Last updated: 11 February 2016
Our Connected Living 2025 report is now live; don’t miss it! It’s based on our survey of 1200 young people across the globe, asking about their expectations of connected life in a decade.
So far in our connected living blog series, we’ve discussed some interesting findings, including young people’s predictions for mobile authentication and connected cars in 2025. Now it’s time to explore their visions for the hyper-connected society. If our respondents’ predictions are accurate, we’re set for a social revolution driven by IoT-enabled technology.
We were particularly struck by young people’s visions of healthcare in 2025. If you followed our coverage of CES 2016, you’ll know that digital health tattoos and smart beds, capable of monitoring your sleeping movements and adjusting accordingly, were exhibited. According to our report, young people see smart devices revolutionizing healthcare, with connected implants, specialized body fat trackers and even connected toothbrushes predicted to be available (of course, these are already emerging today).
If these expectations are accurate, they raise all sorts of exciting questions relating to how healthcare might be provided in a decade. Will the presence of wearable tracking devices free up time for in-demand health professionals, alleviating pressure on national health systems? And what are the implications on data privacy and security?
Young people also believe that personal assistant software like Apple’s Siri, or Microsoft’s Cortana, will be radically advanced in a decade’s time. According to our survey respondents, virtual personal assistants will be artificially intelligent to an astonishing degree, capable of predicting what entertainment you’ll want to watch, and perhaps even managing our IoT devices for us. We’re excited by these predictions – imagine how workplace culture could be transformed by the presence of advanced virtual PAs, freeing up time for employees and allowing them to focus on more creative, strategic tasks. There was little sign that young people feared an AI singularity in this timeframe!
Another key theme of the report is contactless payments – which are already revolutionizing the way we shop, as you’ll have seen in our #MyNFCDay series of videos. According to some of our survey respondents, this could bring an end to cash. Promisingly, a majority felt confident that effective security solutions will diminish online fraud – a hope we share, as you’ll know from our work on dynamic code verification.
Make sure you read the report and discover for yourself how young people visualize the hyper-connected society of 2025. There are some interesting international comparisons as well, with certain regions more optimistic about the potential of connected technology than others. We’d be very interested to hear your thoughts – not just on the blog, but also on Twitter, where we’ll be facilitating a live chat on Thursday at 3pm GMT, using the hashtag #CL2025.
Applied Futurist, Tom Cheesewright, and Growth Marketer/TechCrunch columnist Dan Kaplan, will be joining the Gemalto team, Xavier Larduinat, Marketing and Communications Manager for Innovation, Manfred Kube, Head of M2M Marketing, and Frederic Martinent, Head of Product Marketing, to chat about connected living.
