This Week's Herman Trend Alert

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  The Herman Trend Alert

October 29, 2008

Technologies Changing our Lives

A new report from CSC's Leading Edge Forum (LEF) identifies an emerging wave of disruptive technologies that will reshape business, trigger new business models, and alter consumer and employee behaviors. CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions.

The LEF study identifies seven "digital disruptions" that 21st century businesses must understand to position themselves for success. The emerging economy places value predominantly in the production, enhancement and sharing of information, while cultural content demands our attention to this shifting landscape. (See our Herman Trend Alert archive for previous coverage.) In this alert, we will explore three of the areas identified.

The first disruptive technology we highlight is "Living in a New Reality". This disruption focuses on our increasingly "blended" reality that combines physical and virtual reality, changing both. This enhanced reality helps businesses manage data centers virtually, students learn about weather patterns by "flying" through them, and consumers shop for clothes by building, and fitting, their virtual selves.

Second, we are seeing what LEF calls "Platform Makeover". Virtualization and cloud computing are changing today's computing model, enabling anytime, anywhere accessibility for users and applications. Moreover, "nanotechnology, molecular computing, quantum computing, and optical computing will take us beyond silicon, providing greatly increased speed and bringing new applications, opportunities, and challenges."

Finally, technology is becoming smarter, gradually approaching, and ultimately overtaking human ability to appreciate the meanings of patterns, proactively associate and correlate data, reason and make better decisions. In the future, we will have lifelike virtual assistants and semantic Web search, providing a richer understanding on the masses of online data.

Enterprise applications will identify relationships across data and information technology (IT) systems and give end users the ability to define business processes. Additionally, predictive behavioral software is improving employee hiring, performance, safety, and productivity.

Facilitated by the launch of the Internet, these disruptions will stimulate the formation of new industries, extend the significant gains in productivity brought about by digital communication, and challenge existing social, economic, political, and cultural norms. If we are to have the skilled workers to support these technologies, we must begin now to encourage emphasis on the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) subjects in education.


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