GRAND RAPIDS – The dawning age of self-driving vehicles will radically transform the century – old love affair with humans driving cars, and lead to swarms of connected vehicles motoring down the roads in orchestrated packs – while transforming ownership from individuals to companies, such as Uber, Google and Lyft, predicted technologist Keith Brophy, in his annual aimWest Trends update.
Brophy, a serial technology entrepreneur, is now the state director for the Michigan Small Business Development Center, which provides help and training to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs statewide annually. On Wednesday night, however, Brophy put on his wizards hat and looked into a crystal ball to come up with 10 technology trends he says could come to pass in the years to come.
Brophy shared that the many years of looking at technology transformation has lead to a recognition of certain clues that can help indicate which technologies will have the highest impact.
Some of the key clues behind a trend with momentum include:
- Pace of change of underlying technologies
- Convergence of multiple technologies
- Rapid market penetration paths
- True business value or convenience proposition
- Perception of true business or convenience value
- Visibility and spotlight potential in an industry or market
- Moore’s Law and related factors
- Early adoption and scale up dynamics
Using this background of clues, many trends – now 150 – have been covered at AimWest over the years. As Brophy points out, the true intent of AimWest Tech Trends is not so much to exactly predict the future, but rather to raise ideas that spark thought – and even debate – about that future.
“Still, it is interesting to look at the accuracy of the predictions over the years,” he said. “Some have missed the mark entirely. Most predictions haven’t had a chance for a verdict yet, as their success or failure will play out over a period of the 5, 10, or 15 years ahead.”
Brophy points out that it is easy to see some have missed the mark, like the earlier prediction of the demise of Facebook, after earlier predicting its rise. But some of the predictions from years ago have hit some bullseyes as well, like the advent of the iphone and its impact in shifting us to an increasingly mobile society.
The all time history of the 15 years of AimWest Tech Trends is a bit tough to reconstruct, because the format and record keeping have varied over the years. But in general terms, looking over past records, about 44 percent of the trends have transpired. And about 16 percent have not and likely will not transpire. The verdict is still out on the rest, about 40 percent more of the trends.
“So in terms of an overall grade, if all of these pending trends eventually hit the bullseye the Tech Trends success score will be a sweet 84 percent,” Brophy said. “But if all those 40 percent pending trends end up failing over time, the result would be a more meager 44 percent success rate. So there is still a lot in play here, but in either case, the important point,” said Brophy, “is to keep people thinking about the transformations ahead.”
Now to his predictions. A drum roll please:
Trend 1: Connected, self-driving vehicles, owned by companies rather than individuals, will become our primary means of transportation.
Trend 2: Transportation pathways restricted to connected, self-driving vehicles will replace many roads.
Trend 3: Personal robots will be deployed by consumer oriented businesses to address customer facing tasks and to collect vast amounts of customer interaction data in the process.
Trend 4: Emotional companion devices with targeted expertise will become commonplace, with JIBO serving as a pioneer.
Trend 5: Our economy will dramatically transform with significant workforce displacement as new industries emerge centered on “Gig” and automated services.
Trend 6: Personal monitoring technologies deployed by citizens will join multiple governmental data streams to provide ongoing environmental and security threat assessments.
Trend 7: Satellite deployment will become much cheaper, easier, and more frequent, leading to breakthroughs in weather and climate monitoring, reductions in the cost of mobile communications, and an acceleration of the space arms race.
Trend 8: Drone use matures into a blend of automated connected vehicle and automated connected drone technologies working in tandem, such as truck deployed delivery drone fleets and first responder vehicle early arrival drones.
Trend 9: Powering homes and small businesses efficiently, earth-friendly, and off-the-grid will become the norm.
Trend 10: Work teams will increasingly function in virtual reality workplaces, built on a combination of real colleagues, AI-clones of real colleagues, and AI-created colleagues.
To learn more about Brophy’s tech background, click on http://mibiz.com/item/22313-keith-brophy-begins-new-role-with-michigan-small-business-development-center
