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Technology Predictions for 2010

There were only a few people who could have predicted the almost catastrophic failure of the world’s economy in 2009; and while leading global financial institutions and governments pulled together to bailout failing companies, it was the humble tax-paying workforce that had to push through the difficulties of a recession, employment cutbacks, high inflation, and low interests rates.

In difficult times, the companies that survive are those that innovate.  They evolve and adapt to new ways of working, and those new ways of working inadvertently become the norm. And I’m not the only one who thinks that, ask Steve Ballmer. An executive email published by the Microsoft CEO, entitled The New Efficiency, describes how difficult times result in new ways of working. Cloud computing has long been used to define the future of business enterprise, and describing cloud based-computing often conjures up images of 3D worlds, impossibly thin net-book computers, and completely wire-free working (including powerless power transmission).

As the global workforce begins to collaborate on a larger scale, we’ll see the wider adoption and gradual proliferation of web-based tools,  based on open APIs  (ie sets of technologies that enable websites to interact with each other by using SOAP, Javascript and other web technologies) to aid this mode of working. We’ll find that companies will shift from a static, closed-off, intranet to an interactive, more intuitive, web-based intranet with a greater level of immersion.  And this will spawn from the empowerment of information to the user.  Users will have the knowledge, and understanding, of information at their fingertips and this will allow them to do more with the information available to them. This will be driven by rapid developments in business intelligence techniques, greater transparency in communication across corporate divisions, and advanced levels of data analytics.

Corporate social networking will become the standard platform for communicating within the workplace, and consequently we’ll see a range of mobile device applications which will deliver user centric information direct to a user in real-time. And this information will be synchronised across the myriad of guises that form the user’s corporate identity, in applications such as Microsoft Outlook, instant messaging tools, and knowledge management platforms. We’ll find, by the close of 2010, that web-applications will have the same richness and usability as desktop applications, and that users will gravitate towards online working as the transition between the two platforms becomes almost evolutionary.

A greater emphasis will be placed on home-working, and the ability to work remotely. And this will, in turn, drive developments in wireless telecommunications and advance developments in online collaboration via shared web-based applications. We’ll find that wireless hotspots will have greater coverage with a more reliable (and stable) connection and laptops will downsize as users become part of a more mobile workforce.

No doubt we can already see the benefits, and changes, flash memory is bringing. And as the capacity of flash memory increases so will the versatility of its use. We’ll reduce the need to store files on a desktop or laptop computer and will instead carry the essential files we need with us, and this will be driven by rapid advancements in mobile device technology.

Solid state technology isn’t new, and it’s most famous association is with hard disks. However, this will change in 2010 as solid state memory is introduced. This introduction will result in improved performance and processing power. A few years from now, as quantum computing advances, we’ll see the introduction of solid state processors – and by that time we’ll see the cost of solid state technology reduce to levels of actual disk-based hard disks presently available.

Imagine looking through the lens of your mobile phone camera, and seeing the world as you would normally but with an overlay of user-specific data. Augmented reality will deliver just that. For users this will mean using the device – pointing it at a specific location or landmark whilst walking around – and seeing synchronised data and website links relating to whatever they’re looking at.

There are a myriad of other technologies that will evolve over the course of 2010, technologies that will fight for our attention, and technologies that will assist us daily – I’d be fascinated to hear your thoughts on this…

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Could this be a sign of solid state memory coming our way...?

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/02/24/... # Posted By Sham Mitra | 3/4/10 8:21 PM

its an interesting comment at the end as to the impact of looking at the world through your mobile camera lens. i suspect that when we add all of these things together the end result will be that many current views of the world will be changed as more and different devices come into play in a decentralised and personalised network ecconomy # Posted By andy mulholland | 3/8/10 9:29 AM

Hi,

Remarkable doc. It really covers a ton of the needed stuff.

Thank you so much for giving out this information with the public.

Keep it up! # Posted By sameer | 5/21/10 11:14 AM