2018 should be very exciting for science and technology. As seen in the diagram below, recent years were filled with groundbreaking projects and the stars may be aligning for something really big, driven by advances in software and hardware.
Last year, artificial Intelligence software hit the mainstream. In 2018 it will be more prolific, more creative and invade every corner of our life. The current, second, wave of AI is not quite ready to break and deep learning will continue to dominate this year .
Deep learning is driving the future of autonomous vehicles. Fully automated self-driving cars (level-5, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers and depicted in the figure below) won't take over the roads this year or next, but we'll see plenty of highly automated vehicles in 2018. Models of ownership will be also changing - perhaps to a monthly subscription service vs lease or traditional ownership.
Machines will be taking on more responsibilities in education, getting more heavily involved in the evaluation and counselling of students. Massive open online courses, or MOOCS, did not meet the great expectations everybody had. But e-learning learned to overcome the challenges, smaller private online courses started to gain more popularity and many traditional universities are already at risk to become obsolete. Seven years ago, in his book The Innovative University, world-renowned innovation expert Clayton Christensen predicted that as many as half of American universities would close or go bankrupt within 10 to 15 years. This year AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) will be shutting down around 800 engineering colleges as students can get comparable or better educations over the internet. Only the most technology-advanced Universities will evolve, find ways to reduce the cost of education, perhaps even build programs for specific companies, and survive.
MOOCs is an example of mass collaboration - as is Wikipedia or Citizen Science. The model has many other flavors and names - the sharing economy, the gig economy, the peer, platform or on-demand economy. It enabled brands like Uber and Airbnb to become world giants.
Virtually any industry could be disrupted by Uberisation, through sharing of assets and human resources. And labor market is quietly transforming traditional job structures into on-call microjobs without benefits.
The gig economy is lonely and it often turns over-educated individuals into low skilled workers. Could we develop a better platform to utilize complex technical skills, social abilities and cultural competences? Could we create a new social safety net where the new age workers can rely on each other?
Virtually any industry could be disrupted by Uberisation, through sharing of assets and human resources. And labor market is quietly transforming traditional job structures into on-call microjobs without benefits.
The gig economy is lonely and it often turns over-educated individuals into low skilled workers. Could we develop a better platform to utilize complex technical skills, social abilities and cultural competences? Could we create a new social safety net where the new age workers can rely on each other?
In 2018, Amazon and robots will be moving into health and wellbeing, and telemedicine will become mainstream.
Fitbits did not take over the world, but an "immersive fitness" trend is paving the way to the new gym-less future of fitness. Small accessories such as AliveCor's Kardiaband EKG reader detecting atrial fibrillation are already recognized as medical devices. Omron's HeartGuide smartwatch can measure blood pressure on the go and will seek FDA approval later this year. AI has shown its ability to screen for eye diseases and skin cancer.
The cost of genome sequencing - touted as the future of healthcare - was rapidly plummeting until we realized that the quality remains a problem and much remains to be learned. In 2018, the ambitious 100K Genomes project will be completed and the 100K Foodborne Pathogen Genome project will release more data. Technological advances made it possible to sequence pathogen genomes rapidly with portable devices such as MinION. As two landmark technologies of genome editing and immune engineering - CRISPR/Cas9 and CAR-T - had critical milestones, there will be new and exciting advances in gene therapy.
The health industry is poised to enter the next phase of digitization: a phase of hyper-personalization. Hyper-personalization already infiltrated social networks contributing to political polarization. It might lead to mixed results in retail - that hopes to use ur biometric data for better sales. But the more personalized and precise healthcare is, the better it is for all of us.
Fitbits did not take over the world, but an "immersive fitness" trend is paving the way to the new gym-less future of fitness. Small accessories such as AliveCor's Kardiaband EKG reader detecting atrial fibrillation are already recognized as medical devices. Omron's HeartGuide smartwatch can measure blood pressure on the go and will seek FDA approval later this year. AI has shown its ability to screen for eye diseases and skin cancer.
The cost of genome sequencing - touted as the future of healthcare - was rapidly plummeting until we realized that the quality remains a problem and much remains to be learned. In 2018, the ambitious 100K Genomes project will be completed and the 100K Foodborne Pathogen Genome project will release more data. Technological advances made it possible to sequence pathogen genomes rapidly with portable devices such as MinION. As two landmark technologies of genome editing and immune engineering - CRISPR/Cas9 and CAR-T - had critical milestones, there will be new and exciting advances in gene therapy.
The health industry is poised to enter the next phase of digitization: a phase of hyper-personalization. Hyper-personalization already infiltrated social networks contributing to political polarization. It might lead to mixed results in retail - that hopes to use ur biometric data for better sales. But the more personalized and precise healthcare is, the better it is for all of us.
Virtual and digital worlds will continue to blur leading to marketplace consolidation. And there will be also an increase in consolidation in healthcare, life insurance, gig economy and science.
It will be even more challenging to succeed as an entrepreneur. Big business will continue to getting bigger, swallowing up the resources, market share, and consumer support that used to be more evenly distributed among all types of companies.
But the stars may be aligning up for new breakthroughs, entrepreneurs will rise up, come up with new ingenious ideas and be the driving force behind economic growth.
It will be even more challenging to succeed as an entrepreneur. Big business will continue to getting bigger, swallowing up the resources, market share, and consumer support that used to be more evenly distributed among all types of companies.
But the stars may be aligning up for new breakthroughs, entrepreneurs will rise up, come up with new ingenious ideas and be the driving force behind economic growth.
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