Kevin

I am the writer, editor and publisher behind this future technology blog and I predict you will keep reading to see what is coming right around that metaphorical corner.

Imagining Future Cities – What Do You See?

Cities Comments Off

Apr 142019

Do you ever take a look back at old fiction, say from the 1960s and 1970s? They often depict a future that, today, we live within. Media back in the day would use the first few decades of the next century to paint society in so many ways. Movies like The Running Man that showed society as a deeply flawed place. Others showed a society in the mid-2000s as completely transformed, with high rise buildings and flying cars. We appear to have landed somewhere in the middle of this in 2019. However, when we think of 30 years in the future, towards 2050, what do we imagine? What do we see?

We are presently in the midst of an incredible societal change on a global sense. As we move into a new decade, it’s expected that we’ll see complete transformation of everything. From how we live to how we get around through to what we do with our free time, everything will adjust. The cities of the future will be nothing like the cities of the present – just like the past. Technological, economic, societal and cultural change will drive massive change in the decades to come. What, then, are future cities like to be like as we approach the second fifth of this century?

The future is green

If we are to survive as a species, we are likely going to need make massive changes to our cities. Many cities still thrive off an industrial past – but it’s a green future that will sustain many cities. From moving to green energy to self-sustaining cities powered by greenery, change is already coming into action. The United Arab Emirates, for example, is investing record sums of money into the Vision 2021 plan.

This will be a plan that, if followed elsewhere, could change the world. Driverless cars, AI governmental tools and desalination to help keep water drinkable will become common. The introduction of blockchain and machine learning into far more than just digital cryptocurrency is likely to arrive in the future, too. One of the technological leaders in city building, Tallinn in Estonia, is already utilising techniques like this.

We are in a process if immense and unstoppable change in many ways. We world is going to look like a very different place in 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050. Each decade is expected to bring more environmentally sound ideas. It’s also supposed to bring more technology to help reduce our dependency on people.

Is that a scary thing? Yes, in a way. The world is going to keep becoming more and more connected. Technology is going to fuel everything, from the food we buy to how we get to and from A to B. Smart cities are just around the corner, with everything linked and working as one large network.

Some see that as a rather Orwellian future. With a planet still suffering from the effects of industry and excess consumption, though, something will have to give. For many, that will mean foregoing some privacy in exchange for a cleaner, more modern world. By 2050, expect just about everything to be automated: and that will create its own list of problems for society.

Until such problems arise, though, we should enjoy the ride. The next decades look to be some of the most developmentally important in modern human history. Where will it take us? Probably far beyond even the most ambitious films of the past. 2050 in reality might look a whole lot different to 2050 in most forms of fiction.

Source

Imagining the Smart Cities of 2050

Augmented Reality in the Business World

Augmented Reality Comments Off

Mar 052019

Augmented Reality has been talked about for some time now and more and more businesses tend to opt for using it in their offices in order to improve skills, tasks resolution and effectiveness of the overall business. But what is AR and how does it fit in the business world? Read below the answers to those questions.

Let`s start with the beginning: what is Augmented Reality or AR? AR represents a technology that makes use of a smart device in order to place together layers of information with the sole purpose of enhancing a physical environment, which is not to be confused with Virtual Reality or VR that is meant to create virtual places meant to replace the reality. In other words, AR is all about boosting our interaction with the environment, which makes it more than useful for business application purposes.

For the business world, AR could signify a manner in which we can establish a link between our co-workers, collaborator or customers, depending on the type of business conducted. Team gatherings that include remote employees, job training, product demonstration or project presentations can all be conducted by using the amazing AR due to the fact that it has a beneficial impact on efficiency. Nowadays, a multitude of businesses have interstate or international collaboration with people all around. AR comes into aid for these type of situations by helping remote employees engage and connect with their team in a more significant manner.

One of the first business giants that used AR is, as you might guess, IKEA which made AR popular in the retail environment. IKEA boosts customer`s buying experience by presenting their products through this type of technology. The sole purpose is to permit the potential customer to experience how a particular item would look in their own home, which definitely can make a big difference in the purchasing process. People are more prone to buy items if they are convinced that the particular object will complement the environment created at home.

Moreover, AR proved to be useful in offering support to inexperienced customers that required support in doing home repairing. Thus, AR has the power to provide guidance and even visual representations of how to fix almost everything. This can seriously modify the manner in which our lives will develop in the future.

Another application of the AR in business is that for property development. Those that want to buy an apartment, for example, in a flat that is not ready yet, can experience through AR how the construction will end up looking after completion. Thus, taking potential buyers to an empty lot and allowing them to wonder around through AR will increase the chance of them purchasing and even allow them to imagine how their new homes will look like.

Experts say that AR will change in the future the way in which we purchase and interact with each other. Amongst the benefits of Augmented Reality, we can mention the fact that people will be able to make more informed decisions, which is a great plus, that will diminish confusion or insecurities. Moreover, purchases of more informed customers are proved to lead to positive reviews and recommendations, which is great for improving brand visibility and other marketing purposes.

The scoop on artificial synapses

Future Medical Technology Comments Off

Feb 042019

For some time now, we’ve been hearing people tell us that, soon enough, we’ll have circuitry more powerful and more efficient than the human mind. It looks like we might finally be on the edge of this becoming true, too: circuitry inspired by biology is in the process of being created to help create low-powered AI chips.

While this is still very much in an early developmental phase, the hope is that – with some hurdles still to overcome – we could start creating AI chips with far less demand than we presently can.

Indeed, this latest finding from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology has created something very impressive indeed. They have developed a new magnetically controlled electronic synapse. This new synapse is going to be made like an AI version of the very ones which link neurons within the mind. However, they are much faster than our brains: millions of times faster, in fact.

With using around 1/1000^th of the energy of the brain, too, this is by far and away the most efficient – in both performance and power use – artificial synapse to date. With the ability to gather so many signals and fire out electronic pulses all at once, this could be a much more impressive alternative to the more traditional transistor.

Created by using neuromorphic chips, these will work very much in the similar function to the human brain. This is naturally causing immense excitement within the scientific community. This would allow for us to easily run things like artificial networks – a key construct of modern AI development – with even greater control and efficiency than ever before.

Best of all? It would allow for vast increases and changes with regards to energy efficiency: the results could be absolutely outstanding.

Still some work to be done

However, as you may expect, such hardware still has a veritable glut of issues to be worked out and corrected. For sample, they are yet to be upscaled to work within a large device, so it’s hard to be clear about whether or not a chip could be built onto one. Also, they are going to be running at temperatures of around 5K at present: no normal computing practice would allow for such conditions.

So, while the development of a new artificial synapse does feel closer than ever, it’s also pretty clear that it’s still something very much for the decade(s) to come.

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