“Technology is the enabler. What humanity takes out of it really depends on human society.”
The IEEE Computer Society has released a report that investigated 23 future technologies that could transform the world by 2022.
Exploring the future technology landscape, the CS 2022 report also aims to keep researchers abreast of the future impacts of several technologies as well as help consumers understand where technology is evolving.
IEEE Computer Society President Dejan Milojicic said: "These technologies, tied into what we call seamless intelligence, present a view of the future.
"Technology is the enabler. What humanity takes out of it really depends on human society."
The report covers issues related to security cross-cutting; open intellectual property movement; sustainability; particularly online open courses; quantum computing; device and nanotechnology; 3D integrated circuits; multicore, photonics; universal memory; networking and interconnectivity.
Furthermore, the report also focuses on software-defined networks; high-performance computing; cloud computing; the Internet of Things; natural user interfaces; 3D printing; big data and analytics; machine learning and intelligent systems; computer vision and patternrecognition; life sciences; computational biology and bioinformatics; and lastly robotics for medical care.
According to the researchers, in the future, the technology will allow recharging smartphones just once a month; Internet of Things would enable wearing clothes that keep an eye on all activities; nanotechnology will enable lives to be saved by digestible cameras and machines derived from elements that are 50,000 times as small as a human hair.
However, machine learning would play a vital role in human lives, ranging from ranking search results, recommending products, to developing improved environmental models.
The report noted that further advances in sustainability are anticipated in electric cars, LEDs, smart grids, smart cities, dark silicon, new battery technology, and new methods to cool data centres.
The Open Intellectual Property movement is expected to have high impact on everything ranging from academic publishing and educational models to software, standards, and programming languages.
