Guest Contribution by James Daniels
As a species, we are constantly innovating and improving our technological capabilities. However, every now and then a technology comes along that changes everything.
You can take a look at this excellent guide for an idea of what disruptive technology is.
Below are three technologies that are set to blow 2020 apart.
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Internet of Things
The Internet of Things has been promised for a long time now, but it is starting to become a reality. There are now a large number of always online and interconnected devices available for the home, not least of all smart speakers, which are gradually becoming as ubiquitous as computers. It’s hard to overstate exactly how transformative the Internet of Things will be when it has reached fruition. The Internet of Things won’t just change our personal lives; it will also change the way that we build cities, the way that we approach our jobs, and even the way that we approach childcare.
Once the Internet of Things reaches a critical point, a point where most of the products and infrastructure around us are interconnected, we will witness a revolution in information science.
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Machine Learning
Machine learning is a new approach to artificial intelligence that enables us to harness the power of big data in order for machines to train themselves. Machine learning algorithms are fed huge amounts of data, some of which are correct, and some of which are incorrect. The algorithm is then able to work out for itself what separates the correct answers from the incorrect answers.
But the really bizarre thing about machine learning is that even if a person were to look under the hood at what the algorithm was doing, it would make no sense to us. As our understanding of artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and we get better at creating machine learning algorithms, there currently seems to be no upper limit on what we might be able to achieve with this technology.
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Big Data
Data is at the heart of both of the technologies outlined above. In the case of machine learning, data is required in order to train machine learning algorithms. In the case of the Internet of Things, a big part of the appeal of the Internet of Things is that it will provide an endless stream of data that can be utilized by other devices on the network.
It is only in recent years that we have come to understand what a powerful resource data is. However, in order to harness the power of data, we need access to lots of it. The Internet of Things will ultimately provide us with a huge and effectively never-ending source of data, but it will be a while until the technology has reached that point.
Throughout 2020, expect the nature and sophistication of web scraping tools to increase significantly. And until the Internet of Things is up and running, web scraping is going to be the main source of data for most applications.
These are just some of the technologies that will disrupt the market in 2020. Tech is a fast-moving field and has always been difficult to anticipate. However, if we had to sum up the future of tech in one word, it would be “data.”
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