Future Technological Advances That Will Shape The Next Decade

Advances in many technology-driven fields are on the cusp of maturity. In a decade, several of them will likely be accepted as part of our everyday lives. They will influence how we live, work and entertain ourselves. Most will be promoted by businesses http://www.maritimjatim.info/ first, which will then lead to acceptance by society at large. While they will make life easier, some of them will bring fears of loss of independence and control over our lives. Others, if and when misused, will threaten our very existence. Here is a futuristic look at how the world is likely to change in the next decade with technology and innovations.

1. Flying taxis and hyperloop

Mobility will be drastically different and everything won’t be hi-tech either. As more of Gen-Z enter the workforce, health- and environment-conscious people will prefer to walk more or use bicycles. Public transport is likely to become more comfortable and reliable too. Also, people might use modes of transport that don’t exist today, such as on-demand flying taxis.

An experiment in the area of flying taxis—with the financial and technological heft needed to succeed—is being orchestrated by ride-sharing service provider Uber Technologies. As part of its Uber Elevate programme, it plans to deploy Uber Air—electric aerial vehicles capable of vertical take-off and landing. The company has decided on Dallas and Los Angeles for its first trials and said last August that the third location would be either in India, Japan, Australia, Brazil or France.

2. AI and robot companions

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is over 60 years old, but it is only in recent years, with the advent of massive computational power and storage, that AI is extensively used in business strategies. Advances in related fields such as computer vision and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) have also helped accelerate the development of AI.

Experts feel there is no area that will be left untouched by AI, but the prominent ones that have captured people’s imagination are self-driving cars, personalised medicine, new ways of teaching and the combination of AI and robotics.

One crucial study of how our lives will change due to AI is the One Hundred Year Study launched in 2014 at Stanford University. In its first report, in September 2016, the university says: “As cars become better drivers than people, city-dwellers will own fewer cars, live further from work, and spend time differently, leading to an entirely new urban organisation. In the typical North American city in 2030, physically embodied AI applications will not be limited to cars, but are likely to include trucks, flying vehicles and personal robots.”

3. Mobiles, smart and dumb

A decade from now, mobile phones will have features that we see in movies and read in science fiction novels. One feature that is pretty standard in movies—from Star Wars to Avengers—is the hologram. It is likely that by 2030, holographic displays will be commonplace on smartphones. Another big jump will be with processing power. Today’s smartphones are superior to yesterday’s desktop-based gaming for instance, and with advances in graphics chips that companies such as Nvidia are making, tomorrow’s phones will certainly be better than today’s gaming consoles.

Also, phones will evolve to become an increasingly integrated part of the internet and IoT. Future mobile and digital communications infrastructure will be able to recognise mobile phones and their owners uniquely wherever they go, whether they go shopping or take a pod to the nearest hyperloop station.

Another under-the-hood improvement will be battery power. Phones of the future may have batteries powerful enough to last for weeks, if not longer. Users will also be able to charge them in multiple ways—wirelessly at home or work and using sunlight, for instance.

4. Planet internet

One of the most exciting aspects of the internet of the future is the way it will be delivered around the globe. Among the more ambitious projects is the one backed by Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos who intends to put 3,236 satellites in low-Earth orbits to beam the internet around the planet. The project is named Kuiper after the belt of particles beyond Neptune.

Bezos isn’t the first to this idea. Kuiper will be competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is working on Starlink, a project to put a 12,000-satellite constellation around Earth to beam broadband down to the planet, as well as an initiative by SoftBank Group Corp-backed startup called OneWeb.

5. A billion drones

A future with drones in it is probably closer than one imagines. The biggest obstacle in the way of a society that routinely uses these aerial unmanned vehicles is more likely to be regulatory than technological. Governments will have to come up with rules to ensure safety before drones can become commonplace.

The potential is already being demonstrated by scores of experiments around the world—from Amazon working on deliveries with drones to a small startup (which one?) in Bengaluru working on drones that will make medicine-delivery runs in remote, hilly areas of Papua New Guinea.