By Speaker Digital March 17, 2019

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Speed-dating with the Future

This is an age of technology and digitalization. In this time, no nation can supersede others on the grounds of military strength or economy. Instead, both of them have become the hub of digitalization. Information technology has changed the dynamics. It has penetrated so deep that every success is quantified against the respective digital aspect.

However, the story does not end here only. In order to keep up with the supersonic pace of digital disruption, it is a need of the hour to look for megatrends in this regard. Megatrends are nothing but the intersection of various small trends to bring a significant as well as grand change. A lot of digital disruptions are happening across the globe. Starting from the geopolitical avenues to the environmental, social, economic, and legal horizons, it is everywhere.

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Why Digital Disruption matters the most now?

There are plenty of studies that validate the enigma of thinking out of the box. Talking of the economy alone, it is a quite well-versed understanding that only diversified economies will move forward. Dependence on one thing can be good for short term prospects, but for long term prospects, disruption is the key. Furthermore, since the future cannot be fully known. Henceforth, strategic anticipations can let us consider various credible futures and likewise, may help us make wiser decisions.

Upcoming Digital Megatrends

Smart Machines

With the gross development of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, every walk of life is expected to experience a paradigm shift. Seeing its vitality, many governments and organizations have started to take a keen interest in its implementation in their respective utilities. Whether it is about the complex machine learning algorithms like neural networks or comprehensive speech to text processing algorithms, Artificial Intelligence is ready to transform every sector of the economy.

AI is becoming a very handful tool to make our machines smart and intelligent [2]. One such application is Smart Homes, where everything will be autonomous and make decisions as of humans. Smart devices and machines develop learning based on machine learning algorithms and consequently take decisions based on the learned patterns. In a nutshell, it can totally transform the way we interact and use our domestic and industrial machines.

Data Science

With the fast-driven disruption in the digital sector, data-driven decisions and outcomes are expected to be counted as one of the major megatrends. It has been noted that the operations of many economic and business sectors are already highly dependent on the data. Data science is seeing gross applications in insurance companies, hotels, shops, hospitals, libraries, and bank operations.

In the business world, it is said that always trust data because it never lies. This is the reason businesses have started to acquire, screen, process, analyze, and interpret data to perform their tasks. Due to being real-time and situation-based, data-driven choices are considered wiser ones. It has just started to begin and as a result field of informatics and data science is booming. There has been massive growth with respect to job opportunities in this sector, which itself shows how trending it is and how vital will it become in the near future. Indeed, future companies and businesses will be highly data-driven.

Reinventing Work

There has been a study which says that about half of existing global jobs will vanish completely by the end of the next twenty years [3]. The main reason was identified to be the dominance of automation technology using robots and computers [4]. According to such researches, the job of three to five persons will be done by one automated robot. However, recent researches say that future jobs will enter an era of reinventing. Our communication and collaboration approaches will experience a change of perspective.

Although some of the jobs may vanish, but a lot of them will get reshaped and positively impacted by technology. Moreover, with this, a lot of jobs will also be created. Digital disruption will change the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and learn. It is expected to highly impact in a positive way towards flexibility, communication skills, adaptability, technical skills, and our ability to acquire and perceive learning.

Invisible Technology

With more and more immersion into digitalization, it is highly anticipated that the physical world will have marginal value. We, humans, will crave extensively for the activities which make us feel and see the things in our own comfort zone. Consequently, the requirement to visit furniture showrooms, offices, or even universities will become a kind of much less appreciating. People will visit these places out of choice, not by force.

One such kind of technology can be answered with “Augmented Reality” [5]. It is a very hi-tech innovation where one can design and observe things as of their own liking. For instance, architects and town planners won’t have to present vague building maps to their clients. Instead, they will design and visualize them using Augmented Reality. The client will get to see the real-time approach of the proposed design and may experience how does it feel to live in such a commodity. Henceforth, future innovations, as well as technology, will be highly human-oriented and kind of invisible too.

Conclusion

It can be summed up that digital disruption is going to highly influence our lives. Whether it will be our personal life, professional life, or social life, everything is going to experience a major phase shift. It is the need of the time that we develop adaptability and flexibility in ourselves to adjust with fore coming age of innovation and technology. Because the new era of digitalized communication, collaboration, and global development are already at full swing. Be prepared, now!

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