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launching their drone delivery service, Mercedes will be launching their self-driving cars, and the whole world will be tinkering with DIY autonomous bots. We’re not going to dig into the military application of autonomous robots, but one should note that this could be where these robots are really exploitable in terms of their full potential.
6. DRONES In addition to drone delivery services, riot-control drones, drone video shooting, agricultural drones and lots of other applications, programmable drones are taking online markets by storm. Drones are low-cost, readily accessible and they can be programmed to do pretty much anything. Airspace will look a bit different in 2016, and we should get used to looking up at a drone looking back down at us. The industry will need some new legislations to regulate airspace safety, privacy and personal security.
7. QUANTUM COMPUTING Google and NASA just announced that their quantum computer really works and that it’s 100 million times faster than our normal computer- while there are some naysayers who have poked holes in this claim, the general consensus seems to agree with the staggering announcement. The implications of this, if it is indeed true, Nissan and are still far NASA partner beyond hufor autonomous man imaginadrive vehicles tion. We can’t even begin to understand what this will mean for the future, but let’s just imagine a scenario where a self-improving AI is dwelling in these processors and mimicking human behavior. I would recommend a viewing of Johnny Depp’s Transcendence or the underrated Ex Machina to explore the realm of such a future. 8. AMPLIFIED KNOWLEDGE We already live in a world where all information is accessible to everyone at the edge of our hyper-connected fingertips. Many discussions these days end with someone saying that they will Google the topic under debate. We act as nodes in different networks of knowledge just by being present online, and
The world’s first 3D printed office was announced in 2015 by the Emirate of Dubai. According to a statement released by the UAE National Innovation Committee, the onestory prototype building will have approximately 2000 sq. ft. of floor space, and will be printed layer by layer by a 20-foot tall 3D printer.
channeling the information that interest us. To take this further, scientists at University of Southern California have been developing a cognitive neural prosthesis that works like a mental exoskeleton that enhances and restores memory functions. This implies that Kurzweil’s vision of merging a digital processing core with our organic prefrontal cortex to augment how we process knowledge and connect with each other is not just the stuff that science fiction dreams are made of. 9. PROSTHETICS AND BCIS Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) or brain-machine interfaces have progressed significantly in recent years. Some BCIs aim to restore mobility to people who are paralyzed by spinal cord injury, stroke or brain disease, while others aim to restore senses like sight or hearing. In 2015, we witnessed the birth of brain-controlled robotic prosthetics, and not just with humans. Even chimps could be trained to remote control robotic arms using only the power of thought. The next year will bring a lot more amazing achievements in this domain, especially in the fields of medicine. 10. GREEN ENERGY REVOLUTION Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and a bunch of other tech in-
Switzerland-based Flyability won the US$1 million grant in the international category of the 2015 Drones for Good Award staged in Dubai, UAE. 74
Entrepreneur january 2016
dustry billionaires just formed the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to invest and support green energy innovation. When names that shaped our world as we know it stand together, it is safe to say that it will have a huge global impact. This revolution set its base in 2015 with Musk introducing the Tesla Powerwall, a lowcost high-efficiency storage battery that will help us move one step towards disconnecting from main electric grids and go self-sustainable. The application of the Powerwall in developing countries will be life-changing on the scale of millions. The best part about this is that Musk extended Tesla’s open source policy for the Powerwall for any company in the world to produce a similar product or take this innovation forward. When the transistor was invented in 1947, it changed the entire world and the evolutionary flow of all technologies around it. With the current speed at which technology is evolving, there’s no way of accurately predicting what’s to come. Admittedly, my ten-point list is just my forecast based on what I’ve researched and what developments I’ve been following, and not a detailed report on what to expect in 2016. But I do hope that the modern equivalent of a transistor will be discovered this upcoming year, and knock my expectations out of the ballpark.