A new study by Pew Research Center’s Internet Project has thrown up some interesting results, most important of them all being that by 2025, mobile, wearable and embedded computing will be tied together in the Internet of Things (IoT), allowing people and their surroundings to tap into artificial intelligence-enhanced Cloud-based information storage and sharing.
Most of the 2558 experts and technology builders who were asked to respond by Pew seemed unanimous on this. They were also clear that in just about a decade, accessing the Web would become as effortless as tapping into electricity.
Writing about the findings on its official website, Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie explained that the respondents were invited by Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, and their views solicited through major tech-oriented listservs, between November 2013 and January 2014.
The report titled, ‘15 Thesis About The Digital Future’, said the world was moving rapidly towards ubiquitous connectivity that will further change how and where people associate, gather and share information, and consume media. The 2,558 experts and technology builders were asked to respond on “where we will stand by the year 2025”.
Pew said to a notable extent, the experts agreed on the technology change that lay ahead, even as they disagreed about its ramifications.
Most of them believed there will be:
- A global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data centers in a world-spanning information fabric known as the IoT
- “Augmented reality” enhancements to the real-world input that people perceive through the use of portable/wearable/implantable technologies
Most of the respondents were firm in their belief that the results of that connectivity would be mostly positive. These experts also expected existing positive and negative trends to extend and expand in the next decade, revolutionising most human interaction, especially affecting health, education, work, politics, economics, and entertainment.
One of the respondents, David Clark, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, noted, “Devices will more and more have their own patterns of communication, their own ‘social networks,’ which they use to share and aggregate information, and undertake automatic control and activation. More and more, humans will be in a world in which decisions are being made by an active set of cooperating devices. The Internet (and computer-mediated communication in general) will become more pervasive but less explicit and visible. It will, to some extent, blend into the background of all we do.”
Another, Aron Roberts, software developer at the University of California-Berkeley, said, “We may well see wearable devices and/or home and workplace sensors that can help us make ongoing lifestyle changes and provide early detection for disease risks, not just disease. We may literally be able to adjust both medications and lifestyle changes on a day-by-day basis or even an hour-by-hour basis, thus enormously magnifying the effectiveness of an ever more understaffed medical delivery system.”
Image Credit: Pew Research Center
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