Future technology | 2020 - 2050

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• published: 13 Mar 2016
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Forget drones, FinTech and (especially) apps that claim to be 'digitally disruptive'. The big tech trends that will have a significant impact on the IT and business world in 2016 and beyond range from machine learning and neuromorphic computing architectures to a growth in sensory and contextual information and more ambient user experiences. Could 2016 be the tipping point when the physical and virtual worlds finally merge? Information of Everything It's chaos out there. Smart devices of all kinds are producing and sending text, audio, video, sensory and contextual information. "The Information of Everything addresses this influx with strategies and technologies to link data from all these different data sources," say analysts at IT research company Gartner. "Information has always existed everywhere, but has often been isolated, incomplete, unavailable or unintelligible ... advances in semantic tools such as graph databases, as well as other emerging data classification and information analysis techniques, will bring meaning to the often chaotic deluge of information." Whether you call it the Internet of Things, the Internet of Data or the Information of Everything, we know one thing - 2016 will produce more and more big data. It's what we do with it that could change. The device mesh Forget the smartphone - that's just the start. The era of the device mesh means accessing information and apps via all kinds of devices, from phones, watches and wearables to smart TVs, sensors in homes and even the dashboard in a car. "The device mesh is innately part of the Internet of Things ... even apps like Waze are part of this trend, turning cars into live traffic data," says Mike Crooks, Head of Innovation at Mubaloo Innovation Lab. "The device mesh is the trend of moving to the interconnected ideal of the Internet of Things." Could 3D food printing be the next big trend? 3D printing Some think there's been a lot of hype around 3D printing, but it remains a major growth area with vast potential. As the materials that can be 3D printed increase, so do the practical applications for 3D printers, with aerospace, medical, automotive, energy and the military all destined to benefit. "Open hardware and democratised production methods like 3D printing can be seen as ushering in a third industrial age," says Dr Kevin Curran, Technical Expert at the IEEE, who nevertheless sees food printing as the imminent trend for 2016. ChefJet can print in chocolate and sugar, Choc Edge creates on 2D/3D chocolate decorations, ChocoByte prints custom 3D solid chocolate bars, and Natural Machines' Foodini can print both pasta and pizza. A major research area is bioprinting, where food is printed dot by dot to build up edible meals. "The aim is to create a range of food inks, basically substances that form gels with water, and the Holy Grail is to bring food to life from nothing," he says. The mission, as with all 3D printing, is to eliminate the production chain for food. Smart devices of all kinds are creating an Information of Everything Ambient user experiences Here we're talking about a long-term future of immersive environments with augmented and virtual reality, but for now it's about continuity between devices and location. "Hyper-location technologies are key to delivering an ambient user experience that is also giving rise to the idea of slippy UX," says Crooks, who thinks that mobile is becoming more about short, fast interactions with minimal user input. "It's different from the simple sensor-based apps on smartphones today," says Curran. "Instead of the user having to go and look for something like hotels, the device would already know what kind of hotel they are looking for based on what hotels they have picked in the past." Context comes from both human and physical elements - the former is emotional state, habits, interests, group dynamics, social interactions and colocation of others, present tasks, and general goals, while the latter is the user's absolute position, relative position, light, pressure, noise and atmosphere of the area. Advanced machine learning Another tech trend for 2016 and beyond - and tied up with the Information of Everything - is advanced machine learning, where computers automate data processing by learning and adapting. The end result is artificial intelligence. Handling complex datasets requires deep neural nets (DNNs) that allow computers to both act autonomously and perceive the world on their own. "DNNs are what makes smart machines appear intelligent," according to analysts at Gartner. "DNNs enable hardware or software-based machines to learn for themselves all the features in their environment, from the finest details to broad sweeping abstract classes of content." In this fast evolving area, businesses that understand how to use advanced machine learning can get a huge competitive advantage.