basic rhythm of industrial life. People will have more time to work, and also to play. What we’ll lose is the water cooler, which alongside the altar and the school entrance, was a place for us to connect with new people. Offices are also one of the last spots in an increasingly secular society for all of us to get a sense of community and purpose. I’ll be sorry to see them so diminished."
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn