Within the next decade, smart-device swiping will have gained mainstream acceptance as a method of payment and could largely replace cash and credit cards for most online and in-store purchases by smartphone and tablet owners, according to a new survey of technology experts and stakeholders.
Many of the people surveyed by Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project said that the security, convenience and other benefits of "mobile wallet" systems will lead to widespread adoption of these technologies for everyday purchases by 2020.
Others-including some who are generally positive about the future of mobile payments-expect this process to unfold relatively slowly due to a combination of privacy fears, a desire for anonymous payments, demographic inertia, a lack of infrastructure to support widespread adoption, and resistance from those with a financial stake in the existing payment structure.
Wearable devices, or "wearables" for short, have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. Imagine video games that happen in real space. Or glasses that remind you of your colleague's name that you really should know. Or paying for a coffee at Starbucks with your watch instead of your phone. Wearables will transform our lives in numerous ways, trivial and substantial, that we are just starting to imagine.
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2022 is a long way off, but key digital developments are already in hand. The current explosion of mobile connectivity will surely exert an influence 10 years from now. Desktops and laptops -- even tablets -- may be hardware of the past, as we access the information stream using voice, gesture, and retinal displays. Immersion in this all-enveloping data field will change the way we work and think.
The displacement of information from devices will be reflected in the displacement of the worker from the workplace. Accessing the collaborative environment anywhere, anytime, a nomadic workforce will expect IT to manage the streamlining of data through virtual platforms.
As for social media, we're not going too far out on that unpredictable limb. Will Facebook (or perhaps a successor) swallow the Internet whole, locking us into a fully socialized online experience? Or will an adverse reaction set in, driving users back into isolated silos?
Of course, what 2022 looks like will be governed in large part by the political and technological foundations of connectivity. Big changes are looming, but innovations in the basic architecture of the Internet -- like software-defined networking -- could be overtaken by diplomatic developments. Member states of the ITU, meeting in Dubai this December, are capable of throwing international network traffic, and even the domain name system, into utter confusion.
Experts expect more-efficient collaborative environments and new grading schemes; they worry about massive online courses, the shift away from on-campus life
"Visualization is hot because it makes data analysis easier. Analysis with more conventional BI query and analysis tools is still hard: Nearly half (45 percent) of the 414 respondents to our InformationWeek Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Information Management Survey, conducted late last year, cited "ease-of-use challenges with complex software/less-technically savvy employees" as a barrier to adopting BI or analytics products. That was second, barely, to "data quality problems," cited by 46 percent."
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