Predicting the future is hard and risky. Predicting the future in the computer industry is even harder and riskier due to dramatic changes in technology and limitless challenges to innovation. Only a small fraction of innovations truly disrupt the state of the art. Some are not practical or cost-effective, some are ahead of their time, and some simply do not have a market. There are numerous examples of superior technologies that were never adopted because others arrived on time or fared better n the market. Therefore this document is only an attempt to better understand where technologies are going. The book Innovators Dilemma and its sequels best describe the process of innovation and disruption.
Nine technical leaders of the IEEE Computer Society joined forces to write a technical report, entitled IEEE CS 2022, symbolically surveying 23 potential technologies that could change the landscape of computer science and industry by the year 2022. In particular, this report focuses on:
- Security cross-cutting issues
- The open intellectual property movement
- Sustainability
- Massively online open courses
- Quantum computing
- Devices and nanotechnology
- 3D integrated circuits
- Universal memory
- Multicore
- Photonics
- Networking and inter-connectivity
- Software-defined networks
- High-performance computing (HPC)
- Cloud computing
- The Internet of Things
- Natural user interfaces
- 3D printing
- Big data and analytics
- Machine learning and intelligent systems
- Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
- Life sciences
- Computational biology and bioinformatics
- Medical Robotics
You can find the comprehensive report here.