The 2022 Report team surveyed several thousand IEEE members about the forces behind the technology changes. Desire for sustainable energy, the availability of wireless/broadband connectivity, and use of technology for medical procedures ranked highest as drivers, while 3D printing, the use of robots for labor, and cloud computing were ranked most highly as major disruptors.
Drivers
- Increases in average life expectancy
- Increasing ratio if retirees to workers
- Public concern over control over access/amount of personal information
- Desire for sustainable energy sources
- Reduction in availability of grants and philanthropic resources
- Widening economic inequality worldwide
- Reduced job security in a global market economy
- Climate change
- Global terrorism
- Use of big data and analytics
- Reduction in cost of data collection and retention (for use in analytics)
- Quickening pace of knowledge transfer
- Long-term availability of certain energy sources
- Alternative distribution chains (such as manufacturers selling directly to consumers)
- Use of technology for medical procedures
- Wireless/broadband connectivity
Disruptors
- Crowdsourcing/open-sourcing of hardware development
- Changes in educational structure/design (e.g. MOOCs)
- Virtual/alternative currencies (such as Bitcoin)
- Smartphone use as a device for payment
- Cloud computing
- Use of robots as a source of labor
- Nonvolatile memory influencing big data accessibility and portability
- Quantum/nondeterministic computing
- Use of 3D printing
- Green computing
- New user interfaces (e.g. Siri, Kinect, instead of traditional keyboards)
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