The World in 50 Years

Eight Technology Trends — One Decade at a Time

The smiling toddler perched on his mother’s lap could be any child. Except it’s me.

The picture, taken with a Kodak Instamatic camera in 1970, captures a moment from long ago. But as I look back on that world, it seems like it just happened: Corded dial phones, punch card computing, phone books, cathode-ray televisions, and the three channels where everyone got the news.

The 1970s is a foreign world if you didn’t grow up in it. To someone in 2070 looking at a picture of our world today, we’ll look just as foreign to them.

Key technology trends today will have an outsized impact on our lives over the next fifty years. We won’t notice them on a day-to-day basis. And these trends won’t all move at the same speed due to the need for infrastructure investments and regulatory changes, country readiness to adopt, and business and technical challenges to overcome.

But eventually, they’ll create a new normal for things we didn’t know we wanted, but now do. We’ll know the new normal when everyone takes tomorrow’s innovations for granted — through products and services that are simple to use, inexpensive, and deliver more value than anything we had seen before.

Eight interconnected technology trends will change our lives in the next 50 years -

1. More powerful computing. High powered computing will be readily available and distributed, first through cloud computing and then extended to the network edge so that data analysis and response can be delivered faster to devices. And quantum computing — delivered through the cloud initially — will eventually change what’s possible to compute, exponentially advancing medicine, security, forecasting, and other areas.

2. Available everywhere. With high bandwidth wireless — starting with 5G and going way beyond that — it will be ever easier and faster to access high powered computing on demand and to share data across connected devices.

3. From any device. Future devices will be freed from yesterday’s design constraints, enabled by lower cost, smaller lithium-ion batteries. Smart clothing, wearables, appliances, drones, cars, homes, sensors, and other Internet of Things (IoT) will share more data with the cloud and between devices.

4. Delivering intelligence. The more data collected in real-time across devices, the faster artificial intelligence algorithms will identify patterns, insights, and recommendations. This will not only help us make better decisions but also provide us with truly personalized experiences — further extended into lives through augmented and virtual reality overlays on our physical world.

5. With automation for how we work and play. The lines between artificial intelligence and easy-to-use automation tools will blur for business users and consumers. We will become our own IT departments, using tools to create digital assistants that automate manual tasks for our work and home. This will free us to think more about the right questions: what we want and how we can best achieve it.

6. And improvements for how we live. Breakthroughs in gene therapy, regenerative medicine, and medical IoT sensors, combined with artificial intelligence, will change the face of medicine, enabling prevention and treatments to be customized to the individual.

7. Transparency and trust will extend across connected marketplaces. Today’s digital marketplaces provide everything from car services and hotels to business applications and personal services. Over time, blockchain technology will enable distributed digital ledgers to be created across a breadth of transactions — not just between buyers and sellers, but also between tomorrow’s myriad of devices — removing the need for a middleman.

8. While the need for security will be most critical. The surface area for attacks will increase in an always-connected and -personalized world, where data is readily shared and consumed. Through biometrics and other personalized forms of security, we will improve our control over where and how we present our data to the world.

We see these trends at play in 2020. To name just a few examples: Compared to ten years ago, cloud computing is now a standard, with many organizations spending new IT investment first on the cloud. A quantum chip from Google recently solved a problem in less than 200 seconds that would have needed 10,000 years on a supercomputer. Investments in 5G wireless infrastructure have begun, with the promise of enabling full movies to be downloaded in seconds rather than minutes. Lithium-ion battery costs for tomorrow’s devices will continue to drop by 7%+ per year from now through 2030. Companies are already deploying artificial intelligence for decision-making and putting low-code automation tools into the hands of their employees to improve their productivity. And the adoption of smart cameras and biometrics — including in your home — has already started.

Bill Gates once said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” He’s right. Let’s then take the next 50 years in ten-year increments. With the momentum of these current trends, we can create a reasonable picture of what 2030 could look like. From there, we can look ahead to each decade through 2070, using the “new normal” of the prior one as the foundation from which we build.

Let’s start 10 years out in the future, and zoom in on this world through the eyes of Ben, a 25-year-old product manager.

February 10, 2030

7:30 a.m.

“Good morning Ben. The weather outside is 57 degrees and sunny. I’ve got your calendar and the day’s top headlines ready when you are.”

Though he programmed his digital assistant himself — no matter how personal it gets — waking up really isn’t Ben’s favorite part of the day. Especially when he was in the middle of a dream where someone has just asked him something. He can’t remember what the question was. And it’s bothering him.

His digital assistant, set up in his smartwatch and connected with the rest of his apartment, has already turned on the bathroom lights and transferred his calendar and top headlines to the embedded display in his mirror. He washes up, throws on some clothes, and go to the kitchen, checking the refrigerator panel for what’s for breakfast, and the suggestion for dinner. He chooses his dinner and breakfast orders for tomorrow, and the refrigerator automatically orders these and other groceries for delivery. While eating breakfast, he listens to his morning playlist, automatically started through the smart speaker.

After breakfast, he heads out the door and his apartment turns down the heat, shuts off the lights, and pauses the music. Down in front, a self-driving electric car from his transport service has already pulled up and is ready to go to his office at his usual time. In the car, his music playlist picks up right from where he left off upstairs, and his calendar and the day’s top headlines have also transferred to the thin-panel screen in front.

The car drives him to the office, following the usual path. Ben’s parents keep telling him that he needs to get a driver’s license, but there hasn’t been the need — maybe one of these days. All new cars are electric and self-driving. There are still some old school gas-powered cars on the road but everyone knows their days are numbered.

8:45 a.m.

At the office, AI-enabled security cameras recognize him and auto-unlock the glass door into the office. Occasionally, the screen on the door prompts him for an iris scan when his arrival isn’t expected, if he comes in after-hours or on the weekends.

He sits down at his desk and his laptop has automatically turned on, having been prompted by front door security that he has arrived. Everything is run off the cloud so there’s no need to bring his laptop home since he can access everything from home if he wants just as easily.

He brings up his personal dashboard for the day. His digital assistants have already been hard at work — prioritizing his chat and email messages, providing updates to team members on deliverables, and most important, scanning and prioritizing the latest data, analytics, and insights from his customers on their use of his product.

Ben built these digital assistants himself using a low-code automation platform, and they’re all AI-enabled. It was pretty easy to do, and anyone can build these. In fact, Ben owns a number of these digital assistants, having built them himself before he joined the company. They were part of his resume and helped him land the job in the first place. They free up a ton of time for Ben to focus on thinking about the forward direction of his product.

Ben’s company provides a blockchain platform for financial services, providing an alternative to a lot of banking services for consumers and small-to-midsize (SMB) companies by cutting out the middleman. For a low monthly subscription, consumers can use his company’s platform for crowdsourcing short-to-long term loans of whatever size, personalizing the payment terms. It’s the same idea for small-to-midsize companies, just a broader set of services.

From the data pulled by his digital assistant, Ben sees that his product for consumer cross-border payments is growing like crazy, like the rest of his company’s offerings. The banks see what’s happening, and they’re now focused on providing strategic advice for SMBs and personalized retail experiences for consumers, both powered through AI. A bank doesn’t really look like a bank anymore — more like a coffee shop or place to hang out, where the staff greets customers personally and already know what to discuss with them about their finances.

Ben checks the time. He really needs to get focused on prepping for his update to the Chief Product Officer. But in the back of his mind, he’s still wondering what that question was from the dream this morning.

5:15 p.m.

Ben steps outside of the office building and puts his smart sunglasses on. He’s going to a meetup with some friends and some other people he doesn’t know at a newly opened outdoor equipment shop.

His sunglasses are connected to the 5G network, and the walking directions light up on the inside of the glasses, along with a text message thread with his friends. The shop is only a few blocks away and Ben listens to his playlist through the glasses as he goes, a nice soundtrack to the traffic and people passing by. Ben loves these glasses. At the beach the other day, he downloaded movies to his glasses in seconds and watched them behind his shades.

He walks into the shop and goes over to the designated room for the Meetup. Retail shops don’t look like they did ten years ago. Just like with bank branches, they’re more of a place to hang out with the best-curated stuff available, free appetizers and drinks, new people to meet, and staff that’s there to make it a good experience — and of course help customers order things online if they’re not in the store.

Ben’s friends and others are at one of the tables. Ben’s glasses, now adjusted for indoors, brings up the digital public profiles for everyone around the table. This is really helpful to get conversations started — not to mention remembering people’s names. Everyone is in control of what they put out on their public profile.

After the group gets acquainted, one of the retail staff starts demoing the latest smart outdoor gear. Ben really likes the technical hiking jacket that has a flexible screen for an interactive map. With sensors embedded throughout the jacket, it can monitor your vitals and detect if you’ve had a fall, auto-signally for help — great for the backcountry skiing that Ben does.

Ben places an order through the retail staff before he goes, automatically transferring his clothing size through his digital profile. Retailers love it when they can access your public profile, and Ben gets an automatic discount on the jacket he just bought. He picks up some new hiking boot laces on the way out. There’s no need to see a cashier because everything gets automatically paid through his smart glasses or watch.

7 p.m.

Ben picks up the dinner delivery box in front of his door, touches the handle, and the door auto-unlocks. He enters the apartment where the lights and the 80” thin panel main screen are already turned on.

In the main screen on his personal dashboard, Ben sees a video from his medical service with his daily health report, which includes AI-driven recommendations for food consumption and exercise. On the back of Ben’s smartwatch, a sensor has been taking measurements from his sweat — glucose, sodium, potassium — and combined that with heart rate, body temperature, and other data from his smartwatch. Essentially, it gives him an everyday physical, and he can get prescriptions filled if needed without talking with a doctor. Ben’s mom got this service for him, but he knows he’s fine and doesn’t check it every day.

Ben hits play on one of his streaming services to continue binge-watching a new series. He’s opted for the lower cost ad-supported version. Ben used to fast forward through commercials, but they’re now all personalized to him and he often checks them out. He watches a video about the smart jacket he just purchased, showing how you can add a flat panel camera to record downhill runs. He goes ahead and adds that to his jacket order.

Back to the series — it’s a drama set in 2040. A 15-year old math genius named Koenig is trying to navigate his teen years. Koenig likes spending time more in a virtual world overlaid on the real one through his contact lenses. The episode opens against a black background and a voice-enabled AI asks him: “Hello Koenig. What do you want to do?”

That’s it. That’s the question that Ben heard at the end of the dream last night. He thinks about his day — from home to work and back again, and the backward expanse of that repeating pattern over the last few months. Everything is getting to be too easy. He needs a challenge — to make his mark. He’s been thinking about an idea for a start-up. If he doesn’t start now, then when?

Ben shuts off the main display, pulls over his laptop, and opens a blank page. The cursor blinks back as he dives in, getting the first fragments of ideas down that are long overdue an audience.

Even when we’ve progressed far beyond today, there will always be those who ask “what now” and “what could be better”, which in turn drives our progress further. The eight interconnected technology trends will change our lives, but they won’t change who we as humans fundamentally are, and the answers to the questions we seek.

This picture of 2030 is just one version of possible futures, the reality of which we won’t know until experienced. What do you think?

Next time — we’ll look at these same trends as they emerge in the 2030s, building toward the world of 2040.