Credit: Tim Graf
So-called human “digital twins” will be one of the top decade-defining technology trends as the world “moves beyond screens and keyboards”.
According to a report by Gartner, as technology becomes increasingly integrated with peoples' lives, digital representations of ourselves, such as digital passports and social distancing technologies, will become more prevalent.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the analyst firm claimed health technology, those like China’s Health Code and India’s Aarogya Setu, could be required for access to public spaces and transportation, although privacy issues may prevent mass take-up in a number of markets.
The report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2020, claimed these new devices would relate to voice, vision, gesture, to the point of even directly altering brains.
Another mega-trend, especially in the enterprise world, will be composite architecture with solutions composed of packaged business capabilities that are built on a flexible data fabric.
According to Gartner, this should be a built-in intelligence that is decentralised and extends outward to edge devices and the end user.
In order for organisations to be more “agile”, technology such as composable enterprise, packaged business capabilities, data fabric, private 5G, embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and low-cost single-board computers at the edge should be tracked.
In terms of artificial intelligence, technologies that can “dynamically change to respond to situational variances” will accelerate, especially among user experience and application designers.
AI-assisted design, including augmented development, ontologies and graphs, small data, composite AI, adaptive ML, self-supervised learning, generative AI and generative adversarial network, could become more prevalent in organisations.
Another major trend identified by Gartner will be algorithmic “trust” models that ensure privacy and security of data, source of assets and identity of individuals and things.
According to the analyst, these will minimise the risk and costs of losing the trust of enterprises’ customers, employees and partners.
Technologies tied to this could include secure access service edge (SASE), differential privacy, authenticated provenance, bring your own identity, responsible AI and explainable AI.
The final key trend will see technology moving beyond just chips and boards, especially as technology approaches the physical limits of silicon.
According to Gartner, critical technologies to be considered include DNA computing, biodegradable sensors and carbon-based transistors.
