Yesterday I presented at the South Dakota Telephone Association annual conference, with the topic being ‘A Glimpse into the Future’. In this presentation I talked about the trends that are going to affect the telecom industry over the next 5 – 10 years as well as the broader technology changes we can expect to see over the next few decades.

These are topics that I research and think about often. A lot of this blog looks at telecom trends and technologies we can expect to see over the next five years. And once in a while I indulge myself in the blog and look at the future of other technologies. Researching this presentation was fun since it made me take a fresh look at what others are predicting about our future.

I am an optimist and my research tells me that we are living at the most amazing time in mankind’s history. There is so much groundbreaking research being done in so many different fields that the announcement of new technology breakthroughs will become commonplace during the next decade. Barely a day goes by already that I don’t see the announcement of a new technology or scientific breakthrough.

I don’t think the average person is prepared for how fast the world is going to soon be changing. The last time that the world underwent such a dramatic shift was at the beginning of the 20^th century when we were introduced to electricity, cars, telephones, radios and airplanes. We are about to be hit with a tsunami of innovations far more numerous than that last big wave of change.

It’s hard for the mind to grasp the idea of exponential growth. Over the last forty years our technology has been dominated by a single exponential growth curve – the continuous growth of the speed and density of the computer chip. This one change has brought most of what we think of as modern technology – computers, the smartphone, the Internet, the cloud and our broadband and telecom networks. Anybody working in any field of electronics has been blessed for a long time by knowing that they would be able to produce a new version of their technology every few years that was faster, cheaper and smaller.

What is amazing about today is that there are numerous new technologies that are at the early stages of the exponential growth curve – and all happening at the same time. Just looking at the list of these technologies is exciting – robotics, advanced machine language (artificial intelligence), nanotechnology, alternate energy, super materials, genetics and medical research. As these technologies progress we will soon be inundated with breakthroughs in all of these areas. It’s mind-boggling to envision which of these technologies will dominate our lives in a decade or two, and it’s even harder to think of how these various technical trends will intersect to produce things we can’t imagine.

What is even more exciting is that this is not even the whole list, because there are a lot of other technology trends that might become equally important in our lives. Such trends as the Internet of Things, the blockchain, natural language computing, or virtual reality might have a big impact on many of us in the very near future. I will be discussing some of these future trends over the next few months and I hope some of my readers share my enthusiasm about what is coming over the next decade or two.

I don’t usually use this blog to promote myself, but I am interested in talking to other associations and trade groups about the many topics I cover in this blog. You can contact me at blackbean2@ccgcomm.com if you are interested.