Category: Tech

For those with their glass half-empty, a dystopian tech-world seems to be on the horizon for the coming decade. However, there are of course numerous technological advances that are going to help humans in the 20’s. As such, here are some of the most important technological concepts coming in 2020: the good, the bad, and the “somewhere in between the two”.

5G Networks

While 5G is available in limited countries and areas already in 2019, it is expected to explode globally in 2020, when it will become more affordable. This new 5^th generation of mobile networking is going to give us faster internet speeds, greater connectivity, and more stable connections.

The on-going US-Huawei spat is of course going to slow things down for some countries, but generally 5G will be a regular part of life for most people in 2020.

Hyper-automation.

Hyper-automation is the idea of combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Machine Learning (ML). It is the next step in automation will allow machines to automate complex process in a way that is far beyond our current, already sophisticated capabilities. A number of tools are needed to support the hyper-automation of difficult processes that humans are still typically needed for.

This new trend started after the recent leaps made in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and is expected to grow exponentially in the coming year as process intelligence, content intelligence, and OCR are all further incorporated into the development.

Autonomous Driving

Again, autonomous driving cars have been around for a while, but Tesla chief and world-known “tech-guy” Elon Musk has said he expects the company to have created the truly “complete” self-driving car by 2020.

In addition, automated braking and lane-changing will be an increasingly common sight in 2020, along with the autonomous driving cars themselves. Also, automated entertainment and security functions will become increasingly common as companies like Google become more involved in the industry.

Waymo, Google’s sister company, recently completed their first trial of their autonomous taxi service in California, in which 6200 people used the taxi’s.

Predictive Medicine

Technology is transforming how we practice healthcare at an unbelievable rate. While not a new idea, recent breakthroughs in genomics and AI have given us 1.) a much better understanding of how different peoples bodies are equipped to fight off certain diseases and illnesses and 2.) actual technological devices that can better do so.

For example, the ability to take data from devices such as smartwatches gives us the new ability to predict health issues in patients before they even feel any symptoms.

More personalized approaches are also preferred by doctors as it allows for more accurate applications of treatment. In short, more data-driven and personalized approaches allow for specific patients to ensure they are getting the best possible treatment.

Further Democratization of Technology

This decade has already seen vast improvements in the availability of technology, and this is set to improve further in 2020 for the new decade. Specifically, improved user interfaces and new technologies will allow people outside of the tech industry to use tech services in a much more complex manner, in a way that means many companies can simply bypass the need for an IT department.

Human Augmentation

Human augmentation looks into how technology can be integrated into the human experience for real physical and cognitive improvements. It is essentially the leveraging of tech to improve the capabilities of a person or provide a medical fix. Significant advances in human augmentation have already been made by companies like Boston Dynamics, who have made robots for the medical world, the production-line, and the military industrial-complex.