8 Tech Trends That Will Define This Decade

A rare byline article by Frank Holman, with editorial comment at the end

The world of technology has changed beyond description in the previous decade. Consider the start of the year 2009. You grew up before the iPad, Uber, and even Instagram. Fitness trackers were, in essence, pedometers. “If the smartphone looks to be more of a slow mobile, hang in there,” Wired encouraged consumers in 2010. The fourth generation of wireless technology promises superfast data transmission speeds.” You somehow avoided asking Alexa to switch on the lights or check the weather until at minimum 2014. The same year, Slack emerged, replacing email as the major way of team collaboration.

Technology advances quickly, and the advances achieved in the previous decade have altered the world as we once knew it. Social media has had a massive influence on communication, connectivity, sales, and marketing all around the world. Smartphones have become actual commodities. Ecommerce has become an integral aspect of daily life.

The following decade appears to be moving much quicker. So, here’s a quick rundown of eight significant technology advances that will shape how we live, work, and communicate in the 2020s.

1. AI and machine learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will continue to penetrate and radically affect our world as their capabilities to enable computers to learn and behave intelligently and independently improve. These technologies, which are now widespread in everyday apps and gadgets such as Alexa and Siri, will gradually pervade everything from manufacturing to distribution, cybersecurity, and data analytics. Chatbots, customer recommendation engines, marketing tools, and other applications will increasingly rely on AI and ML technology to automate essential operations and assist organizations in making better decisions in industries such as retail and eCommerce.

Indeed, many experts and observers feel that AI and machine learning will be the most important technological trends of the next decade, creating the foundation for many of the other technologies on this list. However, a word of caution is in order. Companies must be cognizant of their responsibility to do so when they train robots to handle increasing amounts of decision-making. Leaders and developers must keep digital ethics at the forefront of their minds as they digitally reshape our environment.

2.Prescriptive Analytics and Big Data

Consumers and organizations will continue to create an increasing amount of data as they engage online. This is the age of big data, and data is the new oil. Companies may capture, clean, process, and analyze tremendous volumes of data using current tools to acquire enormously valuable insights into consumer behavior, population health, and corporate operations – and hence make smarter decisions that promote efficiency and profitability. AI and machine learning-powered solutions will continue to take over many of these operations, converting data from critical corporate applications like cloud ERP systems into actionable suggestions.

3. IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the expanding number of Internet-connected smart items and gadgets. Everything will soon be connected to everything, from [digital health devices to] smart speakers, thermostats, and light bulbs in the house to automobiles on the road, planes in the sky, concrete in our buildings, and sensors in machinery and equipment. This will accelerate the expansion of big data and AI, give rise to the machine economy, and drive content management and eCommerce models toward headless commerce architecture.

4.Creating a Next-Generation Customer Support Experience

Consider the possibility of tracking staff navigation and assistance patterns across company apps in the future. Consider the possibility of knowing a user [or patient] is going to have a problem before they do, or of intervening in the program prior to the issue occurring.

This is the future of technological assistance, and it is already available.
Businesses can now know where their software issues and IT requests are coming from and address them at the source thanks to new support experience layer technologies. This is made possible not just by providing consumers with in-app assistance that eliminates the need for context switching, but also by allowing enterprises to access end-to-end platform data that they previously could not.

Assume 1,000 employees at a company use an HR service to arrange vacations, and 10% of them submit a support issue. Rather than accepting this, a support experience layer enables the identification of the root cause of the issue or difficulties and the provision of assistance at the source.

5. Cloud Computing

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 emergency has hastened cloud adoption by businesses across the world. Because organizations had to change to remote working methods virtually overnight, the cloud became critical in guaranteeing business continuity. Cloud-based ERP systems, CRM systems, communication, productivity, and data and analytics technologies have all saved thousands of businesses across the world.

This pattern will likely persist. According to a recent study of 250 IT leaders from around the world, 82% indicated they increased cloud usage in reaction to the epidemic, and 66% said this will continue in the future – not only after the crisis is gone. Gartner data support these assertions, with worldwide public cloud services end-user expenditure expected to rise over the next 24 months.

6. 5G

The fifth generation of cellular network technology will change the way we use the Internet and connect to it. Whereas 4G gives average speeds of around 45Mbps, 5G aspires for 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps). 5G will be critical for the development of autonomous cars, allowing them to interact with one another as well as read real-time maps and traffic data. It will also be used in healthcare, including telemedicine, remote surgery, real-time patient monitoring via wearable devices, and uploading big medical information. Manufacturing, retail, logistics, and other industries will also profit from the ultrafast connection provided by 5G, as will consumers’ Internet download, browsing, and streaming experiences.

7. The Spatial Web and Augmented Reality

Immersive digital experiences, such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), will pervade the environment well into the 2020s. We can anticipate the world around us to come to life with data we can see and interact with as 5G global networks, AI and ML technology, and IoT technologies develop and combine in the coming years, altering everything from retail to marketing to education. This is the
Spatial Web, where actual, tangible things, such as devices, objects, and people, are linked.

Retailers are already using Spatial Web technology to allow consumers to virtually try on clothing and make-up before their purchase or to see how a new piece of furniture might appear in their homes. Throughout the decade, more and more applications for augmented reality and Spatial Web technologies will emerge.

8. Free and Open-Source Software

Although it is the software industry’s unsung hero, open source has been, is, and will continue to be vital to corporate software, as well as IoT and AI. As businesses around the world attempt to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, they will want software that is as adaptable, powerful, and secure as it is cost-effective, customizable, and inventive. These boxes are checked by open-source software, not proprietary software.

Indeed, in a recent Red Hat study of 950 global IT professionals, 95% stated that open source was strategically vital to their organization’s entire enterprise infrastructure software strategy. As a result, 77% anticipate boosting usage in the next twelve months, and although the use of proprietary software is declining, corporate open-source software utilization is rapidly increasing.

mHealthTalk Editorial Comment

I no longer accept byline articles but agreed to make an exception in this case. The technologies the author discusses extend the thinking of my 2013 article, Moore’s Law and the FUTURE of Healthcare. In an example describing how computing speeds evolved with exponential tech innovation, I referenced Apple’s iPhone 4 as 5,000 times faster than the $3.5 million IBM mainframe computer I worked on in the early 1970s. But now the iPhone 13 is over 15 million times faster – faster than a supercomputer once shared by hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users. And where Frank speaks of the Internet of Things, he’s referring to embed supercomputing power in everyday objects like doorknobs and lightbulbs to toothbrushes and digital thermometers.