Technology trends in 2020 worth checking
We believe that one or more of the tech trends we selected to review here will have a major impact on business by the end of 2020. Some of these concepts are not brand new, but recent developments have nudged their influence high enough to turn them into lucrative playground for smart entrepreneurs. Although these technologies are digital by nature, the industries they affect are far beyond the IT sector. They are, in fact, interesting prospects for possible improvements in almost every major business branch on the planet.
Democratization of technology
New technology sometimes increases the gap between the customer’s technical skills and what is possible through advanced interfaces. ‘Democracy’ is used in the pure meaning of the word – let the people become the true masters of the tools they spend money on in the first place. This trend enables a broader spectrum of administrators. For example, decision-makers can now use technology as if they co-created it.
The democratization of technology goes hand in hand with better customization, customer experience, and smart automation. For problems with the substantial computational part, intelligent automation is one of the near-perfect solutions. Enabled by the low-restriction capabilities of a flexible new tech, business owners are liberated to create and develop their ideas finally. A later generation already handles the maintenance of this digital clockwork. Enter Democratization.
The democratization of technology suggests that developers and clients somewhat equalize the degree to which they share involvement with the digital tool.
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
Natural Language Processing
In some institutions, the majority of their internal operations depend on unstructured data. Suppose there is a company with international reach, but still uses the non-digital source to manage data. Let’s say, a big car repair shop, whose main communication channel with their customers involves handwritten information handed via a paper clipboard. Good luck organizing all that mess. Artificial Intelligence is thriving when there is a mess created by massive input.
AI understands contextual data. Until recently, artificial minds weren’t smart enough to understand what sarcasm is, or a concept viewed in a specific context. Not anymore, robots can now interpret meanings and situations with human-like perception.
The bigger the volume of data that needs to be processed, the more value on the digital capabilities of AI. Same with natural language processing. Here’s one way how NLP can work as a viable business solution. Imagine that these vast quantities of handwritten data provided by car owners are digitalized. Robots can’t read as humans do, but they do, however, sift successfully for patterns, and they learn to interpret these patterns better. For example, even new AI development functionality could extract a repeated phrase count from a bulk of the text. Now, the programming algorithm for text analysis also differentiates between unnecessary junk like stop words and valuable information.
Suppose this car repair shop operated on a global level. Machine-learning AI solutions seem to increase in efficiency when the problem demand has big data involved. With smart info analysis, you can get reports from your AI, that, for example, most front shield damage incidents happen in Texas. So maybe the car shop owner will plan better if he knew that frequent hail storms force people to want to fix the damage. Trivial details such as these can sometimes influence big decisions about company survival and growth.
VUI – Voice User Interface
Since the success of the conversational robot Alexa, Amazon has continued to focus on voice-based AI projects, and this effort produced items like Amazon Echo. VUIs didn’t show much promise when initially introduced to the market due to the communication quality the technology then could account for. Today, voice-driven applications are storming all businesses, looking to change the way people interface with machines for good.
Although voice commands are suitable for many varied industries, they seem to match what VR capabilities perfectly. VUI creates a brand-new channel for control schemes and interfaces for humans and robots alike. The best part is that as voice commands become better and more useful, so does the AI designed to interpret, analyze, and catalog them. Siri, for example—Apple’s trusty voice-activated assistant—is already overwhelmingly appreciated by its users, its monthly uses in the millions. With an unlimited spectrum of possibilities, VUI is not only meant to revolutionize mobile apps but anything else in the IT – from smart home speakers, IoT, to voice-operated machinery. The list goes on.
Life is simple, it has always been. What is complex is our brain, and that’s the main reason why we perceive life as being complicated. Embrace life for what you have and embrace life for who you are, as what you have others might envy and who you are might be secretly being admired by millions.
Augmented Reality
AR frequently gets confused with VR, both catching a deserved attention in relative recency. Augmented reality pulls a digital layer over what we see naturally with our eyes, while Virtual Reality is an entire environment submerged into digital strata. In contrast, AR improves what we usually see with the help of smart digital overlay that promotes interactivity and assessment. Since technologies like these favor collaborations, it is by no surprise that the industry foreseers conspire to put them onto a common denominator. Such fusion is already a reality – It is dubbed Mixed Reality and represents an exciting attempt to merge digital environment with the real world seamlessly. There’s even an extended version of MR, called XR (Extended Reality), which is the overarching term for any technological effort aimed at amplifying or extending our human senses through augmentation.
AR focuses more on what our daily gear like mobile phones can already do to maximize our efforts. With augmented reality, fictional worlds like the one from The Matrix become more real, blurring the border between the imaginary and the factual. AR encompasses efforts to upgrade what we already have as biological instruments and help us thrive better in the digital macrocosm we created for ourselves.
AI as a Service
Artificial Intelligence has been in the minds and plans of many business gurus for years. One of the most valued benefits of AI is its ability to be more efficient with volume. When data becomes too big for human capacity, it is time we turn to AI-driven solutions. The SaaS business model has proven success in versatile fields and scopes of projects. Today, giant companies like Microsoft and Amazon are prime examples of how machine learning and AI-based tools are the future of business development and expansion.
The consumers of yesterday weren’t concerned too much with the real-time data flow. In 2020, the world has turned into a teeming hive, hungry for information and the speed of its delivery. This fast-paced exchange of data bits is rooted in the ability of data managers not only to collect and store it all but utilize it by storing it in a structurally sound way. The cost reduction possible through AI implementation will undoubtedly continue to entice business owners to look at robots as the most valuable avenues for innovation.
The coming era of Artificial Intelligence will not be the era of war, but be the era of deep compassion, non-violence, and love.
5G
The newest cellular network is much more than just the next version of the connectivity standard. 5G has been introduced around two years ago, but it’s true form might emerge by the end of 2020. Immense power hides behind an oversimplified name consisting of one letter and a number: 5G. This latest mobile network version is a daring project aiming to capitalize on a highly significant feature of our digital life — hypoconnectivity.
Road systems are so much more advanced now than they were a few centuries ago. Few people that witnessed the beginning of the Industrial revolution could have predicted that automobile roads would connect virtually every populated area in the world by now.
5G carries that same grid-like spread effect, and it can potentially connect billions of people. Like what the intense road construction meant as part of the Industrial Revolution, 5G is a viable candidate to lead an upcoming Digital Revolution, with the same impact potential and benefits. What’s more interesting, 5G can potentially directly benefit the existing Automotive Domain by linking vehicles with infrastructures, pedestrians, technicians, sensor data, safety regulations.
When used correctly, 5G does all the main components of the IT industry much more valuable than the sum of their individual esteems. IoT, for example, when paired with 5G, can likely grow into something referred by some as the Massive IoT, and become the backbone of even bigger infrastructures – like the urban ecosystems called Smart Cities. 2020 is when all this might take place.
