The most impactful technologies typically emerge without too much fanfare. There's usually a small group of people who see the potential in a nascent technology and understand that if certain things fell in place, the technology could be a big deal.<p>Which technologies are a few steps away from becoming important in the next 5 years?
I wrote an article about this exact topic:
<a href="https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/10-technologies-you-need-to-be-aware-of-2020/" rel="nofollow">https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/10-technologies-you-need-...</a>
My particular prediction for Machine Learning and Data Science is its going to become less and less Python vs R vs Julia.
and more like the situation we have for for web-servers.
Where basically every language has a solid quality webserver.
And like how now if your focus as a company (etc) is on webstuff you'll use Node or something with a excellent webserver and will hire accordingly,
but if you've got a big team that already uses java to make the desktop application, then you are not going to switch to Node (etc) for your new web offering: you will use the also very good TomCat or Jetty.
Similar if you focus on complex modelling you'll use Julia/Python for that and you will just use their webserver libraries to expose it.<p>The other way round will also occur (and definately already has started but i expect it to be more and more the case.)
You are a web-company wanting to do some ML on some data you won't even think of having a seperate Python/R/Julia program, you will just use the Node equivs (which I am sure today are good, but I don't know them).
Similar for the desktop applications in Java or C# they will just use their own ML / Data Science libraries.<p>And just like there is indeed a role for specialized web servers like Node, there will still be case where you do want to pull out the big guns and move over to Python/R/Julia.
but those will become rarer and rarer.<p>I guess you could say it is commoditization of ML/Data Science libraries.
Does anyone else feel like their brain is broken when thinking about questions like this one? I lean way too much on the pessimistic side about <i>any</i> tool or technology, present or future, to the point that I don't trust my own judgement to predict these things at all.
Virtual reality, at long last, driven by furries.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXr5O4PW3Dw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXr5O4PW3Dw</a>
I for one am amazed that "video game characters" are stuck in video games and don't come out in forms like:<p><pre><code> * an assistant at the drug store that lives on the screen has the image of a body and can make eye contact with you
* a 3-d graphic performer that does a sketch comedy act with a human performer that is reflected into a mirror like "pepper's ghost"
</code></pre>
Technologies that are ready to "break through" (like the internet in 1994) often exist at a mature level somewhere but haven't spread for some reason. For instance, this 1971 book<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Their-Impact-Media/dp/B001IOS2FW" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Their-Impact-Med...</a><p>anticipated that cnn.com would exist around 1981; actually you could read news headlines on Compuserve. France had minitel, other countries had videotext, but there wasn't enough centralization in most places for large-scale online services to hit big until the technology had passed the threshold at which it could have worked by an order of magnitude.<p>Then it went off like a bomb.
If anyone is reading this and can answer a little further: What are some emerging technologies that can be broken into without a university degree? I've been very successful in my 7 year career as a field service engineer on chip equipment, and while it is a great job, I am actively looking to branch out into coding, or another field in tech. The enormity of different fields contained therein is overwhelming. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.
Capability Based Security - Our operating systems are based on a security model that is great for the academic and research organizations of the 1970s. It trusts everything except the users.<p>Capability Based Security inverts this, the user is trusted, and given powerful tools to allow running code without trusting it. Usability and performance aren't sacrificed.
Aneutronic Helium 3/Boron fusion looks set to actually happen. The ability to generate large amounts of electricity directly, instead of having to boil water to make steam to turn turbines, removes a huge cross section of limitations from the otherwise mundane area of power generation.