Trends Identified
Advanced (smart) materials and devices
We believe novel and advanced materials and devices for sensors, actuators, and wireless communications, such as tunable glass, smart paper, and ingestible transmitters, will create an explosion of exciting applications in healthcare, packaging, appliances, and more. These technologies will also advance pervasive, ubiquitous, and immersive computing, such as the recent announcement of a cellular phone with a foldable screen. The use of such technologies will have a large impact in the way we perceive IoT devices and will lead to new usage models.
2018
IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2019
IEEE Computer Society
Active security protection
The traditional method of protecting computer systems involves the deployment of prevention mechanisms, such as anti-virus software. As attackers become more sophisticated, the effectiveness of protection mechanisms decreases as the cost increases. However, a new generation of security mechanisms is emerging that uses an active approach, such as hooks that can be activated when new types of attacks are exposed and machine-learning mechanisms to identify sophisticated attacks. Attacking the attacker is a technological possibility as well, but is almost always illegal.
2018
IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2019
IEEE Computer Society
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
These related technologies have been hitting the mainstream in some respects for a number of years. For a well-known example, Pokemon Go is a game that uses the camera of a smartphone to interpose fictional objects in real-world surroundings. Gaming is clearly a driver of these technologies, with other consumer devices becoming affordable and commonplace. VR and AR technologies are also useful for education, engineering, and other fields. However, there has been a Catch-22 in that there is a lack of applications resulting from the high cost of entry, yet the cost has stayed high due to a lack of applications. With advertisements for VR headsets appearing during prime-time television programs, we may have finally reached a tipping point.
2018
IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2019
IEEE Computer Society
Chatbots
These artificial intelligence (AI) programs simulate interactive human conversation using key pre-calculated user phrases and auditory or text-based signals. Chatbots have recently started to use self-created sentences in lieu of pre-calculated user phrases, providing better results. Chatbots are frequently used for basic customer service on social networking hubs and are often included in operating systems as intelligent virtual assistants. We have recently witnessed the use of chatbots as personal assistants capable of machine-to-machine communications as well. In fact, chatbots mimic humans so well that some countries are considering requiring chatbots to disclose that they are not human. Industry is looking to expand chatbot applications to interaction with cognitive-impaired children as a way to provide therapeutic support.
2018
IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2019
IEEE Computer Society
Automated voice spam (robocall) prevention
Spam phone calls are an ongoing problem of increasing sophistication, such as spoofing the caller ID number of the victim’s family and business associates. This is leading people to regularly ignore phone calls, creating risks such as true emergency calls going unanswered. However, emerging technology can now block spoofed caller ID and intercept questionable calls so the computer can ask questions of the caller to assess whether he or she is legitimate.
2018
IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2019
IEEE Computer Society
Technology for humanity (specifically machine learning).
We are approaching the point where technology can help resolve societal issues. We predict that large-scale use of machine learning, robots, and drones will help improve agriculture, ease drought, ensure supply of food, and improve health in remote areas. Some of these activities have already started, but we predict an increase in adoption rate and the reporting of success stories in the next year. “Sensors everywhere” and advances in IoT and edge computing are major factors contributing to the adoption of this technology. Recent events, such as major fires and bridge collapses, are further accelerating the urgency to adopt monitoring technologies in fields like forests and smart roads.
2018
IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech: Top 10 Technology Trends for 2019
IEEE Computer Society
Move over, Millennials; it’s Gen Z’s time.
In 2019, Generation Z will outnumber Millennials, that generation you’ve loved to hate for the past decade. “Generation Z is now heading into the workforce in meaningful numbers and for the first time in modern history five generations will be working side-by-side,” says Michael Dell, CEO and chairman of Dell Technologies. Gen Z — which Pew Research Center defines as those born from 1997 onward — will be about one-third of the global population and one-fifth of its workers. What is this new generation’s work ethic? “My experience is that they lean in and lean hard,” says best-selling author Brené Brown. About half of her staff is Gen Z. “They are all very different people, but as a group I experience them as curious, hopeful, always learning, painfully attuned to the suffering in the world, and anxious to do something about it.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
The economy will slow down...
Economists are split on when exactly, but they know one thing for sure: a downturn is coming. “There is a confluence of deep-seated, structural headwinds that threaten to upend the global economy,” warns economist Dambisa Moyo, among them growing inequality, a workforce ill-adapted to rapid technological change, political instability and a massive debt burden on governments, corporations and individuals. “The U.S. has historically been the leader, and the U.S. is probably going to slow down this year,” adds CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger. China is already cooling. “World growth is much more likely to slow down in 2019, and it really looks like 2020 could be the year of a global recession,” she predicts.
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
... and companies will prepare with pre-emptive layoffs.
Executives know the good times won’t last and many will reduce their workforce pre-emptively to preserve profits through a coming recession, warns Danielle DiMartino Booth, author of “Fed Up.” General Motors announced 14,000 strategic layoffs in November, after 2,250 had already taken buyouts. Meanwhile, Verizon will let go of 10,400 employees via voluntary severance, the company announced Monday. These won’t be the last. “I guarantee you right now, consultants across the country are convening and discussing with executive teams at many companies what they also can do to get in front of the next recession,” Booth says. “Companies are taking unusual steps because they know how very long in the tooth this expansion is and they know what's to come.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn
We are finally going to spend more time online than watching TV.
The lines will cross some time in 2019: Around the world, people will start spending more hours a day on the Internet than watching television. The glass-half-empty way to look at it is people are turning away from legacy media, says Viacom President and CEO Bob Bakish. The glass-half-full vision: “There is more content being consumed today than ever before in history,” he adds. For Viacom, that has meant expanding its intellectual property across many platforms or creating shows for third-party streaming sites. “We do work with folks that maybe didn't exist 10 years ago, and started getting into the media business five years ago,” he says. “It's a year of a mixed economy and a mixed ecosystem. And that's the world of the future.”
2018
50 Big Ideas for 2019: What to watch in the year ahead
LinkedIn