As COVID-19 shuts the world down and we all head indoors, it’s interesting to ponder how this will change. There is a plethora of new technologies that are emerging which promise to change how we live, work and play. Which emerging technology trends will be ditched at the pandemic? Which one will become even more important? What will the future of business look like post-COVID 19? What tools might we be using?
Let’s investigate some future business technologies that make even more sense now than ever.
1. Virtual and holographic meetings
As the world gets smaller and face-to-face meetings become less practical and less necessary, we will see an explosion of virtual meeting tech. With COVID-19 radically changing the way we work and pushing millions of people into becoming familiar and comfortable with video chat, what does the next step look like? The all will use VR goggles to access and create virtual meeting rooms where you can chat, collaborate and “pass notes” and files as if you were at the same desk.
With the world only just waking up to Zoom, the future of virtual meetings is bright and seemingly endless.
2. Health Technology
With social distancing in place and a global search for a vaccine underway, we are certainly going to see some advancements in health service delivery and drug development, at the very least.
Remote health: As people are forced to a lockdown indoors and avoid movement, we have seen a decline in people’s ability to access medical services. We will also see a growing need and ability to enable remote surgery and consultations. We have already seen a surgeon operate on a patient halfway around the world using a robot. Expect this tech to increase in prevalence and sophistication.
AI drug development: As the world races for a vaccine, we will see the expansion of innovative new ways to process data and develop drugs. We will see AI systems increase in capacity and scope as they are put to use developing drugs and vaccines – decreasing time and increasing accuracy.
3. Drones and small aircraft:
They came out swinging a few years ago, after years of iterative improvements. Now, drones are coming into their own as the uses multiply rapidly.
Delivery: This is a salient point in these chaotic pandemic times. As of March 2020, here in Australia we have seen dine-in restaurants close their door and delivery services emerge as the sole way you can do business as food vendor. Delivery services will become even more sophisticated and necessary now and into the future. Many, like Amazon, believe drones are the way forward and, as you may know, testing is underway. With increase demand worldwide (for drone-based delivery services, we could see this boom sooner than expected).
Transport: It may seem fantastical, but businesses around the world are getting on the drone transport game. Uber, for example, has launched a new division called Uber Elevate, whole mission is to provide aerial ridesharing in a drone-style aircraft. Timeline? They are looking at 2023 prototypes at this stage. However, the business possibilities don’t stop there. “I think the drones will become a lot more than just a delivery tool – think about real estate, photography, mapping, traffic flow monitoring and so forth”, associate professor David Solnet, from the University of Queensland, said.
4. Virtual reality tourism
With the world’s airports shutting and flights cancelled across the globe, our lust for travel needs to be satiated in other ways.
Virtual tourism will likely start to bloom. At present, you can already:
● Tour the Maldives;
● Visit Hamilton Island with Qantas; and
● Take a virtual honeymoon from London to Hawaii.
5. 5G network
The upcoming (if not current) rollout of 5G is going to change the business world like no other technology. The implications of a mobile network that outstrips your home broadband speed is mind-boggling in an age of data-based business.
In fact, with speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second, 5G is predicted to be as much as 100 times faster than 4G.
The possibilities of such a fast mobile network for virtually any business is hard to fathom
6. Live language translation
This was sci-fi nonsense at the time. But now? An emerging reality that will impact on international business in a massive way. There was even an online translator called “Babel Fish” back in 2012, which is now known as Bing Translator.
But now things have evolved and the Google Translator app received serious a serious AI tech boost of late. Microsoft is in on the game, too, as well as myriad translator device manufactures. However, there are still a lot of reported problems. While developments is still in progress and more nuanced and realistic language support is still needed, we are tantalizingly close to a language barrier-free world.
Source: IPA