Five innovations that will define new technology era

Pupils attend a lesson at a Nairobi school last month. FILE

By Okuttah Mark

Each year IBM unveils a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.

This year’s “IBM 5 in 5” explores the idea that everything will learn – driven by a new era of cognitive systems where machines will learn, reason and engage with us in a more natural and personalised way.

“We know more now than any other generation at any time has known. And yet, we struggle to keep up with this flood of increasingly complex information, let alone make sense of the meaning that is inherent in the massive amounts of data we are acquiring at ever faster rates,” said Dr. Dario Gil, Director, Cognitive Experience Lab, IBM.

“By creating technology that is explicitly designed to learn and enhance our cognition we will usher in a new era of progress for both individuals and for society at large.”

Here are the five predictions that will define the future and impact us at a personal level:

The classroom will learn you

The number of individuals who don’t have a sufficient education is a major global challenge. Estimates show that, on a global basis, nearly two out of every three adults have not achieved the equivalent of a high school education.

What if a student could go through their entire stages of education and master the skills critical to meeting their personal goals in life.

The classroom of the future will give educators the tools to learn about every student, providing them with a tailored curriculum from kindergarten to high school and on to employment.

In the next five years the classroom will learn about each student using longitudinal data such as test scores, attendance and student’s behaviour on e-learning platforms, not just aptitude tests.

Sophisticated analytics delivered over the cloud will provide decision support to teachers so they can predict students who are most at risk, their roadblocks, and then suggest measures to help students conquer their challenges.

Buying local will beat online

Shopping online is a national past time. Online sales topped $1 trillion worldwide for the first time last year, and are growing faster than in-store sales.

Online stores have an advantage in their ability to learn from the choices we make on the web. Today, most physical stores are limited to the insights they can gain at the point of sale — and the trend of show rooming is making it harder to compete with online retailers who compete solely on price.

In five years, new innovations will make buying local du jour once again. Savvy retailers will use the immediacy of the store and proximity to customers to create experiences that cannot be replicated by online-only retail.