Tracking the Trends: Emerging Technologies 2014

I’ve been working on this for a while. What you see above is my very first infographic, which I eventually made at Venngage.

E-Tech Trends 2014 [Infographic]: https://infograph.venngage.com/infograph/publish/b097d0b8-8d2f-4ca5-a339-f6ede2bdf8c7

The only problem was that Venngage wouldn’t allow me to export a copy of my work unless I pay them money, and since I don’t have moola to spare you get the low-resolution hard-to-read copy above unless you go to the Venngage site.

BACKGROUND

Briefly, to make this, I took a batch of my favorite white papers, annual reports, and similar resources that choose the most important new tech for various fields. I compiled their lists, and looked for overlaps to identify what seems to be most important across all of them.

WHAT I FOUND

Of the ten reports I examined, there were never more than 5 in agreement on any one technology, and over half of all the technologies are listed in only one of the reports. Of course, that’s the part that is most interesting to me, but that isn’t what will be most important to my bosses. So here are the levels of agreement, as reflected in the infographic.

5 of 10

3d printing
learning analytics

4 of 10

Additive manufacturing
Big data
Flipped classroom
Games & gamification
Social media
Virtual reality
Wearable technology

3 of 10

Artificial intelligence
Mobile learning
Personal agency (learners, patients)
Personal genomics
Social networks

2 of 10

3d bioprinting
Affective computing
Augmented reality
Biometric authentication
Bitcoins & digital currency
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI)
Cloud computing
Drones
Global collaboration
Holographic displays & inputs
Human augmentation
Internet of things (IOT)
Maker culture / makerspaces / consumer to creator
Mobile health monitoring
MOOCs
Newborn genome
Open content
Personal learning networks
Power, renewable
Quantified self
Quantum computing
Robotics
Sensors
Smartwatches
Speech recognition
Speech-speech translation
Virtual assistants
Volumetric Displays
Wearable user interfaces

HOW I DID THIS

I follow a LOT of blogs, Twitter streams, journals, databases, archives, etc. to scan for emerging technologies. My brain sorts these into various categories, informally noted for what level of awareness I feel they need and who I should tell about them, and whether I should tell folk now or if it can wait a while. But that’s all fairly soft and ill-defined. I had a question recently for which I wanted more of a crisp idea of what are the most strategically important emerging technologies.

I could immediately suggest several thinktanks, organizations, and thought leaders who track emerging technologies and push out their annual list of what’s most important. I’m not one of those people, but I watch them. For this question, no one of those reports had what I wanted. I needed education, sci-tech, and healthcare. I wanted to be able to pluck the best from across several reports, and I wanted to be able to do this in a way that went beyond “because I feel it in my gut.”

I made a spreadsheet, entered the technologies mentioned in each report, and checked off which ones appeared in which reports, tallied them up, and this gave me what I put into the infographic. Below, you can find a list of the ten sources I used, and all of the technologies listed that appeared in more than one report.

There are several Horizon Reports, of which more than one might be of interest. Here I used the main Higher Ed report and the Australian report for “tertiary education” (which is basically also higher ed). As a side comment, even though I didn’t use the Horizon Project K-12 education report I often find that the real bleeding edge of tech adoption in education is there, in grade schools. Worth checking out.

There is another fascinating parallel resource to the Horizon Report from Australia (CORE-Ed). And of course, the Gartner Hype Cycle is a must, even though it isn’t education specific, as is the MIT Tech Review’s list of “breakthrough technologies.” The SETDA report for 2013 isn’t out yet, but the 2012 one might still be of interest. Audrey Watters did a rather interesting series in her Hack Education blog on her selections for the top ten edtech trends of 2013. She includes so many use cases and examples in her blog that it is a goldmine of resources to dig through. Berci Mesko’s white paper on the future of medicine is a similar rich resource that points to far far more than is mentioned at the top level.

SOURCES

Here are the links, in alphabetical order.

1. CORE-Ed: http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends

2. CORE-Ed Science: http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2014/02/digital-technologies-and-the-future-of-science-education.html

3. Gartner Report, Hype Cycle: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2575515

4. Guide to the Future of Medicine: http://scienceroll.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-guide-to-the-future-of-medicine-white-paper.pdf

5. Hack Education: Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: http://hackeducation.com/blog/tag.php?Search_Tag=ed-tech%20trends%202013

6. Horizon Project: Australian Tertiary Education: http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2013-Technology-Outlook-for-Australian-Tertiary-Education.pdf

7. Horizon Report: http://www.nmc.org/publications/2014-horizon-report-higher-ed

8. MIT Technology Review: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: http://www.technologyreview.com/lists/breakthrough-technologies/2013/

9. Popular Science: 2014: The Year in Science: http://www.popsci.com/article/science/year-science-2014

10. SEDTA National Educational Technology Trends 2012: http://www.setda.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SETDANational_Trends_2012_June20_Final.pdf