IEEE spectrum turns 50. To commemorate the anniversary the magazine presents eight technologies that will shape the world in the coming 50 years ranging from neural interfaces and prosthetics to space exploring robots. For people interested in the near future Miriam Mecker’s “Internet Trends 2014” provides interesting reading matter.
IEEE Spectrum is the flagship magazine and website of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences. Its charter is to keep over 400,000 members informed about major trends and developments in technology, engineering, and science. To commemorate IEEE Spectrum’s 50th anniversary the editors present scenarios for eight of the most promising of today’s technologies that will shape the next 50 years.
The eight trends are:
- Neural interfaces and prosthetics that will end disability by turning us all into cyborgs,
- Programmable matter that we can morph into an unlimited range of functional items,
- Wearable computers
- Robots exploiting space resources
- Computer generated humans in movies and video games paving the way for new forms of entertainment
- Smart and agile power systems turning every home and business into power plants
- Self driving cars
- Robot servants
For each of the technologies the editors describe the state of the art today and likely near-term developments, and then sketch out a future in which things go well. There are several additional articles such as a science fiction and an article about important technologies that shaped the year 1964.
Miriam Mecker’s presentation on internet trends describes technological trends too. However her predictions are for the year 2064 but for the next years. Mecker’s “Internet Trends 2014” covers a broad range of topics, including:
- Key Internet trends showing slowing Internet user growth but strong smartphone, tablet and mobile data traffic growth as well as rapid growth in mobile advertising.
- Emerging positive efficiency trends in education and healthcare.
- High-level trends in messaging, communications, apps and services.
- Data behind the rapid growth in sensors, uploadable / findable / shareable data, data mining tools and pattern recognition.
- Context on the evolution of online video.
- Observations about online innovation in China.
The report can be downloaded for free from the website of KPCB. http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends
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