This is a blog on the future of
technology. Particularly of interest
here will be comments on the future of computing, however other futuristic
technologies may be discussed as well.
Brief background: I am Eric Wasiolek. I am currently doing a doctorate in Computer
Science at Colorado Technical University among other things. I have many degrees including a degree in
Philosophy, Computational Biology, and an MBA.
I live in California near San Francisco and have worked for years in
Silicon Valley.
This Blog: This blog is a part of a class called
"Futuring and Innovation"
where we will both discuss futuristic technologies and the process of
bringing those technologies to fruition as a product in a market with either a
startup company or a start up unit in a larger established company. In general I will discuss breakthrough
technologies and factors that must be considered to make the technology mature
and bring it to market (the class is both about the technologies and how to
bring them into being in large companies and startups and how to maintain them
with incremental innovations) (Wade, 2012). These
factors may be social, economic, cultural, legal, organizational,
environmental, etc... (Davila and Epstein, 2014). Also discussed to some extent are incremental
innovations. These are innovations that add
new features to an existing product. As
an example, take the car industry.
Incremental technologies may be next year's model, which includes new
electronic features such as a more powerful music system. Incremental innovations extend the life of a
product and the monetization of the product.
A breakthrough technology would be creating an electric or hydrogen fuel
cell car instead of an internal combustion engine car. Factors that may affect the breakthrough
product in this case would be the establishment of charging stations throughout
a state or the establishment of hydrogen fueling stations throughout a
geographical area. Some technologies
completely revolutionize a field. I call
these paradigm shift technologies. An
example is going from horses to cars.
Blog Topics:
As an example one of the first
technologies I covered in this class was nanocomputers. My comments on this topic are in my next blog
and are based upon a video at ted.com on nanocomputers and readings of several
articles on nanocomputers, particularly the variety created out of carbon
nano-tubes. Other topics I discussed so
far include molecular computers (nano computers from carbon tubes are one
variety). Other types of molecular
computers exist. Some use the electronic
properties of atoms to create circuits (such as carbon nano-computers), others
use molecules such as DNA to store bits as differentiated molecular states
(i.e., different configurations of a molecule).
Many other blog topics will be covered over the next few months during
the course of this course. Other
students in the course have submitted interesting future technology topics,
which will be covered in their blogs.
These topics have included Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) where output
from the brain (motor neurons) are used to drive machines and robots, like a
robot arm. Other topics have included
holograms and holographic displays, cognification or the use of artificial
intelligence (AI) in hardware and
software technologies, innovations in big data analytics, including advanced AI
techniques in the analytics phase (machine learning is already used), hackability and the technologies that will be
required to prevent hacking into internet devices (e.g. appliances, cars, any
physical device of machine that is web enabled), and also one in my list is
quantum password protection.
References:
Wade, W. (2012). Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Davila, T., Epstein, M.
(2014). The Innovation Paradox. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, California.
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