Technology Today
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Predicting the future requires hubris,
and it should therefore be met with
more than a terabyte of skepticism. In
past years, I’ve made some calls that
have proved prescient like predicting
way back in 2011 that social media
would determine the U.S. presidential
election . Meanwhile, some took
decades longer than I had foreseen
such as my 1992 prediction that this
new thing called the Internet would
lead Hollywood studios to merge with
telecommunications companies .
Over the years, I’ve learned that the
best way to predict the future is to
hang out with the people creating it.
When you work with a top
consultancy and have leading
technology innovators as clients, it’s
pretty easy to recognize trends that
have the greatest potential impact.
Here are my top four tech trends for
2018:
1. IoT becomes BIoT
The biggest mistake most
prognosticators make is
underestimating the potential for fast
growth in our hyper-connected world.
Automobiles took time to catch on
because would-be drivers had to wait
for roads and gas stations to be built.
But today’s disruptive innovations
rely on existing infrastructure for
mobile devices that puts most
companies just a few clicks from
billions of consumers. One of those is
the Internet of things (IoT), which
involves adding smart sensors to
connected devices so that users can do
things like ask Amazon’s Alexa digital
assistant to turn off the lights or order
a pizza.
But blockchain, one of the underlying
technologies for the hot
cryptocurrency bitcoin, can make IoT
devices even more useful. It creates a
digital record across hundreds or
thousands of computers, vastly
reducing the risk of hacking.
Combining IoT with blockchain —or
BIoT—ushers in a whole host of new
services and businesses. For example,
BIoT can be used to track shipments of
pharmaceuticals and to create smart
cities in which connected heating
systems better controls energy use and
connected traffic lights better manage
rush hour.
In 2018, companies will begin to use
Application Programming Interfaces,
or software used to connect different
databases and computer services.
Combined with the blockchain
Internet of things, it will be as easy to
get data from sensors in a warehouse
as accessing websites on our mobile
phones. When manufacturers,
retailers, regulators, and
transportation companies have real-
time data from sensors imbedded on
products, trucks and ships, everyone
in the distribution chain can benefit
from insights that they were
previously unable to get. With BIoT,
companies and consumers can also be
assured that their most valuable data
on the blockchain cannot be hacked.
2. The fintech renaissance
While bitcoin and blockchain were
grabbing the headlines in 2017, social
and mobile payments have
fundamentally changed the financial
markets. In China, mobile payment
volumes now exceed $5 trillion
annually.
All aspects of the payments chain are
open to disruption as blockchain
speeds clearing house functions while
smart contracts handle settlements. In
2018, look for biometrics such as
facial recognition, voice ID, and
fingerprints to help make shopping
far quicker —by eliminating the need
to swipe a credit card at checkout, for
instance. Instead, you will be able to
verify your identity for a merchant
scanning your eyes with your
smartphone, in what’s known as a
retinal payment. A bold clairvoyant
could even predict that some major
retailers will hop on the
cryptocurrency bandwagon and issue
their own secure currency next year.
Fintech will likely also become greener
in 2018. With cryptocurrencies
reaching over $300 billion in total
value, there is now a financial
incentive for investments into
quantum computing, which involves
using the behavior of energy at a
subatomic level to process computing
functions at a billion times faster than
today’s microprocessors.
By some estimates, mining today’s
cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin,
requires more electricity annually
than the amount of energy used in 159
countries . With cryptocurrency’s
carbon footprint rapidly growing,
quantum computing has the potential
to greatly reduce the estimated
28TWhs of electricity consumed by all
of the current computers processing
bitcoin.
Analysts now anticipate that banks
will derive over $1 billion annually
from blockchain-based
cryptocurrencies within the next two
years as traditional financial
institutions start treating
cryptocurrencies and other digital
assets similar to traditional fiat
currencies with more efficient
payment systems, loan processing, and
credit instruments. Going green by
using less energy to create bitcoins,
will translate into earning more green.
3. Augmented reality goes
mainstream
Before smartphones existed 10 years
ago, most people would consider
spending five hours daily staring at
your phone as crazy. In 2018, the
bent-neck trend will start to reverse
itself.
The mobile game Pokémon Go has
unleashed a billion-dollar demand for
augmented reality entertainment, and
major brands are taking notice.
Thanks to the introduction of
affordable augmented reality glasses,
our phones will remain in our pockets
and Heads Up Displays (HUD) will
improve how we work, shop, and play.
HUDs, best known today as the
instrument gauges that fighter pilots
monitor on their visors or
windshields, will become a standard
in consumer eyeglasses. Imagine
walking down the street in a foreign
country, for example, and having all
of the store signs instantly translated
into English thanks to your trendy
sunglasses.
AR will customize in-store experiences
with mannequins that match your
body type and display enough virtual
inventory to rival any online site.
Merchants will create AR experiences
with their packaging so that
demonstration videos can appear
when you look at the product on the
shelf or celebrity spokespeople can
magically stand in the aisle to pitch
the product. Virtual pop-up stores can
be built to appear anywhere that
crowds are gathered (in a stadium, a
busy street corner, or even inside a
subway). These non-brick and mortar
retail locations will bring new
opportunities for merchants to create
engaging shopping experiences
anywhere with accessible bandwidth.
Li-Fi, a new light-base wireless
connection with data speeds 100 times
that of Wi-Fi, will bring high-
definition virtual objects into stores.
With Li-Fi and AR, consumers can see
limitless virtual inventory in store, at
scale.
With just a wave of your hand, a car
salesperson can change the model,
color, and customized features of the
car “sitting” on the dealership’s
showroom floor. Combining real and
virtual objects can enhance
experiences for all out-of-home
activities. Sports stadiums will be
brought into the 21st century with
personalized HUDs of players on the
field. Imagine watching a live football
game in the stadium and seeing
personalized stats floating above the
fantasy sports players you follow.
When watching sports from home, AR
has the potential to bring the
excitement of life-size boxing matches
into your living room. The real
promise of AR is to bring people the
information they need without having
to ask for it.
For many, 2018 will be the start of
living an augmented life.
4. 2018 is the year of the bots
We all have gotten use to speaking
with bots whenever we call to make
airline reservations or to confirm our
bank account balances. The use of
natural language bots will expand
from use as automated customer
service agents to become routine for
daily living.
Home bots will do more than just
respond to requests, to being able to
provide timely information such as,
“It’s time to take your medicine.” You
may even feel like Don Quixote as
mobile bots become dedicated Sancho
Panza servants—always at the ready
and by your side.
Imagine a bot whispering in your ear
“don’t make that purchase or you will
be over your credit limit” or “your
parking meter expires in two
minutes.” Bots will help with the
children, act as financial investment
advisors, and be an omnipresent
value-add from the brands you trust.
With phones staying in our pockets,
businesses will likely spend more on
creating chatbots in 2018 than on apps
in an effort to better serve their
customers.
There’s always room for the
future to unfold
unpredictably
As timely as I believe these four
predictions to be, the pace of
disruption can be slowed by a host of
issues, including cyber security,
government regulation, and, most
importantly, consumers’ ability to
adapt and accept change. In this era of
endless innovation, the only
prediction you can be 100% assured of
is that future will look very different
from today.
02/04/2018
Bike limousine
22/12/2017
Paying with Your Face
Face-detecting systems in China now authorize payments, provide access to facilities, and track down criminals. Will other countries follow?
Shortly after walking through the door at Face++, a Chinese startup valued at roughly a billion dollars, I see my face, unshaven and looking a bit jet-lagged, flash up on a large screen near the entrance.
Having been added to a database, my face now provides automatic access to the building. It can also be used to monitor my movements through each room inside. As I tour the offices of Face++ (pronounced “face plus plus”), located in a suburb of Beijing, I see it appear on several more screens, automatically captured from countless angles by the company’s software. On one screen a video shows the software tracking 83 different points on my face simultaneously. It’s a little creepy, but undeniably impressive.
Over the past few years, computers have become incredibly good at recognizing faces, and the technology is expanding quickly in China in the interest of both surveillance and convenience. Face recognition might transform everything from policing to the way people interact every day with banks, stores, and transportation services.
Technology from Face++ is already being used in several popular apps. It is possible to transfer money through Alipay, a mobile payment app used by more than 120 million people in China, using only your face as credentials. Meanwhile, Didi, China’s dominant ride-hailing company, uses the Face++ software to let passengers confirm that the person behind the wheel is a legitimate driver. (A “liveness” test, designed to prevent anyone from duping the system with a photo, requires people being scanned to move their head or speak while the app scans them.
The technology figures to take off in China first because of the country’s attitudes toward surveillance and privacy. Unlike, say, the United States, China has a large centralized database of ID card photos. During my time at Face++, I saw how local governments are using its software to identify suspected criminals in video from surveillance cameras, which are omnipresent in the country. This is especially impressive—albeit somewhat dystopian—because the footage analyzed is far from perfect, and because mug shots or other images on file may be several years old.
Self-Driving Trucks
Tractor-trailers without a human at the wheel will soon barrel onto highways near you. What will this mean for the nation’s 1.7 million truck drivers?
his long-haul 18-wheeler down a two-lane Texas highway when he saw an oncoming car drift into his lane just a few hundred feet ahead. There was a ditch to his right and more oncoming cars to his left, so there was little for him to do but hit his horn and brake. “I could hear the man who taught me to drive telling me what he always said was rule number one: ‘Don’t hurt anybody,’” Mugriyev recalls.
But it wasn’t going to work out that way. The errant car collided with the front of Mugriyev’s truck. It shattered his front axle, and he struggled to keep his truck and the wrecked car now fused to it from hitting anyone else as it barreled down the road. After Mugriyev finally came to a stop, he learned that the woman driving the car had been killed in the collision.
Could a computer have done better at the wheel? Or would it have done worse?
We will probably find out in the next few years, because multiple companies are now testing self-driving trucks. Although many technical problems are still unresolved, proponents claim that self-driving trucks will be safer and less costly. “This system often drives better than I do,” says Greg Murphy, who’s been a professional truck driver for 40 years. He now serves as a safety backup driver during tests of self-driving trucks by Otto, a San Francisco company that outfits trucks with the equipment needed to drive themselves.
At first glance, the opportunities and challenges posed by self-driving trucks might seem to merely echo those associated with self-driving cars. But trucks aren’t just long cars. For one thing, the economic rationale for self-driving trucks might be even stronger than the one for driverless cars. Autonomous trucks can coördinate their movements to platoon closely together over long stretches of highway, cutting down on wind drag and saving on fuel. And letting the truck drive itself part of the time figures to help truckers complete their routes sooner.
But the technological obstacles facing autonomous trucks are higher than the ones for self-driving cars. Otto and other companies will need to demonstrate that sensors and code can match the situational awareness of a professional trucker—skills honed by years of experience and training in piloting an easily destabilized juggernaut, with the momentum of 25 Honda Accords, in the face of confusing road hazards, poor surface conditions, and unpredictable car drivers.
And perhaps most important, if self-driving trucks do take hold, they figure to be more controversial than self-driving cars. At a time when our politics and economy are already being upended by the threats that automation poses to jobs (see “The Relentless Pace of Automation”), self-driving trucks will affect an enormous number of blue-collar workers. There are 1.7 million trucking jobs in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Technology is unlikely to replace truckers entirely anytime soon. But it will almost certainly alter the nature of the job, and not necessarily in ways that all would welcome.
Breakthrough
Long-haul trucks that drive themselves for extended stretches on highways.
Why It Matters
The technology might free truck drivers to complete routes more efficiently, but it could also erode their pay and eventually replace many of the
Otto’s headquarters, in the once-seedy South of Market section of San Francisco, isn’t much like many of the other tech startups that have transformed the area. Proudly oblivious to that neighborhood upgrade, it’s a barely renovated former furniture warehouse converted to a garage and machine shop, with semi trucks in various states of dismantlement hulking over benches of tools and computers. “No fancy, shiny offices here,” brags Eric Berdinis, Otto’s young and clean-cut-looking product manager.
Berdinis shows off the latest generation of the company’s fast-evolving technology, which is currently installed on Volvo semis. Unlike the bolted-on, kludgy-looking hardware that’s been on testing runs for the past year, the newer versions of the company’s sensor and processing arrays are more sleekly integrated throughout the Volvo cab. The equipment includes four forward-facing video cameras, radar, and a box of accelerometers that Berdinis boasts is “as close as the government allows you to get to missile-guidance quality.”
Particularly key to Otto’s technology is a lidar system, which uses a pulsed laser to amass detailed data about the truck’s surroundings. The current third-party lidar box costs Otto in the vicinity of $100,000 each. But the company has a team designing a proprietary version that could cost less than $10,000.
Slideshow: A human can push the red buttons to the right of the steering wheel to instantly take over from the self-driving system.
Slideshow: The driver can sit in the back of the cab while the truck drives itself—albeit in the right lane only.
Slideshow: A shipment of Budweiser was loaded onto an autonomous Otto truck last year.
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