“The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.”
Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web
If Tim Berners-Lee had the foresight to know our online world has yet to reveal its full potential, then we should know enough now to know that we can’t even begin to conceive of the possibilities. The continued exponential growth in technology is astounding, as Azeem Azhar’s book, Exponential, describes.
What does that mean for 20fifty and for our clients? Here are 5 technologies we can’t wait to adopt:
Forget Your Screen
Extended Reality (referred to as XR) is not just some Metaverse mania. The term refers “to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables.”
While on a visit to the Helsinki XR Centre, we recently experienced how the technology enables experts to step beyond their screens, greatly expanding the dimensions we get to work within. With three Varjo hardware demos on offer, our CEO and Co-Founder, Catherine, was able to experience what it is like to interact with a human skeleton using the Hololens 2; design a new kitchen with the mixed reality VarjoXR3, a “retinal resolution device that is used to train astronauts, pilots, and nuclear power plant operators, design cars, and conducted pioneering research” and completely immerse herself in fully specced home with the “world’s first human eye-resolution VR headset for industrial use”. Check out this case study on how Volvo uses this technology to prototype designs and simulate test drives.
In April 2022, Varjo announced Reality Cloud. Reality Cloud will allow for access to virtual and mixed reality anytime, anywhere: “Varjo Reality Cloud is powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in addition to state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPUs and is future-proofed for running graphically intensive virtual- and mixed-reality applications across any device.” As AWS Cloud enthusiasts, we find this pretty fantastic!
Through our own internal experimentation with the Oculus Quest 2, albeit a lot more low tech that what we refer to above, we are already seeing substantial possibilities. Enabling a near-infinite virtual screen space means our teams can collaborate, code, and congregate in exciting ways, unrestrained by their screens and locations.
Automation For the Nation
Over the past decade, we’ve begun to realise new ways that businesses can adopt automation technologies to enhance productivity or build new products. The next step? HyperAutomation. HyperAutomation “is a business-driven, disciplined approach that organisations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperutomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms”, including machine learning, event-driven software architecture, robotic process automation (RPA) and low-code/no-code tools. By using HyperAutomation, businesses can save time and money by reducing the need for manual labour and repetitive tasks. In our environment, combining the right technologies is already propelling our customers towards achieving so much more, far more effectively, and cutting out the tedium associated with many of their internal processes. In house, our team is experimenting with GitHub’s CoPilot and have since inception, been extensively utilising Terraform to drive our infrastructure as code.
Compliance as a Cause
Take the Cambridge Analytica scandal, matched with the rush around ensuring GDPR compliance, and add in a little of the data privacy sauciness that’s popping up across the globe and what do you get? Cookie acceptance chaos. That’s, however, where the opportunities around compliance come into play. As the world moves towards securing data privacy as a priority, companies that seek to ensure compliance through their innovative products stand out. It’s not just about avoiding lawsuits, fines, and headlines. It’s about ensuring dignity at customer level, security at a business level, autonomy, and informed decision making, for every individual. The technologies taking the lead towards ensuring compliance, rather than rallying against regulation, are the ones we’ll be relying on in the middle distance and long term.
Post-pandemic Technologies
We won’t bore you by saying that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world of work. We all know that. What we’re looking at now, is just how sustained that change will be. In light of the much-touted “Great Resignation” and as a business that’s always bucked the narrative of remote working, through our connected collective, it’s remarkably interesting to take note of what comes next. As younger generations move into the workplace, the demands will change, and that unlocks new innovation that will respond to workplace demands. Many newly-minted employees entered a fully remote workplace during the pandemic, and now many appear to be more keen on a hybrid model of working. Can technology straddle both the interpersonal needs and flexible requirements for a workplace that won’t require clocking in? We believe it can, and will do so even more. Building sustainable, yet flexible IT roadmaps is important for organisations. Building effectively flexible IT roadmaps is essential because they help to ensure that technologies will be able to grow alongside the business. This is especially important for newer businesses, who may not have established systems in place yet, or were launched during the chaotic times we once called unprecedented.
New Energy for a New World
Tesla may have brought us electric vehicles that not only look good and go the distance, but we’re still relying on fossil fuels for many of our industries across the planet. Concerns around fighting climate change aren’t just another tick box on a company’s to do list, they’re now a priority. Powering our technologies through sustainable energy sources, and discovering alternative energy frameworks will demand that today’s technologies respond well to operating in different ways. New energy sources beget new technologies, and open up new career opportunities. We can’t wait to build green, using green, to enable a green future. Low carbon laptops, anyone? Sign us up.
2050 is the middle distance and is a date that is often referred to by those contemplating the effect and future of AI. Our team combines human ingenuity and intelligent technology to build cloud and AI powered solutions. We build what matters for 2050, so that what is built in 2022 and beyond transcends every, and any, expectation, prediction, trend, or whim. With 2050 only a few short years away, it seemed as good a focal point as any to keep us honest. From a kernel of an idea to the fully deployed solution, we work with you and your team to Build What Matters. Let’s work together, to build your business’ future.
