How will technology change our lives in the next twenty years?

The year 2020 is fast approaching and looking back at the last two decades we’ve had revolutionary advances in technology which have shaped the world we live in today.

The access of information has enabled us to live longer, healthier lives, and in other ways has made us lazier and more reliant. Based on the last 20 years, it is safe to predict some of the technological advancements the next 20 years may have to offer. But how will it impact us?

SMART Technology

A phrase you’re surely familiar with, and just one decade ago the idea of controlling the temperature in your own, your security systems, lighting and television all through your smart phone would have seemed ridiculous. Yet in 2017, the possibilities of a fully functional smart home came to light with the predictions of it being a $50billion+ industry in the next 2 years alone! As we have facial recognition technology built in to most smart phones to use to gain access to banking apps and other secure spaces, the likelihood of using your smart device as a key to access your home does not seem like a farfetched concept. 

Whilst speaking of secure spaces, the idea of having one device to control a magnitude of functions in your private home, security breaches could potentially be on the rise too. Something to consider as advances in technology also produce fractures in security as there can often be areas of vulnerability. 

SMART cities is also a concept you should become familiar with. It is described as an urban area that uses different types of electronic Internet of Things sensors to collect data and then use insights gained from that data to manage assets, resources and services efficiently. This means an area could control climates in areas by using heat mapping technologies, or even something as simple as creating a traffic lighting system, based on traffic flow.

Artificial Intelligence 

The gap between human and artificial intelligence is closing, and in the last 10 years AI has changed the world in many subtle ways. If you investigate what is being produced today, you would know that the next couple of decades are where we begin to see changes on a grander scale. In the next 10 years alone, AI will make more progress than ever before. It’s influence will be a part of our day to day lives and we’ve started to see it already. Voice recognition technology as one example is being used daily by Billions of users, whether using the voice activated Siri on Apple Devices or using the likes of Alexa and Google Home to answer commands within the workplace or in a home environment, this subtle introduction has already become something we have become very familiar with, very quickly. 

Shopping has also been revolutionised by Amazon’s quest to make physical shopping even less hassle than online due to predictive shopping, telling us what we need before we even know it.

Paying for things has never been easier, with the above-mentioned Facial Recognition Technology, millions of smart phone users pay for items with a simple click of a button, prompting a scan of the face. This will become increasingly popular and may even replace the PIN code we’re all so familiar with when making payments and withdrawals from Banks.

But these are just the tip of the iceberg based on existing technologies today. Business insider had asked academics on what their thoughts of the future were, and interestingly enough the concept of applications within a hospital environment was raised:

“Many applications that today we perform unassisted, will, in fact, be assisted operations. So a surgeon or a nurse in a hospital who’s working on a patient will have an angel on his or her shoulder looking over him or her and offering helpful guidance when perhaps he has, or he’s about to make a mistake.” – Mahadev Satyanarayanan – Carnegie Mellon, University Professor

Considering what we know today, it seems that technology will enable us to live more comfortably, become more agile, and even have the potential to save our lives. What would you like to see revolutionised by technology in our near future?