2014 Top 10 Technology Trends

2014 promises to be another exciting year for technology development! Technology more than any other endeavor has the potential to most quickly improve people's lives.  

Some prominent multi-year trends currently in development include:

1. Worldwide Internet-connected (2 billion in 2013 growing to 5 billion in 2020) and growing Southern hemisphere megacities
2. Big data (doubling to 8 zettabytes 2013-2015)
3. Smartphone (>1 billion)
4. Smartwatch 
5. Wearables, Glass 
6. Quantified self-tracking (QS) gadgetry
7. Self-driving vehicles
8. eLearning and MOOCs 
9. 3D printing 
10. New economic models: bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, crowdfunding, crowdsourced labor marketplaces 

On the Horizon:

• Lab-produced synthetically-engineered food 
• Smart home 
• 3D bioprinting / DNA computing / synbio

Predictions for 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 

Digital Literacy: Learning Newtech for its Own Sake

Digital literacy is a new capability and feature of our modern world, where consciously or unconsciously, there is a category in our lives called ‘learning newtech.’

There are two levels: first the basic skill acquisition and conceptual understanding required to learn a newtech, and second, the psychology of the digital learning curve which includes evaluating and justifying the time investment and utility of learning au courrant digital literacy tools with the appreciation that they will be almost immediately obsolescent.

We might complain about the effort required to master contemporary areas of digital literacy like learning mobile app development, the big data statistical manipulation language R, and scripting frameworks like node.js and jQuery. At the same time as we forget our many digital proficiencies, and the time invested to acquire them; previous generations of digital tools like file sharing, photo-uploading, Excel macros, Microsoft Word, PREZI presentations, file archival, and system restoration.

It is arguable that we should devote explicit effort to digital literacy, and further that digital literacy for its own sake could also be an objective. Taking Stanford University as an example, all incoming students must take a software programming class; pedagogically the language requirement is still in place, but it has shifted from French, Spanish, or German to C++, Java, or Python.

Top 10 Technology Tends for 2013

1. Big data ubiquity, along with machine learning algorithms, and information visualization
2. Video is the platform (example: individual YouTube channels with over 100,000 people making more than $10,000/year from ‘home video’ properties like My Drunk Kitchen, the ShayTards, and Right This Minute) 
3. Wearable computing and objective biometrics: Fitbit, myZeo, WiThings, smartwatch, smartring, wearable electronic patches and tattoos, Google’s Project Glass
4. Fracking
5. eHealth biohacking: Quantified Self-tracking, self-experimenting, group health collaboration, $99 personal genomics (23andMe), $99 personal microbiomics (American Gut Project), $5 home blood-test cards (Talking20) 
6. eLearning: Coursera, Udacity, edX, Class Central (MOOC aggregator)
7. Mobile is still the platform: worldwide smartphone adoption crosses 1 billion
8. Crowdsourced labor marketplaces: CrowdFlower, CrowdSource, oDesk, ClickWorker, Mechanical Turk, mobileworks, TopCoder, Elance, vWorker/Rent a Coder, Guru, 99designs, crowdSPRING, CloudCrowd, Soylent, microtask, LiveOps, Gigwalk
9. Computer security: increasing power of Internet-based activist hacking groups (e.g.; Anonymous)
10. New economic models (crowd-based): crowdfunding (Kickstarter, indiegogo, etc.), sustainable business, and crowdfunded debt forgiveness (from the Occupy movement’s financial arm: Rolling Jubilee)

Up and coming: Consumer EEG rigs wearable 24/7 (Axio, Interaxon) and attendant neural and biometric data privacy rights, ideally sans Faraday Cage 2.0

Still waiting for: nanotech, 3D printing, eHealth data commons with public longitudinal phenotypic data sets

Predictions for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 

Brave New Simu World

What an exciting world we live in with so many new and evolving forms of entertainment, learning, experiencing, interacting and actualizing. And they are all converging, merging and bubbling into new possibilities. It's all part of the trends to seamlessness between learning and entertainment and people being more interactive and expressive with every medium.

We used to have radio, then TV, then cable, then video games, then online video games and MMOGs (massive multi-player online games).

As one great example of what is available now, SimuLearn offers the Virtual Leader simulation elearning tool to develop leadership skills for corporate and government customers. What a great tool this could be. What if everyone in a work team played themselves in the online simulation? What if everyone played others especially swapping roles up and down the power hierarchy, what could you learn by playing your supervisor? What if every role was played by others with your personality and work skill characteristics? A dream or a nightmare?

There can be at least two ways to play a role; first by being yourself doing the responsibilities of that position or second by inheriting or creating character attributes (personality, skills, etc.) that filter/direct how the player you are playing can perform their role and interact in that context. Being someone else from the constraints of their value system, background, personality, skills, mindset and outlook can be hugely educational. Identifying these aspects of yourself can be extremely educational. This would be useful in any and all contexts of human interaction: professional relationships, personal relationships, interactions between any entities, politics, international relations in particular....

Kuma War offers game simulations of real world events, mainly war strategy related. The Great Divine is a move-through-the-stages video game but ability to move up is measured via biofeedback of how calm you are. And of course The Sims were the original simulation platform, with Sims Online and Second Life now growing exponentially as users create their experiences, realize their creativity and interact with others.

How soon can we have holographic 3-D displays and simulated conversations with non-human characters representing our dream characters or real-life people!