James Bond might have been the ultimate action hero in the ‘80s, but modern technology has made dart-shooting watches somewhat quaint nowadays. The pace of technological development is continuing briskly into the future, with some exciting possibilities.
Niche technological advances as well as broad currents of next-level tech like blockchain impact every living human. They affect our quality of life in so many ways, no one is left untouched. We can already glimpse not just emerging technology and trends, but also the level of development on so many revolutionary projects that aim to digitize and automate our world.
The Voice In The Machine
The Internet of Things (IoT) is such a real and logical advent that a company like South Korean giant Samsung has directed its attention to ASIC manufacture. At the moment this is decidedly cryptocurrency mining-focused, but an ASIC chip is also an essential component of any device we wish to connect via the IoT. In future, perhaps the kids won’t push the remote when approaching the gate, they might simply say “Open!” or, even, perhaps not have to say anything at all!
The refining of voice-to-text apps, already made real by Google Speech and others, continues apace. It is very likely that with improvement in recognition intelligence, our children won’t have to “come up to the blackboard,” but will rather populate the screen from their desk, using their voice. With previously dominant apps like Dragon Naturally Speaking rapidly starting to look outdated, being able to “speak-type” a document or screen has been made more real than ever before. As if that isn’t enough, a truly mind-blowing project is being pioneered by a former Google member at Facebook. Silent Voice First is the pet project of Regina Dugan and will ultimately allow us to think our words to a screen. In her own words, while it might sound utterly futuristic, it’s actually “closer than we think,” according to Dugan.
Big Social Changes With Tech Advance
Almost every household in the world has by now heard the name “Bitcoin” but, beyond cryptocurrencies, the underlying blockchain technology is a world-impacting phenomenon. With everyone in business from banks jumping to apply the tech, the blockchain construct of the here and now is set to revolutionize global business into the future. Huge cost savings and other valuable and often equally large changes in the way things are done on blockchain are changing the ways businesses and consumers conduct their affairs.
Coming back to AI, the clumsy robots of Japanese students and the alternatively unbelievably human androids of Hollywood movies are drawing closer together. In the field of education, for example, Opet is about to roll out an android tutor app that not only learns and teaches a country’s syllabus to its students, it also learns the student’s preferences and behaviour. Learning the student’s personality within a short time, the app will deliver teaching in a manner it deems best suited to one of 16 personality types that best matches an individual student.
A Digitized And Automated World
Two other arenas with exciting, futuristic developments are those of optical apps and propulsion. Smaller, practical yet equally amazing apps trade on the optical capacities of a modern phone. Several free apps are available now that allow a contractor to employ his smartphone as a measuring device. Provided the phone is positioned correctly when snapping a pic, the app will produce accurate measurements for the object in the picture. It might seem a small upgrade - not having to reach for a tape measure - but this kind of next-level app is still in its infancy and future accuracy and application can only grow.
Far from the tussle between the alien exposure movement and Area 51, antimatter thrust or propulsion already has working models. Mainstream scientists working on the technology predict the beginning of adoption within the next ten years. Imagining super-fast travel and a world of artificial intelligence that responds to verbal commands, tomorrow looks nothing but exciting! Electronic eyes and electronic intelligence mean our kids will walk through doors on electronic authentication, study and store without paper and live and work aided by an army of intelligent devices. It was Carl Sagan who spoke of mining passing asteroids for their minerals, as though he were talking of setting up a modern day oil rig. With modern advances in propulsion, AI and material manufacture too, perhaps in future when our kids come home for some shore leave, it could very well be from outer space.
Date Published: 18 June 2018
