Forrester: 15 emerging technologies to watch

There are many ways to group related ideas in the near-term tech future; this is a pretty good version from Brian Hopkins at Forrester Research, and a report from the enterprise architecture community on their emerging tech predictions.

He completely misses the upcoming revolution in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven digital personal assistants.  One aspect of the AI tsunami I'm just starting to be aware of is its potential to make sense of big data in a human-like manner (understanding context, relationships, data cleansing,) but at computer speeds.  We'll see these ideas show up in new releases of Apple's Siri, and in Google Now.

Also not even mentioned: 3D printing.  I'm not certain if we will see it impacting business in a big way by 2018, but the implications of "print to order" parts and products could well be important.  I'll write more soon about another 3D printing effect I haven't seen mentioned anywhere:  what happens when you can store things digitally, share them freely online, and create-to-order?  Will it bring about an intellectual property revolution like the one we saw with digital music, books, and video? What will happen when we can treat physical objects as part of the stateless future, in which content, storage, and delivery are decoupled from each other?

Let me know in the comments if you think there are other big topics in the 5-year horizon.

Forrester's Top 15 Emerging Technologies To Watch: Now To 2018 | Forrester Blogs:

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