“Hey Siri!”
“What can I help you with?”
“What will be the biggest tech trends of 2017?”
“Interesting question. Here’s what I found…”
It won’t be too long before such an exchange will lead to a full-length article like this one. Automatic journalists made their debut in 2016, writing about data-driven stories like minor-league sports, and in 2017 we can expect automation to make even more inroads into jobs previously thought only do-able by human beings.
Many jobs will be done away with altogether. Amazon will be debuting its ‘Amazon Go’ system in Seattle, in which customers with an Amazon account and the proper app can go to a store and make purchases by simply taking what they want and walking out without the need to wait in line and check out at a register, completely mitigating the need for cashiers (or even cash registers).
Even going to the store could become a thing of the past. The ‘on-demand’ trend will continue to surge to even greater heights as everyone keeps on sprinting to be the next Uber of whatever it is that they do. You’ll be able to get everything from food to a place to stay within the hour of when you decide that you need it, all with home delivery.
It would be remiss to mention Uber and pass over their self-driving car initiatives; cashiers aren’t the only job on the chopping block, as even drivers are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Combine that with the broader on-demand ecosystem and 2017 will likely see a rollout of robots delivering what you need to you exactly when you need it.
AI will become even better at helping you figure out exactly what you want, and may even be able to anticipate your needs on your behalf. Smart assistants (like Siri) are becoming better and better at helping you prioritize your productivity, leading to the rise of ‘Enterprise Resource Planning’ technologies that are fully dedicated to wielding the might of AI to help your business achieve its goals.
Even our things are getting smarter; 2017 will definitely be the year of the ‘Internet of Things’, in which intelligence and connectivity are infused into the commonplace objects of everyday life. The space has been choked with not enough cooperation in past years, but the introduction of major players like Google and Amazon into the space will guarantee the genesis of more ‘hubs’ and centralization that enable cooperation across multiple technologies and brands in the home-automation space.
It doesn’t stop there; our things themselves aren’t just getting smarter, they’re getting virtually augmented and maybe even becoming 100% virtual entirely. 2016’s smash success of Augmented Reality applications, from games like Pokemon Go to Snapchat’s facial filters, blasted open the AR/VR space like never before, clearing the way for exciting applications the likes of which we can barely even imagine.
2017 will be an incredibly exciting year; from ‘Smart -’ to ‘the Uber of -’ to ‘the Snapchat of -’ to ‘the Pokemon Go of -’, whatever you do there will undoubtedly be a way for you to leverage these trends to amplify your efforts to build a better world.
