Since the clocks will tick over to a new year in a few days, now is as good a time as any to check in with a selection of tech industries and sectors that will see upheaval in 2018: Cryptocurrencies are on the rise, cyber security is overloaded, and artificial intelligence is on everyone’s mind. What major events and shifts will we see in 2018? Here’s our collection of the top ten most intriguing tech trends.
Smart Home Technology Grows
The first prediction hearkens to one big futuristic stereotype, the “home of the future.” Stephen Cox, Chief Security Architect at SecureAuth, foresees smart home technology continuing to expand the boundaries of what we can automate. But we won’t see one of the bigger innovations this year in smart houses any time soon — even though it will have a big presence on our phones in 2018. I smile every time one of my children ask our Echo an inquisitive question burning in their minds. Then, I put my security guy hat on and worry about the implications of connecting dozens of devices to our home networks, many developed by vendors lacking strong security discipline.”
Biometric Security Rolls Out
Looking back over the year, most techies would cite the iPhone X face ID demo at Apple’s annual September event as one of the most exciting new technologies of 2017. The experts agree that Face ID and the biometric scanning behind it will only grow more important in 2018. So why won’t we see biometric scans on the doorbells of smart houses in the next few years? Because the future of biometrics is deeply tied to how strongly mobile companies develop it. It’s certainly a sign that biometrics are becoming more of a commonplace technology with a critical place in authentication. It’s interesting to see the consumer market leading the enterprise market in the adoption of biometrics. The major smartphone vendors are making it easier for the enterprise market to move towards passwordless.” It’s easy to forget when predicting the future that society-changing innovations don’t depend on technical accomplishments as much as they depend on economic realities. Biometrics might be the coolest new security measure, but only if mobile companies determine that it’s in their best interests to continue supporting and storing the data required for it to funtion.
More Cryptocurrency Mining
Another trend Cox is keeping an eye on: The mining of cryptocurrency. Given Bitcoin’s power — the currency’s value has risen 500 percent since last July — cryptocurrency is easily the tech sector that saw the biggest rise in fortunes in 2017. Don’t worry too much about this one, as Cox continues that it’s “largely a nuisance at this point,” though it does highlight how simple hackers or other bad actors today find it to harvest PCU cycles. But that’s far from the worst prediction for the world’s hacking problems next year….
Cyber-Warfare Gets Deadly
We’ve seen plenty of massive data breaches and virus attacks across 2017, but the impact of these events will only get worse in 2018, according to the experts. Lonas also foresees the rise of programmable malware — “malware kits able to morph their purposes depending on the intent of those who launch them.” Looks like the dystopian cyberpunk future predicted by sci-fi authors like William Gibson is continuing to reveal itself in new ways. Another way that the world is turning into a high-tech dystopia in 2018? AI will keep taking our jobs.
Continued Job Automation
Automated processes, from self-driving trucks to smart voice assistants, are changing the type of tasks workers are required to do across untold industries, and in an increasing amount of cases, they’re changing whether those workers are needed at all. The prediction? That’s going to keep increasing across 2018. But as the job market tightens in some areas, another possibility is becoming a large option for small businesses: micro-services.
A Shift Toward Micro-Services
This prediction comes in a joint statement from Sol Cates, CTO & VP of technical strategy at Thales eSecurity, and Jim DeLorenzo, solutions marketing manager at Thales eSecurity. Due to this wider investment, they go on state, organizations will likely develop a stronger desire for more secure micro-services.
More Monetization of Data Assets
A prediction from the realm of big data comes through a statement by data and analytics software provider Infogix, which plans on seeing data itself being increasingly monetized. How? By companies that can harness the value of their data sets and tie it to number on paper. Here’s how they put it. It’s all part of a larger pivot towards valuing data more highly in the new year, according to Kevin Hartman, VP of Strategic Initiatives at the digital technology consulting agency, SPR. While plenty of the predictions on this list might have a bit of doom and gloom hanging over them, companies finding ways to accurately capture value that they already had certainly doesn’t sound like a loss.
The IoT Gets Real
Also from Infogix comes the assertion that the Internet of Things (IoT) will continue to grow. It’s a prediction that can be seen in the data, given the steady increase of internet-connected devices in use. Jeff Kavanaugh, senior manufacturing partner at the similarly-named Infosys, backs this one up, noting the benefit this will have business growth. “The exponential adoption of IoT will drive down sensor and acquisition costs, enabling more and more viable business cases that have previously been too expensive,” he says. John Grimm of Thales Security, too, comes at a similar prediction from a different angle: He highlights the consolidation that he believes the IoT — and its “over 300-400 platform products” — will undergo in 2018. The impact for businesses: IT security concerns and traditional employee safety measures will overlap more and more. Meanwhile, consumers everywhere won’t need to have a smartphone glued to their hand in order to remain connected: Voice assistants, thermostats, and, in some cases, wine bottles, will be internet-connected.
AI Hits the Design Field
Artificial intelligence can benefit any industry that currently uses the regular kind of intelligence, and that’s all of them. As Mike Fitzmaurice, Vice President of Workflow Technology at Nintex, sees it, 2018 is “the year artificial intelligence and machine learning actually become packaged and provided to the average end-user in ways that do not require a Computer Science degree.” But out of the many ecosystems that will be increasingly their reliance on AI in 2018, one stands out as particularly interesting: The design sector. But of all the predictions surrounding fields like machine learning, automation, or IoT, one prediction stood out as a more comprehensive look at the psychology behind all these innovations and the people they affect. We predict in 2018, we’ll begin seeing the implementation of tools for the design of AI as well a design language for it. We currently rely on old tools and interactions (or visualizations of data) to make sense of this, but 2018 should see strides in solving this. We may even see AI playing a role in helping designers design better, by utilizing data and algorithms to augment design capabilities.”
We Need to Look at the Big Picture
Infosys’s Jeff Kavanaugh has this statement, which is less of a prediction and more of a truism about how bad humans tend to be at changing their habits. So when you’re watching the Times Square Ball drop this New Year’s Eve, maybe take a moment for one resolution: To look inside yourself and rethink whether you’ve fully realized the possibilities surrounding you. In 2018, we’re all affected and connected by the technology around us, and we need to understand exactly how we’re being affected if we want to change it for the better. Read more about the most interesting future trends in tech on TechCo
