By the end of 2017, Netflix released a new season of the "Black Mirror" — a series about the threats and risks that technologies can carry to modern society in the nearest future, including cybercrime, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, etc. But there is also a more optimistic forecast for the high-tech development — here are the 5 trending pieces of tech you should know about.
Blockchain
The big popularity of this technology is caused first of all by the growth of cryptocurrencies in 2017. But, while many people perceive bitcoins as an easy way to get rich, blockchain has impressive perspectives in providing the secure digital transactions. There are, in fact, endless amount of ways to use blockchain.
In many developing countries, including African and Eastern European, this trend is extremely popular: more and more developing teams use the blockchain, and governmental authorities discuss the perspectives. For example, in Puerto Rico, where the infrastructure was destroyed after the hurricane, the crypto specialists are planning to build a so-called crypto society, where all the financial transactions will be provided by blockchain technologies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
If you do not consider the artificial intelligence as a completely autonomous computer capable of processing all the information in the world, in a specialized form it is already used in many fields — for example, in some autonomous vehicles, Facebook algorithms, voice assistants, smart and connected homes, and so on.
AI is also popular as a means of analyzing the big data — companies like FarmaTrust use AI to fight counterfeit drugs around the world, and they want to create a marketplace for the safe drugs online sales.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Through the example of the incredible rise of Pokemon Go, 2017 has already shown what augmented reality can do in the field of game development. But, there are much more ways of using the augmented reality, and technology can be used significantly wider. AR is often considered much more useful for end users than virtual reality because it is able to add virtual layers of information to the real world.
Voice assistants
It's absolutely obvious that similar solutions from Google, Amazon, and Sonos have been on the rise in recent years. These solutions are already very popular, for example, a voice assistant on smartphones, computers, or smart and connected homes. Nevertheless, their potential in the implementation of digital technologies in everyday life has not yet been fully disclosed.
Internet of things (IoT)
The idea of the Internet of things technologies have been very popular in the digital community for many years, but 2017 showed the real potential of smart home devices and the role of mobile gadgets in it. Of course, the technology is not limited to solutions for the smart and connected homes, its main idea is to introduce technologies in our everyday life. We hope that very soon each home device connected to the Internet will be absolutely common at every home.
We expect something new every year, and 2018 is no exception. We are sure that this year will definitely bring new ideas and technological trends. If you know of any other tech that will be the ground breaking material, let us know in the comments below.
