Digital Technology is everywhere and it is redefining how we live, communicate, and work. Most importantly, it accelerates how we innovate. The unprecedented pace of innovation we experience is powered by a massive digital ecosystem of resources, tools, infrastructure, and advanced capabilities that a few years ago would have been classified as ‘science fiction’. Our and are impacted by recent innovations leading to new forms of communication and collaboration. Our digitized world accelerates innovation in many ways. social structures work models Movements such as the and both innovation and from it. open-source open collaboration drive benefit The following summarizes the and . the state of digital technologies, things to come, opportunities for innovation We Generate an Astronomical, Rapidly Growing Amount of Data. The world’s network of humans and machines generates astronomical volumes of data. It is estimated that our will size about by 2025 [1]. And this volume is growing exponentially. Of course, a significant percentage of this is just or even , , and data. But subsets of this data describe , and at the same time, . digital universe 175 zettabytes noise fake low-quality unreliable most types of human activity at a global scale at an amazing level of detail Along with the events coming from connected devices and the measurements from billions of sensors — this massive, growing data set forms a new type of : a vast amount of time-series of events and signals, machine states, news, opinions, research findings, discoveries, social interactions, decisions, environmental measurements and more. global memory The historians of the future will be able to look back and reproduce the planet’s activity with a granularity of seconds. The machines of the future will be able to consume and make sense of our reality in ways we cannot even imagine. Of course, there are substantial ethical questions and concerns regarding ownership and usage of this data: This question could be an excellent theme for innovation on its own as we should not rely on the political will and corporate social responsibility; regulation is only a part of the solution. Technology itself can provide excellent ways of data ownership and ethical use. how might we use, protect and leverage humanities’ accumulated data in an ethical way and for the greater good? Our Data Processing Capability is Impressive but still, Rather Limited. Current data processing technologies are capable of making sense of the vast amounts of content we produce. Sophisticated algorithms can identify in the data and generate insights that make applications and devices smart. non-obvious patterns Statistical and machine learning algorithms allow optimal, in complex situations — for example, powering autonomous cars to react in optimal ways, enabling systems to identify cyber-attacks or controlling the traffic load of a smart city. real-time decision-making Artificial Intelligence empowers computers , , [ii], and soon — to deduce new information from existing knowledge. Machines can already recognize human emotions, and they can communicate verbally at an impressive level. to see to listen to smell to infer But still, there is massive in the immense volumes of data and content we produce. The , the , and of the world’s accumulated data create the need for , , and information and insights. untapped value amount breadth depth new ways to summarize visualize present To deal with the potential of information overload, companies will soon feel the need to move and to automatically synthesized and . Corporate executives will soon interact with Business Intelligence agents providing instant answers to business questions instead of multi-page reports and worksheets. from regular reports dashboards, data stories smart insights The world needs novel methods to experience and make sense of the massive data we generate. Intelligent content synopsis, personalized insights, ‘data navigation’ systems, VR and AR experiences to visualize complex ‘data worlds’, voice-driven insights are just some examples of potential innovations in the data space. Artificial Intelligence is Getting Intelligent. Computer vision and Natural Language Processing are characteristic examples of recent advances in the field of AI. Simply put, Computer Vision is the class of algorithms that allow a computer to see — to analyze images and videos and identify entities, objects, and specific instances such as locations, persons, things — or even the situation and the particular occasion visualized in an image. Combined with other technologies such as fast networking and edge computing, Computer Vision creates opportunities for breakthrough innovations across domains, including (autonomous cars, self-organizing fleets, navigation systems, and smart cities), (diagnosis), and more. transportation medical systems robotics At the same time, Language Understanding is making tremendous progress — making more intelligent, contextual, and proactive. Your smart speaker will soon perform in a , able to instead of just responding to an isolated question. digital assistants conversational mode drive meaningful dialogues Digital assistants of the future will know by analyzing the voice in real-time, and thus, they will be able to respond in personalized ways — . By leveraging accumulated knowledge about the user, conversational experiences will become more personal, useful, and relevant for the , the , and the . who they are discussing with matching the communication style and information needs of each specific user particular user moment in time estimated mood AI-powered is becoming more accurate and faster — recent advances allow while and other voice attributes of the original speaker. translation speech to speech translation maintaining the tone of voice With the help of Artificial Intelligence, — hence the term . People are already interacting naturally with smart devices — we can control simple functions of our home via our smart speaker or digital assistant or use voice commands to perform a web search and manage our calendar. Soon, we will be able to use not only voice but also — a technology recreating the sense of touch by applying force feedback, vibrations, or motions to the user. communication with machines is becoming seamless Natural User Interfaces haptic interfaces Our Reality Gets Augmented. Technology is not only changing how we interact with our intelligent machines but also . Typically delivered through smart glasses, (also known as or ) provides an extra layer of information relevant to the particular object a user is looking at or interacting with. It is what we get when physical and digital worlds blend into a single experience. how we see and understand the world Augmented Reality extended mixed reality This area will grow rapidly — the space for innovation is unlimited: New , , and , , for field workers — are just some examples of the applications that are on the way and are about to change the ways we understand the world. content experiences data exploration visualization techniques dynamic mapping of the physical world industrial applications Analogous progress and opportunity for innovation exist for — which allows new digital worlds to be created and helps e.g. join a human activity happening elsewhere. Virtual Reality experience remote environments or situations Content creation and new experiences for VR/AR defines a great new stage for innovations across multiple domains and business scenarios, including e-commerce, gaming, social applications, learning and education, and healthcare. Humanity’s Memory Becomes Persistent. Another significant advance is in digital tech is the (DLTs) such as the . Such systems are based on an extensive network of nodes, each running on a different machine and maintaining a complete copy of a database of transactions. Nodes communicate with each other on a peer-to-peer fashion — with no single entity or authority controlling the system. A process of and makes these systems and — they are not controlled by specific entities, and they don’t require trust between transaction participants. Distributed Ledger Technologies Blockchain transaction verification voting among the nodes trustless decentralized Blockchain is considered to be one of the most disruptive technologies of our times. It is already powering cryptocurrencies, and it is expected to drive massive transformation in social, government, and financial sectors — as the solution for distributed, decentralized, and of data or code (smart contracts). immutable storage Robots are Finally Getting Smart. Either purpose-specific or general-purpose, robots are already here in various forms. The discipline of Robotics combines multiple technologies, including sophisticated hardware, advanced software systems, and AI algorithms, to develop smarter, robots that can perform a widening range of tasks. autonomous Robots are powered by advanced Artificial Intelligence and take advantage of the fast connectivity and edge computing, to perform complex . Robots may come in multiple form factors — , , , , and so on. New generations of robots are connected — they take advantage of the world’s knowledge and digital infrastructure to become smarter and more adaptive. In the near future, general-purpose robots will become truly proactive and autonomous with advanced and the ability to recognize complex situations and act accordingly. They will have a ‘personality’, individual communication styles, and strategies. cognitive tasks in real-time humanoids nano-robots military industrial context understanding Biotechnology Redefines Life. At the same time, advances in , are driving massive changes across industries, from medical and pharmaceutical to agriculture and food engineering. Research in presents significant progress — recent announcements of quantum supremacy demonstrate how this new class of systems outperforms the most powerful computing systems we currently have. biotechnology bio-engineering, and bioinformatics Quantum Computing The years to come will bring impressive technological breakthroughs with a massive impact on our lives, markets, and societies. In our connected world, with the unprecedented level of , , and , , at scale, and in several forms. It may be driven by corporations, secret research labs, and universities but also from , , or simply by thousands of across the globe. information knowledge ideas exchange innovation is happening continuously startups individual scientists creative individuals [1] Originally published in https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/idc-seagate-dataage-whitepaper.pdf The Innovation Mode Blog Cover image by Prawny from Pixabay

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