August 20178 A s a CIO I am often asked, what is the next big thing? What's' going to change our lives or change the way we do things? The question is reasonable given we have seen the Internet, smart phones, Google, YouTube, Facebook and many more digital and social revolutions in the last two decades. The trouble is, more recently things are slowing down and this is why people are asking and almost expressing impatience with the speed of development. Scientists feel we are long overdue a major disruptive technological invention. Video conferencing promises but falls just short of being there and blended learning is better than online learning. We are getting both impatient for improvement and exhausted with the pace of change.Major disruptive technologies have roughly occurred every five years since the beginning of the twentieth century. What are disruptive technologies? They are advances that transform life, business and the global economy. They have a big impact. They disrupt, which means they have positive intended impacts and negative unintended impacts.So how do we predict disruption and why is it slowing down?It is easier to deal with the last part of this question first. It is slowing down because we doing too much; there are multiple competing streams of development from applications (Apps) to robots, smart devices, mobile wearable technologies, wireless devices, and multiple media channels. The connected world has opened up infinite opportunities to transform society. How do we predict future technologies? We draw inferences from literature that canvasses a selected group of experts to predict where things are going. To research this article I drew on a variety of sources within and external to higher education and most align on what the future holds.The next big thingFuture oriented technology articles predict things like a `Youniverse' (an App we can use to manage and memorise our life), autonomous vehicles, the smart wardrobe and five-sense immersion. Future sophisticated devices will contain smart sensors enabling devices with robotic capabilities connected to the internet utilising artificial intelligence (AI). These devices will read human moods and reactions and adapt output to suit the user experience (adaptive computing). They will offer a fully immersive experience via flexible and holographic displays (immersive or virtual reality). The next big thing is a super smart, super connected robotic device than can immerse the user in augmented reality. A smart device connects, contains sensors, creates, and presents big data. Our campuses will feature many of these from interactive classroom walls, campus signage, Apps in the Café, holographic touch displays in the Library and so on. Artificial IntelligenceThe world's data stored on the Internet doubles every two years, yet only 0.5 percent is analysed. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) will help us. Two leading developments of AI have taken very different routes. One uses a super computer that uses neural networks (as statistical method that imitates cognitive function) to store and analyse textual or language based knowledge. The alternate leading example of AI is pixel What is the Next Big Thing?in my viewBY JEFF MURRAY, CIO, UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIAJeff Murray
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