Future Technology

Revolutionary technological advancements will shape our immediate future (2-5 years). My assessment is based on simple observations, some readings and common sense. To give you an idea, see what the governments, big business houses and entrepreneurs are currently engaged in and then you may make your own judgement.

1. Computing will be at the heart of the revolution. It will generate and process great amount of data to help decision making. It will make the existing hardware more efficient and our lives more productive. The crunching, storage and applications will shift to cloud. The devices (mobile phones) will simply access the servers. Which means that high speed internet proliferation through wireless (say LTE) will pave the way. That further means advancements in mobile phones (both hardware and software). And so it is very easy to see why most of the work is happening in SMAC.

2. SMAC. Social media, Mobiles, Analytics and Cloud computing. 

• Social media..was not covered at (1) above. It will be the means to do business and of course for personal connections.
• Mobiles..smart phones will become smarter. What i am very excited about is the use of mobile devices for learning - Immersive learning through mobile gaming. This could be a game changer.
• Analytics..Big Data is already a big name and it will only get bigger. There is information overload and competition is intense. So till one comes up with a new technology or an innovative idea / product, we will continue to squeeze the existing data to make professional decisions. The top executives and government officials will be forced to make use of this to save their careers. It is already a wide field (please consider business intelligence and data mining as part of this group).
• Cloud computing..Can't keep carrying bulky, expensive machines.

3. Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence..This is where the action is. US is working big time on this and major advancements have already happened (unknown to us). Once the new technology is opened up, it will have the same effect as the PC had on the paper world. 

4. Wearable Technology..This will consolidate existing technologies / devices on to our bodies (may be within???). By making the technology central to the body, a number of changes in business and our lives will happen.

5. Energy..This has been central to human development and the reason for wars. Breakthroughs are needed here. Clean-tech is another area. 

6. Misc..The above technologies will enable major breakthroughs in E-commerce, payments industry (especially mobile payments), education, entertainment and healthcare. Projects and operations (such as manufacturing and supply chain), Defense , Banks, and agriculture will be benefited too. UAV's as a product will have diverse applications - I am personally very excited - These will come in different sizes, may work in groups and will have diverse applications. Let me include VR (Virtual Reality) and 3D printing here.

Finally...If you come to think of it, it is eventually about inter-connected-ness...

PS : Anything i missed? Please share.