2019 - Tech predictions, the realistic view




Every year I read the tech predictions of the major media outlets, and research companies and I have a different view that I share with my friends. This year I realized it's probably easier to for me to bring the ideas to all my readers as my own 2019 technology predictions.

I used the work done from Forbes, and Gartner as my starting point as both have glimmers of truth that help form my list.

Forbes and Gartner predictions high level

Before I jump in my predictions let's look at the  Forbes 2019 tech prediction article  and Gartner 2019 top 10 articles. The thematic of their articles are based on these eight ideas:
  1. Rise in autonomous things - the idea is that many more manual tasks will be automated in 2019. This includes the use of drones, and robotics powered by better Artificial Intelligence (AI) that will allow the machines to learn and adapt in the natural world.  
  2. Augmented reality, and Virtual Reality (VR) will grow into commercial, and industrial use - more people with gear on their heads walking around the office. I suspect repetitive neck strain will be the new carpel tunnel injury starting in 2019. 
  3. AI growth including, AI driven development that will allow machines to be more adaptable in the natural world, as well as be able to create or write software and automation without human intervention. 
  4. Digital twin or AI A/B testing. The predictions points to AI that will help model everything before real world solutions are built. I suspect this will require VR to visualize the new models.
  5. Gartner and Forbes sees the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution with their idea of empowering the edge.  IoT will becomes mainstream in more industries, and IoT will becomes a more pervasive technology in  businesses.
  6. Both articles look to blockchain becoming main stream and used widely. Forbes see that blockchain will become a service offering [Blockchain as a Service](BaaS) that will transform supply chain. Gartner thinks that blockchain will drive down costs of transactions and improve cash flows.  
  7. Gartner sees the evolution of smart spaces, such as smart cities, while Forbes predicts Enterprise Content Management (ECM) will be mainstream and improve workflows.
  8. Forbes suspects that 5G which will be a bit step in 2019 that offer WIFI speeds from cell providers, and Gartner suspects that Quantum computing, Digital ethics and privacy will dominate 2019. 

The 2019 Simorjay Tech predictions

Right now we still live in a world where simple tasks as setting up a cell phone or laptop you need  'genius' help. The tech we love and use is still complicated and hard to adopt and set up quickly. We still require an army of experts to enable and use basic technology. My predictions start with renewal in getting users to adopt tech faster. First that requires -

1. Better user interfaces and UX interactions. I see a seed of a good idea from the Forbes article for improved ECM as a right step in 2019. I think we will see a massive adoption of AI, and Machine Learning (ML) to help user interaction improvements in the digital world. This would be a revolution on how we interact with our technology.

2. IoT as simple assistance, and novel high tech toys continue. Tools, and tech such as  Amazon Echo, and Google Assistant will continue to entertain us by telling us about the weather, turning on  lights, or ordering strawberries online. The lack of a smart user interface that can recognize us as distinct users/people will prevent much growth. My echo should not treat my order the same as a parrot!.  However I predict we will see this tech built into more appliances such as refrigerators, coffee pots, crock pots,  maybe even curling irons, and hair dryers to ensure we get the perfect hair.

3. Cloud will continue it's astounding growth. Cloud is the promise of simplicity, and brings user the ability to spin up great ideas quickly. Small businesses can grow to enterprise scale in a rapid manner. Start ups that required infrastructure investment, now can become operational in matter of weeks as a global presence. Cloud will continue to revolutionize everything from how we build games, cars, rockets, robots, buildings, literally everything. Complexity and ease of use will make this more possible in 2019.

4. Blockchain as a protocol. This tech is super valuable, but requires to be simple to use. This tech will be valued by health, and financial corporations, but will need to be a click to use model in 2019. Block chain once embedded into the cloud providers backbone, made universal and inter-operative across all providers will change how we think about owning our data. Finally we will be able to take our health data from provider to provider, or bank anywhere anytime.

5. ML and simple AI will go from obscurity to main stream. As ML makes AI possible most will not be able to tell them apart, but the average use will start to see how ML impacts their daily life more and more with improvements in healthcare and financial transactions. The progress in 2019 will see cures to some common illnesses and diseases, as well as better and more viral targeted advertising. My prediction is that ML and AI will also crack the language translation barrier and finally make real time translations work with natural language for all.

6. Death of Privacy on the internet, and Security risks will grow at alarming rates.  As ML and AI are helping drive good, it will also empower the bad. Spammers, Hackers and others will move to the power of ML, and AI to improve how they deliver their attacks including improved spam, virus, and other malware. Unfortunately General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came to help the average users protect their private life on the internet, but this poorly designed and implemented privacy protection will be forgotten, and seen as annoyance in our daily use of the internet. GDPR introduced more pop-ups that requires people to click through and ignore. Users will continue to give up their rights to watch dancing cats, see the coolest meme's, read Facebook, follow on Twitter, and connect with friends on Instagram.

7. 5G will emerge as the gold standard. This cool tech will emerge as what everyone will want. But the technology will only be adopted by the rich. This technology is truly promising, but much like the personal assistants it will only empower countries and users that can afford the technology in 2019.

8. VR and Augmented reality will continue to grow as a toy revolution. Instead of kids getting Legos, and other physical toys, our kids will be asking for VR and augmented headsets. Kids in 2019 Christmas wish list will include playing with more virtual toys where they can build in a VR or augmented reality world. Forget a small Lego block to build castle - now they can build a real castle to live in. And imagine no more cleaning up those scattered Lego bricks again.

9. Visualization, and improved analysis. With the growth of data, being produced by AI, and ML it will become more complex to analyze and visualize this data. As long as humans are the creative source behind the AI and ML we will need to analyze and provide interpretation of the results. Success of the new information will be done with greatly improved visuals tools that provide real time reporting to help make quick decisions. This year the market for tools like PowerBi, and Tableau will emerge as the hero's of the industry.

10. Finally the biggest break out will be in batteries. Revolutionary energy storage solution will make 2019 amazing with massively improved battery design using CarbonNano tubes. These batteries will be able to be charged in minutes, and store energy for weeks or months. There has been interesting developments in the past few years in battery storage using carbon nano-tubes  that I predict will be unveiled to the mass market this year. This could be the next panacea in our battery hungry world. Ideas such as carbon nano-tube net and carbon nano film illustrate recent developments that can take concept to reality.

That's it. My top 10 predictions. And i'd give at least 5 of my predictions a better than 90% chance of becoming a reality.

Watch for my 2019 December prediction review when I'll publish an article to see how many of my ideas became a reality!

Frank












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Protecting sensitive data

Image
Last month I wrote an article on key things to consider when protecting high valued assets or sensitive data. The article called Security Tip of the Month: Protecting Highly Sensitive Information addressed some of the key items that organizations should consider when protecting data that has the possible impact on an organization that is irreparable. As my article stated the cost of protecting this data tends to be higher than most data. Fact is that this data is not traditionally just sensitive such as credit card data, or HR data. Key indicators of what is High Value Data can be summed up like this. Assets that are considered to be of high value will frequently have the potential to cause the following conditions if they are lost or divulged: •        Loss of life - such as an informant list •        Regulatory fines - such as financial performance data •        Significant damage to the business - such as code signing and encryption keys (private) or trade secrets
Read more

Secure workstation - Root of trust to manage the cloud

Image
Two months ago I introduced the Azure secure workstation, and I’ve had the privilege to present the ideal to some great audiences. From the discussions, a common question I’ve been asked is a pattern that would provide the Secured PAW model lock down scenario to exclusively manage an Azure Portal (EG how to I assure only secured workstation, and users assigned to the program can manage my cloud services)? In this article I’ll provide the NEXT step to accomplish exactly that outcome. This includes additional configurations that I only lightly covered, or net new technology to apply since the publishing of the doc. Proposed outcome “ How do I” Use a Secured workstation (that I can trust) to manage my Azure cloud. Here’s how I would deploy the solution. First I will start by deploying the Secured Workstation model this using the secured profile. New technology, and capabilities to add: Hardware root of trust – in our solution we post the idea that you can
Read more

Why is privileged access important?

Image
Last year about this time I had published updates to the Azure Secure Workstation that was originally released two years ago. And This month the solution has been considerably rewritten and revised to provide a better more complete management for privileged access!  Collaborating with two great security experts James Noyce, and Mark Simos The content got a massive overhaul, and a broad perspective on what it takes to build and manage a comprehensive privileged access solution, including account management, device management, intermediaries such as VPN's and interfaces such as Web and Cloud services. Additionally, the solution was uniformly designed with three distinct security levels that anyone reading the article can deploy from a more flexible Enterprise security, to a comprehensive isolated PAW or privileged Access Management. Over the past two years I've been working to explain and illustrate how you can use a cloud-based solution to build an effective Zero tr
Read more