Technology trend forecast for 2017

When I left US after working and studying for almost 10 years in IT, I thought Nepal was ripe for the technology revolution. People were finally switching from kbps internet speeds to mbps. It seemed like the right time to catch the internet wave in Nepal at that time.

I got together with other like minded people in the valley and brainstormed on thousands of internet ventures that would work for Nepal. But we decided it was too early to start internet venture as other internet ventures were struggling in Nepal. We thought it would be best to wait to introduce all our amazing web ideas.

But while we were waiting for the web revolution to sweep the nation, the mobile generation overtook us. From a meager 4 to 5% to a staggering 60% in 2012, mobile penetration was one of the fastest in Nepal compared to its neighboring countries. 

Recently, I attended Tech Crunch Disrupt in London, which is one of the major technology events where latest technologies are showcased and discussed. I thought we were well versed in the latest mobile trends by watching what is happening in Nepal, and what trends are picking up, but Tech Crunch completely bedazzled me. The world has moved far ahead from the mobile revolution. While we were busy getting accustomed to the mobile trends, the rest of the technical world has added a number of new technologies that is going to revolutionize the world. I got the opportunity to observe most promising technology for 2017 during the event.

IOT - Internet of things
Not just mobiles, now even small devices are able to talk to each other and perform according to their counterparts. From turning on air purifiers according to dust conditions in the neighborhood to alerting people of hazards in the room, to monitoring product usage/wear/tear behavior, a lot of these machines which talk to each other are going to take over the world. If you are a technologist, I would bet on building IOT related devices to be the next big boom in technology world. I think IOT would turn into a necessity rather than a luxury in the developing world. This can help build agricultural products that can communicate with weather systems and soil pH sensors which can talk to a monitoring system and the optimal irrigation levels that can help conserve water and other resources.

This would prevent lots of farmers from losing their crops due to inadequate water.  

Machine learning – Artificial Intelligence
I think another big technology revolution that will take over in 2017 is intelligent decisions making by machines. Until now, most technologies revolve round solving mundane tasks that are solved through finite algorithms. With machine learning, we can solve problems with infinite possibilities. Like what would a person who liked a song on YouTube most probably buy at Amazon? Machine learning can calculate the possibility of how often people who love certain type of music would react to certain type of product. 

Following hundreds of thousands of similar networks, the machine is able to predict the direction or motive of the user and make suggestions according to that. YouTube recommending the videos you would like according to the pattern of videos you’ve watched previously would be one example.

This is just a small example of what machine learning can do. International Business Machines Corporation just made their series of Application Programming Interfaces public that can assist with a number of machine learning requirements. 

Now you can get to submit a video and let the machine figure out how many different objects are in the video, or what people are talking about in the video.