The worlds of science fiction that many of us have watched for years, are far closer than any of us would realize. Advances in miniaturization, software development, and micro electromechanical systems, are on the verge of revolutionizing the world as we know it. Every day we lurch forward into a world of pervasive computing. While there are numerous buzz-words and descriptions of the the world we are entering, it can really be broken down into four key technology concepts:
- The Internet of Everything
- Human Computer Interaction
- Synthetic Intelligence
- Robotics
While these concepts may seem far-fetched, the foundations for them are being laid by the technology trends dominating today’s technology landscape. The forces shaping today’s technology landscape are based upon the Cloud, Big Data, Security and Mobile. These technology trends are both precursors, as well as harbingers of the next generation of technology that will fundamentally change our world.
The Cloud
Cloud computing is not being driven by economic necessity, but more by accessibility. Governments, businesses as well as consumers, have an insatiable demand for ubiquitousness access to their information. Legacy computer models based upon hub and spoke, or client/server models, no longer serve the emerging demands of consumers and businesses. As we continue to move more more of our applications and workloads into cloud-based models, we create the very fabric and foundation of the Internet of everything. Truly we are creating a world where users can access any information from any device, from any place at any time. The power of distributed computing, via cloud and mobile, are creating the foundational pillars of the Internet of everything. Using my definition of cloud computing, mobile is merely an extension of that model, providing distributed access to those cloud-based applications and information. The final evolution of the Cloud Based computing model is all applications and data accessible by users based upon communities or industries, with the ability to transfer or share that data and compute capability across those vertically aligned cloud environments.
Big Data
As we evolve our distributed computing model, with the growing ability to collect information and data on every device and object that we interact with, we are inherently creating a greater mass of data and information that must be manipulated. Our ability to synthesize, analyze, create and distill specific information, decisions or patterns from the Internet of everything, requires a new level of computational and computing capability that cannot be handled by software that is merely programmable. Big data will drive the necessity for more cognitive and synthetic intelligent software to analyze the massive amounts of data that our pervasive and ubiquitous computing environments are creating. The vast amounts of data will require scalable, low cost, software defined and autonomous infrastructure, that will be accessed via cloud based user interfaces.
Human Computer Interaction
As the amount of information continues to double every five years and the number of connected devices grows exponentially, our ability to manipulate and interact with the cloud-based and pervasive computing environment must evolve as well. ABI Research’s latest data on the Internet of Everything (IoE) shows that there are more than 10 billion wirelessly connected devices in the market today; with over 30 billion devices expected by 2020. Every aspect of our lives will be connected, tracked and cataloged in the cloud.
The user experience and user interface technologies will need to evolve to increase the speed and ease of accessibility to these new environments. Ultimately gesture and voice recognition will become the standard models by which we interface with the computing world that we are creating. As software continues to evolve, and moves from the programmable, to the cognitive and ultimately to synthetic, users will be able to have an interactive dialogue with the computing environment as they would with another person. Computing will no longer reside within a single data center, let alone a single geography.
Robotics
Synthetic intelligence will involve from today’s computing and operational environments. “Software Defined Everything” will permeate every aspect of the Internet of Everything. Software defined data centers, networks, smart devices, and micro electrical devices will become the norm. Cognitive computing models will allow the software defined environments to learn from pattern recognition and human computer interaction, ultimately creating synthetic intelligence, that will reside within the network or the cloud, and be accessible anywhere. As computers become able to create semantic analysis of information, they will also become self-determined. While they will not be self-aware, they will mimic human self-awareness, through autonomous decision-making, self-correcting, learning, and self programming. Our software defined environments will become self managed, and notify us only on an exception basis. This is already taking place in most leading large scale computing environments, as the amount of alerts and changes to both software and infrastructure can no longer be monitored by human beings.
Robotics are simply the mechanical interfaces to the software defined environment of synthetic intelligence. While there will surely be robots that mimic the human form to perform tasks that will no longer be provided by people, the vast majority of robots will be behind the scenes running and maintaining the evolving infrastructure and Internet of Everything. We simply have to look around us today to see the evolving nature of machine to machine (M2M) communication and nonhuman interaction in places like financial trading, logistics, and military intelligence, just to name a few.
Security and Culture
The greatest challenges facing society as we continue to see the exponential evolution of computing capability, will be security, and the cultural challenges associated with this new computer defined cultural paradigm. In a world where every device and object are connected and categorized and ultimately stored as information, the opportunities for abuse, and misuse are enormous. As we continue to see with the latest headlines of the Snowden / NSA scandal, and the massive data breach at US retailers, and our reliance, and consolidation of information continues, security becomes an ever greater challenge. While security poses many risks to confidentiality as well as financial loss, the greater question for us becomes the societal impact of the changes that this technology will have upon people and culture.
As our society continues to evolve, technology and access to the underlying information and data, will become a right and not a privilege. Who is allowed access and to what degree they are allowed access, will become questions that our political institutions will have to grapple with. The fundamental tenets of our society and our culture on a global basis will be altered. We will begin to look to our software defined environments as companions, confidants, and advisers on every decision that we make. We will immerse ourselves in a world driven by synthetic intelligence, that will relieve us of most of our daily tasks. In a world where most of our daily drudgery is removed from us, how will we invest our time and energies? Will we pursue a life of trivia, or introspection, research, and the search for greater truth and knowledge of ourselves and our world? Only time will tell.
In the end, our machines, and the technology that we have developed, will begin to evolve on an autonomous path from us. Where once they were merely tools, they will become companions in the next evolution of our society, as well as ourselves. The ability of our technology to manage our world and its complexity at a speed and level of accuracy that we can comprehend, but not emulate, will create opportunities and breakthroughs that are the stuff of science fiction today. It it will also create innumerable challenges, and changes to the world in which we live. As a technologist, I believe that it will create a better world, a world that is more equitable, just, with a higher standard of living for every person.
Innovation, Technology and Leadership 