Mega Trends in Technology

Here are some larger trends in technology that I think are happening. They could be useful when thinking of new products or companies to invent.

Many you have probably seen before, others could be new. I will revisit this page many times over.

• Communication converges towards telepathy. I wrote a separate post about this earlier. Phones are becoming smaller, invisible. Location services keep track of your friends automatically.
• Storage, bandwidth, processing power becomes free. Chris Anderson has already discussed this and written a book about it.
• Everything becomes digital. Things that we haven’t considered part of the digital revolution will be drawn in. Media (music, games, movies) has already gone through this change, next up are physical items with 3D printers and maker machines.
• Everything becomes wireless. We’re already using WiFi, many people use wireless headphones (audio) and wireless connections for their TV sets (video). Wireless power will be the next breakthrough.
• Storage → references. We’re moving away from files (resources) and instead using links (references).
• Batch → real-time. With more processing power, things that used to take minutes now take milliseconds or less.
• Online identity becomes more important than real. This applies both to the online real self (i.e. Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn profiles) and alter egos (i.e. avatars in online games).
• Search → task fulfillment. This idea came from my friend Andrey Zhukov. Don’t just show me a long list of results, do something for me! (Yes, Google.com, I’m talking to you).