[January 26, 2005]

Technology Trends in 2005 That Will Catalyze the Future

Market Intelligence From Technology Futures

What are the important emerging technology and policy trends for 2005 and beyond? Below popular futurist and technologist David Smith, Vice President, Technology Futures Inc., (TFI) provides important emerging technology trends developed through TFI's forecasting, strategy, and analysis work. These trends will be of great consequence to those involved with global business, technology business process, science and universities, government agencies, federal labs, corporate labs, and technology savvy consumers.

SIGNIFICANT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2005:

--- The timeframe of the product life-cycle continues to decrease: By the time a product hits the market, its shelf life is half what it used to be. So, to remain competitive, the science and research time will become more intensive and innovative earlier as product development time continues to compress at an unprecedented rate.

---- Outsourcing and globalization become paradigms of success: To be successful in a real-time, global marketplace, businesses must understand and adapt to the new source of competitive advantage by connecting to the core competencies and customer interaction on global scale. In the global business world, global interaction is imperative.

---- Broadband and high-speed wireless penetration reach a large enough market for new classes of applications to emerge: These new products will explicitly take advantage of what broadband and wireless networks have to offer in terms of mobility and accessibility to the global marketplace.

---- Dramatic escalation in device-to-device communication versus people-to-people communication continues: The traffic on the Internet is no longer people talking to people, but people talking to devices and devices talking to devices.

---- The Age of Bio will maintain its marked acceleration: National and global collaboration is enhancing its commercialization potential.

POLICY TRENDS AS CATALYST FOR THE FUTURE:

---- Policies are needed that encourage an open, standards-based infrastructure and positioning U.S. organizations as early adapters to information technology developments: The U.S. will lose its ability to take advantage of technology unless it focuses on devising such policies.

---- An information age emerging increasingly driven by needs for precision, accuracy, and timeliness in all of our endeavors-­ personal, business, and governmental.

---- A major revolution continues in IT growth in such areas as the Internet, wireless and wired communications, mobile applications, and electronic commerce.

---- Information technology becoming ubiquitous and expanding within the private, business, and global worlds. Every device becomes a server.

---- Quality of life improvements in such areas as smart appliances, cars, highways, and buildings, easier access to knowledge, and revolutionary new concepts in health-related fields.

---- An increasingly mobile and global society becoming ever more reliant on a worldwide availability of information.