As the world ushered in a new decade, the tech minds were already wondering what the next ten years have in store. Space is vastly underexplored with terra-forming, travel, and habitation causing many a space scientists sleepless nights. Closer home, a lot more innovation is still necessary in finance, supply chain, and various forms of entertainment such as real money online casinos, music, and the movies, to name just a few.
Oceans remain unexplored as well. Oceanographers and marine biologists agree that the knowledge that the world has of this vast resource is not anywhere near adequate. In fact, the portion that is fully mapped is just but a tiny fraction. The truth is, even lakes are less understood, especially the underground lakes and the very deep waterbodies such as Lake Baikal.
Competition for Research Funds
While these two areas may seem attractive, the sad bit is that they are only poised to attract government funding, which may seem vast but is in the real sense very limited. The areas that are driven by substantial capital venture are the fields of renewable non-polluting energy, especially in the face of climate change and its harsh impacts.
Other areas that may attract technological innovation to provide workable solutions are modular city infrastructure, application of high-scale passive techniques in the built environment, and real dimensional artificial intelligence. The first two will be essential in developing efficient cities without traffic snarl-ups and better energy efficient residential and office spaces with substantially minimized pollution.
Artificial intelligence coupled with the power of the blockchain and the Internet of things (IoT) is already being leveraged to provide answers to most of the complications plaguing the world. These technologies now provide doctors with better disease management methods, precise prescription, and enhanced nursing care.
The Bull’s Eye
All the areas of technology defined here above seem like fund magnets. However, IoT has everyone’s vote. This is because it provides a convergence point for cloud computing, predictive analytics, big data, business intelligence, high speed ubiquitous connectivity and the beneficial use of commodity devices; very essential breakthroughs.
As at January 2020, the five biggest venture firms with interest in IoT have leveraged more than $23.5 billion in capital and research funds. These five, QUALCOMM, Cisco Investments, Intel Capital (News - Alert) GE Venture, and Google Ventures have interest in diverse areas that include retail efficiency, mobile connectivity, mobile advertising, medical laboratory automation, machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity among a host of other areas.
In Summary
The 2020 has gained pace and the rate of innovation is keeping up. The world expects technology to provide solutions and the candidate seems suited for the task. With IoT as its best foot forward, the world should see a lot more solutions coming from this field.
